At least in Germany most Living Labs have been built as part of academic and scientific institutions. In many cases the aim was making scientists understand that there is a world outside of their lab that does not work under thoroughly controlled conditions. Often, additionally ordinary citizens should learn about the meaning and value of scientific work.
With Innoclusion we did not follow this well-established track. The four Innoclusion LLabs are part of given social service providers operating in the real world, with all its daily routines, constraints, and obligations, as well as its inherent VUCA aspects.
Here it is about confronting highly motivated start-up founders with not always extreme domain expertise with the sometimes-brutal reality that make up the conditions that frame the providing of care and support to those who need it.
But it is more than that. Our aim has been (and still is) to evaluate whether innovative solutions will be useful in real-life conditions, and to provide a secure space for further development and optimisation in the real world. As part of this evaluation and development process, both users and providers can learn how to generate maximum value from an innovation. This approach is key to bringing innovations into broad use and acceptance.
What do you think what was the first purpose of the wheel after it had been invented? Actually, is was not the wheel of a trolley but the potter’s wheel. To be honest, we have to admit that we do not know exactly with what the history of the wheel really had begun in the neolithic age or before. Possibly, the first usage of the wheel was an application to ease olive harvesting in the Mediterranean area. People let run down stone wheels from the hilltop that they crash against olive trees, making them shake and discarding the ripe fruits. Or in the beginning all started with small stone wheels that children let roll against a wall as we were throwing coins during my childhood. The one of us whose coin came to a rest nearest to the wall got it all. Nobody knows by now.
But it is obvious that from the invention of a round shaped geometric form with a whole inside to fix it to something (this differentiates it from a donut) to a wheel that is broadly used for various purposes in transportation there is a pretty long way. Scientists say that it took some three to five hundred years to make a cartwheel from the potter’s wheel. This is not unlikely because here we have to deal with a complex co-innovation process. It is not only the potter’s wheel that has to be adapted to an entirely different use case and set-up. Somebody had to invent axles and the whole idea of a cart. And the yet existing sledge industry sensing the disruptive quality of that invention may have tried to prevent it from becoming publicly known broadly by filing for patent infringement at any court between Beijing and Babylon.
Maybe, maybe not – important in our context is a decisive differentiation: A piece of technology is nothing but a technological invention. To become an innovation there has to be developed a new habit, a usage pattern that creates value. This value must be perceived as unique and high enough that it is worth to change your long established and well-known habits. To become an innovation in the true sense of the term, the invention successfully has to compete against the status quo that is the hardest, toughest enemy an invention ever could stand against.
So, at the end of the story the innovation is not about technology. Technology enables innovation – nothing more. Innovation is a new socio-technical behavioural pattern that has to be developed by humans crazy enough to care about new stuff where most people say: What t** f*** is that???
The type of living labs that has been designed and Implemented on Lastovo Island, in Čakovec, in Kork, and in the depth of the Black Forest is a means to generate the best innovative socio-technical patterns that will help our social system to cope with the consequences of our aging societies, of the increase of clients and the shortage not only of skilled workers but also of funds, and all the rest.
The transformation of the European social system has to cope with the transformation of its system environment. The latter transformation is on a fast pace. We can wait another three to five hundred years to develop the necessary socio-technical innovations – the next “cartwheels” – to keep up with. Or we can use the established methodology of the Innoclusion living labs to speed up by integrating all stakeholders deeply into the development process. We should not misunderstand this as a technology development process – it’s way more than that. The development of the technology and the development of the social usage patterns, which let emerge the maximum value from the use of the technology, are deeply intertwined by the design of the Innoclusion living lab process.
Therefore, the Innoclusion living labs design is a key to the successful transformation of the European social system.
