The Apulian ICT Living Lab joins private- and public-sector stakeholders and consumers to boost sustainable economic growth
- 05 October 2015
We coordinated a public-private-people partnership which realised a Living Lab (called “HELP LARGE”) for the co-creation, experimentation and evaluation of a serious game (‘Cibopolis’) supporting healthy eating and nutrition education. It was an innovative and fruitful approach based on the cooperation of different domains (e.g. digital game design, instructional design, healthy nutrition & wellness) and the direct involvement – from the very beginning - of end users (i.e. schools and associations). Due to the nutrition theme, ‘Cibopolis’ will be presented at Milan EXPO 2015 during a two-day session.
The project aims to introduce an innovative way for local businesses to answer public sector needs through technological innovation. To ensure a higher level of quality, utility and social acceptance of the ICT solutions provided by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the Apulian ICT Living Lab model promotes active ‘prosumers’ by creating domain-specific open innovation environments within real-life conditions. This should lead to solutions being closer to a possible market application, since the services and platforms would be ‘co-created’ with the end users (genuine consumers) in an every-day environment.
Involving the public
The project unfolded in different parts: through promoting the collection of specific societal needs and organising a technological response into a dedicated online database – the so-called Requirements Catalogue – was structured into eight thematic domains. All the major stakeholders of the Apulia region (public authorities, third sector organisations, citizen and consumer associations, etc.) could freely publish their needs onto the platform in a structured, machine-readable, way. This also enabled a type of ‘census’ of the potential end users of future applications trials, which were collected in another online database, dubbed the Living Lab Partners Catalogue.
By 2015 the Requirements Catalogue had gathered more than 400 needs and the Partners Catalogue more than 200 different entities. To total of 79 Living Labs proposals were submitted by 202 SMEs (25 single SMEs and 56 networked enterprises). A number of partnerships created during the project are due to three events: the collection of technological demands expressed by regional public sector bodies or third sector associations; the launch of a public call for ICT SMEs capable of working on these demands; and the unveiling of the Living Lab based method. These partnership will hopefully become permanent working alliances.
A wide range of fields involved to maximise the Living Lab model
The Living Lab strategy focused on eight thematic domains, with the overall aim to create a knowledge intensive community, which would boost innovation and reduce the time-scope between an innovative idea and its market launch.
In terms of concrete practice of the Living Lab, the DemoLab became the core of the Living Lab, the locus of crossing between knowledge, real life and concrete experience. In fact, collecting and strictly referring to the activities of the local Living Labs funded through the Apulian ICT Living Labs programme, ACTLab represents a true unique experience of stakeholders multi-thematic aggregation in which technologies are the tools of connection between single projects and the LL praxis is the reproducible mechanism that allows the growth of the network.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Apulian ICT Living Labs” is EUR 39 799 411, of which the EU’s European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 22 178 564 from the Operational Programme “Puglia” for the 2007 to 2013 programming period.