Living Lab

by Creative Wallonia

The Creative Wallonia initiative places creativity and innovation at the heart of Wallonia’s economic development. In this context, the Living Lab concept is a laboratory for open innovation. Beyond the simple validation of concepts by mere consumers for new products and services, the Living Lab is a place for the appropriation of new technologies and the emergence of new usage scenarios where users/citizens become actors and contributors.

Expertises:

Co-creation for digital ⊕

Domaine: Digital Society ⊕

Factsheet:

Status: Finished
Collaboration: Wallonia
Role: Coordinator
Started: 1 January 2013
Duration: 48 months
Program: Creative Wallonia
CETIC budget: 1250000 €

Objectives

As part of the Creative Wallonia initiative, CETIC has been appointed to coordinate the implementation of two Living Lab pilot projects, the first of their kind in Wallonia.

The Living Lab places the user at the heart of the co-creation concept to design and develop products and/or innovative services in order to better meet society’s needs and expectations.

Results

The positive outcome from different Living Lab initiatives around the world led to a reflection on the value of implementing such dynamics in Wallonia and raise the region’s innovation capacity.

In 2013, CETIC launched a call for proposals to fund two Living Lab pilot pro- jects. These two pilots will be centred either on the eHealth theme or on the Open Domain one. On the one hand, eHealth is key to addressing Wallonia’s upcoming societal challenges. The focus is on telemedicine, on technologies and process enhancing the autonomy of elderly people, and on the sharing of medical data. On the other hand, Open Domain aims at experimenting with usage scenarios for new standards, practices or innovative technologies.

Added value

Through the deployment of the two Living Lab pilot projects, CETIC will enhance its expertise in open innovative technologies and co-creation methodologies. CETIC will ensure the knowledge transfer towards local businesses for integration of co-creative concepts and technological innovations into their process.