The case of citilab truefinal-v2

Artur Serrai2cat/Citilab

Summer School of LlsParis.

August 25-27, 2010

Open innovation Open innovation systems, systems,

living labs and SMCs:living labs and SMCs:The case study of Citilab, Cornella de The case study of Citilab, Cornella de

Llobregat, SpainLlobregat, Spain

Index

I. Towards open innovation systems

II. Citilab, Cornella de Llobregat, a case study on LL at SMC.

III. Some topics for the agenda.

i2CAT Foundation

1. Towards open innovation systems

The “national innovation systems”

The national innovation systems (Nelson,Rosenberg, Porter... 1993).

Characteristics:– Science-Technology-Industry– Science the Enless Frontier, V. Bush– Linear model. R&D--->Innovation– Triple Helix, Universities, Gov., Industry– Clusters, (Porter)...

“CMU, a Design Culture” (1990-93)

Science: basic research

Technology:Applied research

Industry:development

NSF Model (Vanevar Bush 1945)

DARPA model(ARPA, 1959)

Computer Science:Basic Technological research(Strategic Research)

Applied technologicalresearch

“Dual use”: Military and Industry

H.Simon. “The Sciences of the Artificial”

Natural worlds Natural sciences

Necessity Discovering “Facts” Science-Technology

and Industry

Artificial worlds Sciences of the

artificial Possibility Designing Deeds Computer

science-”Dual use” community.

The Internet was a child of this culture

Evolution: Open networks, open source, open innovation

-1991. “Internet is for everyone” ISOC.-2000. Web 2.0, Wikis, social netwoks-2001. Innocentive, crowdsourcing.-2005. “Democratizing innovation”....

-2006. Corelabs project: Open Living labs.

Extending innovation as a culture.

What happen when a new practice is beginning to be shared by others?...

It becomes a culture: a set of values,

knowledges and practices shared by a community.

Open living labs are extending the innovation culture to everyone.

2. The Open Living Labs hypothesis

Could it be possible to organize the information society as a living lab?

Could we think in different generations of information societies, being Living labs the next one?

EnoLL-Europe 2010: the tip of a global open living labs movement

II. Citilab, Cornella de Llobregat: a case study on LL at SMC.

Citilab of Cornella (Barcelona)

http://maps.google.es/maps/ms?hl=es&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111599577425807502671.00048e171fdb4238bfe3a

Spanish Lls accredited by EnoLLAugust 2010

Why Living labs in SMCs. a) Because they want it.

Cornella and other Catalan cities wants to develop LLs.

b) Because they can. SMCs can have all the components for a PPPP.

– Botnia LL: Center for Distance Spanning Technology at Lulea Institute of Technology, Big and SMEs, City of Luleä (45.467 hb), in the periphery of Europe, relevant role at Corelabs, (2006)

– Even the big Lls are SMCs : 22@, Arabiaranta, ...neigborhoods in a big city.

– Also the smallest Lls are gathering in consortia of small municipalities.

c) Because may be... we are wrong. “Piecemeal social engineering”, K. Popper

The context

Cornellá de Llobregat

Working class city in metropolitan area of BCN86.519 inhabitants,(INE 2009)De-industrialization. Increasing service economyElder population: 17,39% (BCN, 20,43%)Secondary educational centers (5).No university or tertiary center (BCN, 8) People with university degree, 9,31%. (BCN, 20,17%)Immigrants, 17,26% (BCN, 17,54%)

http://www.diba.cat/hg2/menu_ind.asp

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90s. Access and digital literacy.

- 90s Digital cities, telecenters, community networking,...CornellaNet.

-2000. First Global Congress on Community Networking. Barcelona Nov. 2000.

- 2010. Still there is big community of telecenters and internet access points in the SMCs in Catalonia.

-Economic crisis is accelerating the need of changing this old digital policies.

2000s. Innovation literacy.

-Problem: – Once the people is connected then what?– Only users of technology or also

producers?– Introducing the culture of design, of

innovation.– Introducing innovation literacy

-Next generation community networks....”Citilab” (2002).

Citilab Project (2007-2010)

Problem solving approach:

1. How to develop an user-driven LL at an SMC?.2. How to create an innovation program with

results?3. How to innovate and to train simultanously?4. How to organize the manage of the institution?5. How to get funding and make it sustainable?.

