Best practices Database for Living Labs - ALCOTRA - Innovation

1. Introduction
Much has been written about the massive explosion of Living Labs that has positively affected the European
scenario in the past five years now. Scientists, industry observers, and policy makers seem to share the
perception that the big movement (and momentum) still under way defies meaningful descriptions, making
an overall evaluation almost impossible. This perception is unfortunate, because the ‘essence’ of European
Living Labs – a successful mixture of ICT-based collaborative environments, open innovation platforms, user
centered product/service development methods, and public private partnerships – holds potentially
disruptive and long lasting transformational effects on industry, markets, regional economies and societal
landscapes.
On November 20 th , 2006, the Finnish EU Presidency launched the idea of a European Network of Living Labs
(ENoLL) for the “co-creation of innovation in public, private and civic partnership”. This was presented as a
first step towards a new European R&D and Innovation System, entailing a major paradigm shift for the
whole innovation process. Since then, a growing number of European actors in a variety of business and
non-business domains, have understood that involving people into product and service creation is of vital
importance for the acceptance and marketability of results. This has led to the launch of six non-funded
calls (the one currently open expires on February 28 th , 2012) and the acknowledgment of five consecutive
“waves” of Living Labs, endorsed by the Portuguese, Slovenian, French, Swedish, Spanish and Hungarian
Presidencies, bringing the 19 founding members of the ENoLL to 274 (including 47 non-EU Living Labs from
e.g. North and South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, and the US). A subset of these has
also given life, in January 2010, to the ENoLL aisbl international non-profit association, holding its seat in
Brussels.
In essence, the Living Lab concept refers to a set of (quantitative and qualitative) methodologies and tools
for the co-creation and validation of innovation together with the end users in real-world environments. In
these environments, people are taken across the different roles played during a normal day, and which
typically require the use and support of different technologies. Compared with traditional testbeds, where
users are not necessarily involved and the laboratory setting is controlled, Living Labs place people at the
very centre of the innovation process; thereby, innovation becomes human-centric, in contrast to
technology-centric. Further to that, Living Lab activities go on round the clock: this means that solution
developers get the opportunity to gain understanding of a new product or service in its 24/7 usage context.
Finally, in the perspective of validation, the focus is on how users experience technology, e.g. by interfacing
design and ergonomics, as well as on user acceptance. Hence, the purpose of a Living Lab is to enhance
innovation, usefulness, and usability of ICT applications in society.
To date, evidence collection on current and emerging Living Labs has largely relied on self-reflection and
some empirical analyses carried out on relevant, yet partial subsets of the movement. However, this has
contributed to highlight the complexity of a European ‘phenomenon’ which is characterized, at the very
least, by a great deal of variability in the respective aims, methods, tools, activities and results. In this
context, time is ripe for an integrated research agenda, which aims to fill in the vacuum between
theoretical developments and practical implementations, and lay the scientific basis for what can be
recognized as ‘the’ first truly original model of innovation ever appeared in Europe.
As a preliminary contribution in that direction, this paper proposes a survey of all 274 Living Labs that are
currently members of the ENoLL, based on textual information kindly made available by the ENoLL aisbl
chair. The survey was carried out, when available, on the individual self-descriptions delivered by the
candidates to the various ENoLL “waves”, otherwise on the Living Lab profiles that are published on the
www.openlivinglabs.eu website. No attempt has been made to contact any Living Lab directly for a
clarification or integration of the received and analyzed information. While this approach may lend itself to
criticisms, as it leaves a lot of margin to the discretional interpretation of the researcher, we believe it also
comes as close as possible to what can be said to be an objective and neutral presentation of the Living Lab
The project is co-funded by the ERDF
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