Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

German Living Lab Event, WTC Bremen

September 19th, 2006

I’ve just spent a couple of lovely days in Bremen (temp avg. 28C) on the inviation of BIBA’s Division IKAP who hosted the German Living Labs Event, at the World Trade Center Bremen
There were an interesting mix of topics, “Towards a European Network of Living Labs”, “Examples and Visions of Living Labs”, “Industrial Perspectives on Living Labs” and “Applications for Living Labs – Specific Scenarios and Customer Groups”. The speakers made a good case and obvious need for the Living Labs concept, but I left feeling that we are truely in the early days of this initiative and there are many things (service offerings) to sort out.
This event was also an opportunity to meet up with all the CoreLabs partners after the summer break. There was loads to catch up on, deliverables to finalise and a Lanuch Event (Nov. 20th) to prepare for.

Learning, Innovation and the Living Labs

September 7th, 2006

There area number of other items I picked up from the very interesting HSE workshop last week.
I start with David Kolb’s learning styles model and experiential learning theory (ELT). David Kolb published this work in 1984 but has relevance today. To really get a feel for this work the best reference site / research library is from the EBLS Network.
There are other Experiential Learning articles and critiques of David Kolb’s theory which can be found at the link.
Another book recommenadtion this time from Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation : The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology
Although I must admit, I find the words “Open Innovation”, a paradox, as
Open , according to Webster, has the meaning

having no enclosing or confining barrier : accessible on all or nearly all sides

Innovation has the meaning of

the introduction of something new

But in the business world we have traditionally lived in the closed innovation paradigm, but I am hoping we can change that with the Living Labs.
Following on from this discussion the true promotors of Open Innovation are John Seeley-Brown & John Hagel with their most recent work on Creation Nets [in pdf] . There is some interesting blogs on this, one from John Hagel, and I found another Mediangler with a slight Irish/European perspective.
Maybe it can really happen.