Living Labs Europe

Launched in the beginning of this year Living Labs Europe (blog) is a collaboration of Public Private Partnership where firms, public authorities and people work together with creating, prototyping, validating and testing new services, businesses, markets and technologies in real-life contexts, such as cities, city regions, rural areas and collaborative virtual networks between public and private players. The real-life and everyday life contexts will both stimulate and challenge research and development as public authorities and citizens will not only participate in, but also contribute to the whole innovation process.

There are already many existing real-life test beds in Europe that as building blocks the future Living Labs concept, including Barcelona. They have already published a report the Mobile Readiness Index of the region.

Relation to my thesis: The Living Labs concept is about moving out of laboratories into real-life contexts.