Living Lab

Definition: Living Lab
“[…] a Living Lab is a gathering of public-private partnerships in which businesses, researchers, authorities, and citizens work together for the creation, validation, and text of new services, business ideas, markets and technologies in real-life contexts”. The main idea of a living lab is to design innovations on a user-centred basis. About 85% of problems related to new products and services originate from a design process that is not tailor-made for the customer, which means that theoretical advantages often do not withstand a real-life environment. A living lab’s priority is to harvest creative ideas mainly from those stakeholder groups who will be using the new product or service later. In order for that to happen, collaborative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have to provide the basis for targeted customer-centred development. Bergvall-Kåreborn et al. (2009, p. 2) have chosen five key principles under which a living lap is functioning: The idea of a living lab depends on several factors which play a key part in developing a user-centered innovation. Feuerstein et al. (2008) mentioned that, in order to enable e-Collaboration methods such as online interviews, web-based conjoint analysis and virtual product testing on the test site, an efficient ICT and infrastructure are essential requirements. The contribution of this thesis to the related living lab is the information about how to produce regional NDVI maps with open-source software. These information can then be evaluated and support decisions on where and how much pesticides and fertilizers need to be spread. How this low cost approach might look like and what challenges might arise is discussed in the following chapter.
 * “Continuity: This principle is important since good cross-border collaboration, which strengthens creativity and innovation, builds on trust, and this takes time to build up.
 * Openness: The innovation process should be as open as possible, since the gathering of many perspectives and bringing enough power to achieve rapid progress is important. The open process also makes it possible to support the process of user-driven innovation, including users wherever they are and whoever they are.
 * Realism: To generate results that are valid for real markets, it is necessary to facilitate as realistic use situations and behavior as possible. This principle also is relevant since focusing on real users, in real-life situations is what distinguishes Living Labs from other kinds of open co-creation environments such as Second Life.
 * Empowerment of users: The engagement of users is fundamental in order to bring innovation processes in a desired direction, based on the humans’ needs and desires. Living Labs efficiency is based on the creative power of user communities; hence, it becomes important to motivate and empower the users to engage in these processes.
 * Spontaneity: In order to succeed with new innovations, it is important to inspire usage, meet personal desires, and fit and contribute to societal and social needs. Here, it becomes important to have the ability to detect, aggregate, and analyse spontaneous users’ reactions and ideas over time."

Learning Task

 * (LL Comparision) Explore the existing European Network of Living Labs and analyse similarities and difference of the listed living labs.
 * (LL Implementation) Analyse educational resource "Citizen-Driven Innovation – A Guidebook for City Mayors and Public Administrators" and derive major steps of implementation of a LL. Add the major steps here and identify Living Labs approaches in literature that follow these steps and/or show or use different design concepts!
 * (Pro/Cons) Identify Pros and Cons from a neutral point of view of user-driven innovation (include the sustainablility aspect to your considerations)!
 * (Swarm Intelligence) Analyse the concept of Swarm Intelligence and applied that concept to the living lab approach! What are the similarities and differences of LL approach and the concept of Swarm Intelligence?
 * (Reach People) The social, cultural, environmental and economic conditions differs from regions and communities. To reach people and target local problems in a living lab needs an analysis of the reqional requirements and constraints. Explain why it is necessary to reach people and have a sustainable impact on problem solving to take these conditions into account for user-driven decision making!