Living Labs are a success story with innovative power

Position paper argues for user-oriented innovation infrastructures in Germany 

How can innovations actively be fostered? So called Living Labs offer companies and users innovation environments situated in practice. Here, innovative developments can be tested in real life situations. In the newly published position paper “Innovationsstrukturen 4.0“, 13 German Living Labs present their activities to strengthen the innovation location Germany.

There do exist more than 100 Living Labs (and rising) in Germany which inter alia deal with topics like Living, Shopping and Mobility. Living Labs provide infrastructures to develop and test new products and services and furthermore probe their market maturity in collaboration with potential consumers. The newly published position paper is primarily targeted towards policy makers responsible for innovations in Germany. The position paper aims to bring light to current Living Lab infrastructures and describe their potential for the development respectively introduction of innovative products as well as services.

“Living Labs support the development and testing of high-quality products, services and business models,” says Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf, Chair of the department of Business Informatics and New Media at the University of Siegen. The position paper will be presented to the public at the first Living Lab Form in Germany at the 26th of February 2018 in Cologne.

The 13 participating Living Labs, also including the PRAXLABS, are initiated by universities, private organizations, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft e.V., the German Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI) as well as foundations. Researchers from the PRAXLABS infrastructure actively participated in developing the mentioned position paper  during the project „INNOLAB-Living Labs in der Green Economy.“ The Living Lab approach has been untilized by researchers at Siegen since 2009 to solve social, technical and economic challenges with a focus on IT in collaboration with user.

The whole position paper: 
„Innovationsstrukturen 4.0: Ein Positionspapier an innovationspolitische Entscheidungsträger in Deutschland“