European living labs

To find and utilize innovations in Europe seems to be one of the hardest problems in Europe in the upcoming years. Worldwide 85% percent of the development efforts are spent on products and services that never reach the market, thus leaving a big hole in the political economies. At the same time the potential of certain products or services (like SMS) is totally underestimated by the experts, leading to unexpected market opportunities. The concept of Living Labs was built up as an approach to stimulate user-driven innovations in order to better understand and exploit innovations. However while more and more enterprises and regions in Europe and all over the world start to commit themselves to the basic principles and guidelines of Living labs, the starting point for these enterprises and regions is very different. The book „European Living Labs - a new approach for human centric regional innovation“ tries to outline where the Living Lab principle originates from and identifies the roots of the Living Lab movement. It shows the potential that can be unleashed by putting the customer into the driver seat of innovations and explains what kind of methods and methodologies exists to achieve this goal. The book proceeds by classifying and describing the different good practices that can be found all over Europe. The technological infrastructural requirements are investigated and a picture is drawn on how in the future the Living Labs will be able to cooperate and to standardise their services for entrepreneurs to allow these parties to roll out their innovation and products on a European bases.