RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

Living Labs (LILA): A community driven approach to
technology transfer and internationalising entrepreneurship
Rehan BHANA 1 , Asim MAJEED 2 , Hanifa SHAH 3 ,
Anwar Ul HAQ 4 , Rebecca GOODE 5 , Steve ADIGBO 6
1,2,3,4,5,6
QA Higher Education
2
Asim.Majeed@QA.COM
Abstract: The collaboration between cross-border networks for technology diffusion has embraced innovation,
which includes systematic, dynamic and strategic processes of the product development. Although
a similar concept was embraced by various private and public organisations (e.g. google glasses) to produce
real value and sustainable products from their investments; they have struggled to do that. A response to this
is the concept of Living Labs (LILA) as an open real staged environment for experiments and developing
innovative products in collaboration with community users. The participation of university campuses as living
labs in these projects gives high importance in relation to innovation capabilities and long-term investment
plans. This research explores an understanding of living labs as an arena for innovation based on
collaborative networks and user-centric project development methods. Project initiations in open based environments,
supporting cross-border collaborations, accelerates the acceptance and development of innovations
internationally since it has the potential to meeting the needs of users from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Researchers of BlindX Ltd. at Birmingham City University (BCU) generated an idea of designing and building
a cane with facial recognition, GPS navigation and obstacle detecting sensors up to 10 metres distance
in the environment. This cane would help blind and visually impaired people in their day-to-day life. This
innovative project which will be used as a case-study to review and evaluate our approach. It was accomplished
at the BCU campus through the use of a living lab where students, computer scientists, researchers,
local community representatives and electronics engineers collaboratively participated. During the compilation
phase of this project, we learned that there is a need for thorough understanding of actors, each stakeholder’s
objectives, opens and collaborative culture establishment, operational processes of technology transfer
when adapting the living labs development approach for internationalisation the entrepreneurship.
Keywords: community, technology transfer, internationalising, entrepreneurship
Introduction
The concept of cross-border technology transfer is embryonic and entails a variety of views
(Smith et al., 2015). The study carried out by Dechezleprêtre et al., (2008) classified the innovation
process as being of three type: bottom-up innovation, user-led innovation and living