In recent decades, Living Labs have emerged internationally as research and open innovation infrastructures and collaborative, in real life settings. Their goal is sustainable creation of new adapted products, spaces or infrastructures to the needs of the society and territory in which they are established. For it involve different agents, both public and private, that make up the so-called quadruple helix (citizens, organizations of research, business and government agencies/levels) in a open, iterative and user-centered ecosystem. They encourage co-creation in an environment real, being its function to act as intermediaries/orchestrators thereof.
Therefore, the fundamental keys that a Living Lab must comply with are: •Orchestration: acts as an orchestrator within the ecosystem to connect and partner with relevant stakeholders. •Stake multi stakeholder •Stake active users •Co-creation, understood as a bottom-up process. •Around real: operates in the real environment of the end users, incorporating innovations into their real lives instead of move the user to test sites to explore innovations. •Multi-method approach: each Living Lab activity is based on a problem. Therefore, the methodological approach for each activity will be selected based on the expected results of the activity and the interested parties that should participate.
Under this premise, there are different types of living labs. The living labs territorial are committed to local development, the promotion of digital culture and the innovation, entrepreneurship at a local scale, the creation of networks of digital citizens, citizen participation in local government, the discovery of new technologies and the uses they may have for the citizenship. One of the functions of territorial living labs is to promote coordination between territorial agents to improve the well-being, the quality of life of the population and thus contribute to the development and sustainability of the territory. An example of this could be Living Labs of Smart cities,
Los living labs scientific-technological originate in another conceptual framework, that of the competitiveness and sustainability of business. Some are companies that offer product validation services technology during the design and development phases of products to companies from different sectors. Others arise in science park settings. and technology to help researchers from universities, startups and companies linked to them and, furthermore, to facilitate the transfer of their technologies.
It seems that these living laboratories have come to stay and replace the old and obsolete structures of innovation and, thus, involve the different agents of society in the search for efficient formulas for problem solving, based on active participation of the agents.
Sara Soloaga
Ecologist and MSc in Ecosystem Management
NAIDER
