Living Labs Network

Where PEOPLE and TECHNOLOGY come together to engage in problem-solving.

Our focus is on strengthening a community for resilience and be prepared
to address the twin transitions - the greening of society and digitalization -
via collaborative action. Our vision is that every community - whether rural,
peri-urban or metropolitan - can convene people from all walks of life led
by the involvement of Quadruple Helix actors in government, academia, the
private sector and Civil Society to foster growth of the Fourth Sector, to
focus on the Global Goals and other initiatives that foster cross-sectoral
collaboration. We aim to build bridges and break silos between multi-sector
actors to formulate inclusive responses to calls to action for collaboration
with a co-creation of solutions to challenges. Our efforts also address the
lacuna on the nexus between sectoral production and management that
can benefit from entrepreneurship for diversification of products and
services, and look for ways to promote strategies that can enable govern-
ments, business and academia recover from social disruptors like Covid
and become resilient to future shocks.

Sustainabiity and digitalization have become top priorities among decision-
makers for their impact on economic, political and business environments.
Achieving sustainability requires moving from the traditional economy of a
“take/make/waste” mentality to a “circular economy”, one that is based a
fundamental shift in how we conceive not only of product development but
the very business models that drive progress in the quest of the twin transitions.
Behind every project lies the LLN Design Studio - a needs analysis lab that
supports qualitative and quantitative research aimed at understanding and
evaluating social, environmental, technological and economic changes taking
place in a rapidly-changing global, digital and intertwined society. The results
form the basis of programming for knowledge transfer, cross-sectoral collaborative
actions and social dialogue for a bottoms-up approach to problem solving to
address the needs of society. Our activities are steeped in the Collaborative
Leadership Process that helps diverse audiences consider the inter-related
nature of complex challenges that cannot be achieved by any one sector
in isolation. We invite you to join us as we explore strategies that foster
environments typical of a living lab...... collaborative, engaged, progressive
and effective.

Join us! Send us a note if you would you like to join our community and contribute to our actions

Email: info@livinglabsnetwork.com

The living lab concept is a variant of education models proponents of experiential or project-based learning and socio-constructivism that support a multi-point approach

to problem solving - multi-actors, multi-systems, multi-scale, multi-sectors and multi-levels. By sponsoring a vast panoply of activities that can generate new ways of responding to the challenges of post-pandemic labor markets and confront the growing complexity of societal challenges, living labs are the experimental test-beds for innovation and the co-production of knowledge as well as citizen and sectoral engagement in science and research projects. In addition to supporting needs analysis, the Living Labs Network Design Studio fosters a multi-actor learning community that can engage participants in creative work with phenomenon learning - i.e. learning around themes - to address grand societal challenges.

A response to the CREATIVE EUROPE call, the project "3Ts - Triple Transitions for Digitized, Resource-Efficient and Resilient Sustainable Cultural Tourism and Cultural Heritage Operations" brought together three municipalities, three NGOs and two SMEs for:

- Dialogue, Advocacy and Cross-Sectoral collaboration

- Mapping for the “big picture” of needed efficient interventions

- Embracing EntreComp for the entrepreneurship/social innovation journey

- Toolkits for measuring sustainability goals

- Skills Development and Training for the labor markets of targeted subsectors of the tourism industry

- Telling Visually Impactful Stories with Data utilizing the “scrollytelling” format

Demonstrates the Collaborative Leadership Process approach to problem-solving by providing a forum for dialogue where youth can lead discussions about the challenges they face for a bottom-up response from the community that can inspire, initiate and grow collective action, and where they can visualize their ideas about creating a sustainable and inclusive future before an audience of stakeholders.

- Supports direct communication between public officials and young people via a virtual innovation hub, where "tickets" are submitted that provoke public action

- Virtual Mobility = interactions between participants accross Europe for peer learning via videoconferences

- Skills Development targets acquisi-tion of the soft skills most in demand by employers

Erasmus+ Small Partnership that promotes sustainability in agrotourism operations.

- Provides a framework within which a three-dimensional perspective of achieving sustainability can be applied

- Creates a matrix of areas in which environmental, economical, cultural and social interventions can be made

- Training for operators to become entrepreneurial to diversify products and services while transitioning to digitalization standards of the twin transitions

- A Sustainability Toolkit is provided to explore the different applications of sustainability and draw inspiration from successful case studies of sectoral sustainability

- The ECO SEAL provides a verification process of having met certain standards of sustainability in products, operations and management

365 InfoDays for Violence Prevention Actions considered the complex interplay between individual and their relationships, and between these and the community/societal factors to develop programming for a systemic approach that encompasses multiple cross-sectoral liaison resulting initiatives engage target groups at the structural level in order to enable them to implement interventions at the individual, sectoral entity, employer, community and societal levels aimed at curbing, reducing and eventually eradicating gender-based violence in Europe. Strategies include public service campaigns that raise awareness, behavioral change training, continuing education for professionals in related fields, professional development for respondents to calls for help from violence victims, and material for employers to change labor market human resource policies to prevent violence in the workplace.

Our Living Labs consist of events in space and time to host a vast panoply of activities, from awareness-raising events to collaborative actions frameworks that allow representation from across the sectors to interact comprehensively with other members of a community. Living Labs serve as the local, regional and country-wide facilities to support learning activities and knowledge transfer, stakeholder liaison, and partnerships with Associate Partners, public authorities, and others, as well as multiplier events and other activity that foster collaboration to develop solutions for challenging issues. They are established to support synergistic mechanisms for cooperative actions that are aligned with various initiatives that promote sustainability, embrace digitalization and support actions for the greening of Europe, that foster cross-border collaboration. Linking the Living Labs via a virtual innovation hub forms a transnational network of demonstration projects, resulting in a methodological approach towards identifying innovation taking place across sectors while fostering the understanding of how institutions, organizations and social networks relate to drivers of change as well as a process of engaging stakeholders in a systematic way.

To address the effects of climate change and make the best use of Earth’s natural resources, people must change the way they consume products and entities across the sectors must alter how they structure and run their operations. The circular economy is an economic system that promotes sustainability by mimicking nature’s ability to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. It is the business model of the future.

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Our Mission:

Bringing Together Sectoral Diversity
To Analyze and Address Complex Issues
That Transcend Borders
For Collaborative Action

Living Labs for the
Collaborative Leadership Process

A place to develop ideas....
A place to create projects.....
A place to share knowledge.....

A PLACE TO
DEVELOP IDEAS

For Cross-Sectoral Collaboration

A PLACE TO
CREATE PROJECTS

Simplifying Complex Issues for
Non-Experts

A PLACE TO
SHARE KNOWLEDGE

Public, Private, Academic, NGO
Sectoral Insights

applications - Sampling of Projects