Living Labs
A Living Lab is a new concept for innovation to boost the Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth in Europe. What is Living Labs? The answer depends on who you ask, because of the big differences between running Living Labs. But one thing is common for all of them; the human-centric involvement and its potential for development of new ICT-based services and products. Things are accomplished by bringing different stakeholders together in a co-creative way.
A Living Lab is both a methodology for User Driven Innovation (UDI) and the organizations that primarily use it.
A Living Lab is about experimentation and co-creation with real users in real life environments, where users together with researchers, firms and public institutions look together for new solutions, new products, new services or new business models.
But Living Labs are also about societal involvement, about promoting innovation in a societal basis, involving academia, SMEs, public institutions and large companies in an Open Innovation process that because happens in real environments has an immediate impact. This is how Living Labs aim to contribute to a new Innovation System where users and citizens become active actors and not only passive receivers.
The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) is a bottom up organization coming from the European Living Labs, the E.U., national and regional governments, academia and leading companies + SMEs, providing networking and a global context to its members.