MedLab launches the first Maco-Regional Living Lab

What is the project about?

MedLab built on the emerging model of «Living Labs» (LL), whereby research, development and innovation in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) shifts from the laboratory to the real world. In the project’s 30-month lifespan, eight different institutions in six MED Member States explored the feasibility of building multi-stakeholder Living Lab partnerships to promote ICT-driven innovation coherent with regional policies in areas ranging from rural development to green construction. Emergent technologies such as social networking, mobile services, and open data mash-ups were explored for their capacity to contribute to shared objectives of innovation in concrete fields of development.

What's the latest news? 

At the Final Conference in Thessaloniki (GR), October 3-4, 2011, project partners agreed “to form a permanent MedLivingLab network that inter-connects the local and regional Living Lab partnerships that have been constructed in the lifetime of the MedLab project, in order to build a diffused innovation ecosystem in the Med space. This network is open to the participation of Living Labs, regional and national networks, and individual citizens and businesses throughout the Med space, with particular regards towards welcoming our neighbours on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, as well as collaboration with national and macro-regional Living Lab networks elsewhere in Europe and the world. 

« MedLivingLab focuses on the constitution, aggregation, and enhancement of existing and future Living Lab partnerships that build on local cultural and social capital to promote the “democratic appropriation” of ICTs and increase “territorial smartness” in the adoption and usage of new technologies as they rapidly emerge. The network thus represents a practical and feasible method for attaining the bottom-up, user-driven innovation processes called for in EU 2020. “