With so many things happening recently I haven’t had a chance to tell you about a project that has just successfully finished its research programme.
CoreLabs started in March 2006 with the stated mission to conduct as broad coordination as possible among European private, public and civic stake-holders and related projects working with systems/environments (Living Labs) for open user-driven innovation of (primarily) new ICT based products and services.
CoreLabs mission also included the establishment a European Network of Living Labs and to propose related supportive policies and governance structures. The long term objective with the Living Lab network is to become a enabling key instrument in a new European innovation infrastructure.
So did CoreLabs manage to do this?
The projects achievements include all planned deliverables and targeted objectives (ref DoW) three of which can be downloaded below:
D2.1a Best Practices
D3.2 Technological & Mass Customisation Aspects, which was edited by Claire and myself here at the TSSG.
D5.1 Methods & Tools Inventory and Taxonomy
There were as quite a few additional deliverables and impacts achieved such as the ;
(Co-)organisation of more than thirty (30!) LL-events across Europe
The election based formation of a Living Lab Portfolio Leadership Group, LLP-LG
Creation of the physical (Rubik’s cube based) Living Lab Harmonization Cube, presented
at the e-Challenges conference 2007 in Den Hague.
A Living Lab Book; European Living Labs. A new approach for human centric regional innovation, in which Chapter 4 on the Technology Platform for the ENoLL is a contribution made by Claire & myself also.
To mention but a few.
The project had its final review on February 14th 2008 and the EC have kindly reported that that through these achievements the project has contributed to the understanding of the changing techno-socio-economic paradigm. The report does go on to state that this ongoing transformation requires research on how to optimally embed ICT in all segments of the European society (health, mobility, learning, government, leisure, etc.). ‘Living Labs’ appear as an optimal tool to realise this objective.
There is tons still to do, but CoreLabs has clearly being a guiding light in this initaitve.
And so as the quote from W.Churchill goes:
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. (10 Nov 1942).