The European Network of Living Labs is a grown up initiative coming from the own European Living Lab and sponsored by the European Community through a number of European Projects and coordinating actions like COLLABS, CORELABS, Laboranova, EcoSpaces, Co-Spaces, C@R , WearIT@Work , VEP, etc…
The development of the network started in the year 2006 according to a road-map, based on the project-plans of the EU coordination actions CoreLabs and CLOCK, in close cooperation with the Living Lab sites and the Living Lab Open Innovation Community. The CO-LLABS Thematic Network and the Living Lab Leadership-group have now taken over the role to coordinate the development of the ENoLL.
What is a Living Lab?
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 also Living Labs are 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 grown 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.
APOLLON - the new initiative of ENoLL
APOLLON is leveraging current experiences and on-going investments to supplement cross-border pilots with best-of-class methods for setting up, developing and operating sustainable networks of Living Labs. One of the major challenges in this project is to enable SMEs to gain access to new markets, using the Living Lab environment as a user-driven community, which provides invaluable feedback in the product development of new, innovative services. Since APOLLON is actually piloting concrete services in thematic networks along the way, the project also aims to provide the success stories of these SMEs, as well as show how SMEs can best be involved in cross-border Living Lab projects.
http://www.apollon-pilot.eu/