1st problem: People, people, people!.

a) No formal innovation personnel in the SMC.a) By formal innovation people we understand people trained in

working in the current innovation systems, knowing – how to develop innovation projectes, – how to produce innovations in the form of new products

and services, – How to write proposals, speaking English,write papers,

make patents,...

b) Bringing them to Citilab! Initial volunteers, UPC computer scientist and an anthropologist.

– Solving the “Out of the Paradise” syndrome.– Imaginingg new research and innovation

oportunities out of research universities or big corporations

The big gap-Municipalities, at least in Spain, have no innovation

professionals. No Ph.D. trained people.

-Local SMEs have little formal innovation experience.

-Universities has excess of Ph.D. with no opportunities in the academia.

-The big gap. May be one of the reasons why technology transfer offices doesn't work.

-Possible solutions:– Importing talent to SMCs Lls (Citilab)– Creating innovation cells as Lls seeds (UPC)– Working with Applied Sciences Universities or Insitutes of

Technology as innovation universities. – Creating bottom up open research and innovative

structures like European LL Schools or Institutes.

b) The innovative user? Who are they?

- Are there innovative users in SMCs?

- We found at least one: – An innovative politician at City Hall. “The ICT fan”. The

current Excutive Director of Citilab, V. Badenes.• He looked for us, as university experts on CNs,

in 1998 inviting us to their community. • He gathered the initial ICT user community.

Cornellanet.• We worked together in the creation since 2002

of Citilab as an innovation center. The name of Lls didn't exist yet.

The current Citilab community

- Two ongoing fieldworks studies, Columbia Univ. and Universitat de Barcelona (J. Colobrans).

-In april 2010 Citilab has 4.500 registered members.-85% of them coming from Cornella and neighbors cities.

-20% born in 42 countries outside Spain.

-24% of members have tertiary education (vs. 9% in Cornella)

-The basic question Citilab staff ask to the newcomer is:

“What do you want to do? If you know how to do it , you can do it here by yourself. If not, we can help you. Sharing is our basic way of doing”.

Citilab and the model of diffusion of innovations. Everett Rogers, 1962.

2,163 11.680 29.416 29.416 13.849

2nd problem: How to start a LL innovation program at an SMC?

Priority to local needs: bottom up approach.

-Discovering local needs and opportunities. Ethnografic fieldwork.

-Connecting local needs with global issues...or not yet.-From innovative topics to research ones.

Examples:Users Project Research topic-Retired people 55+........ Seniorlab..............AAL and others

-Second. Teachers (30-50s).. Digital Horchad......PLEs.

-Musicians, (20-30s)............ Musiclab...............Digital content-Children (10-20).................. Scracht...............Comp.Thinking

Seniors are different!

-Current seniors are healthier, they have more money, and more free time for learning, for being creative, and why not for participating in innovative projects...

-Seniors (55-75) are not elders (80+).-One of the few areas in which Europe is just ahead of the

rest of the world -Extension of neotenic characteristics. (Charlton, B.G. 2007)

-How about a senior industry?: senior fashion, senior universities,knowledge tourism, etc.

A living lab on e-learning

-The teachers need a living lab for innovating in teaching.

– They are fed up of “technology harrassment”-The “Hort Digital”, an innovative project for building a

LL on e-learning, specially for teachers– A Personal Learning Environment (PLE)– A Problem based Learning approach

-Results: – Very possitive results with teachers– Support from the Dep. of Education to

opening the project to other centers.

Problem: how to enhance e-arts for the Net Generation?

-Big demand from Net Generation on arts training.-Arts school professors don't play. Professional performers

don't teach. -Who are these youngers?

– The Net Generation (between 80s and 2000s)– Shawn Fanning (born 1980). Napster (2000)– Mark Zuckerberg (born 1984). Facebook (2004)– The sons of Steve Jobs (born 1955), a graphical

designer of the baby boomer generation. Macintosh (1984)

E-arts is serious business.

-Classical view: Business is hardware, technology, “real stuff”

-But we live in a knowledge society, and knowledge is “inmaterial stuff”.

-American universities science and technology is mostly a “soft power”.

-Arts belong to this kind of power, like gaming, net art, cultural heritage, 3D cinema, or bollywood digital movies.

-The artists create the vision, the design, the “new reality”. Limits of “sciences of the artificial”. Arts should be included in the new LL curriculum.

Edutech: Computational thinking for everyone

Scracht, learning programming with kids.

Can Museums become LLs?

Expolab project (2009-2010) - A collaboration between the Citilab and the

Tech Museum at Silicon Valley.- How engage citizens in the design of the

exhibitions and activities of a tech center- Could we transform science museums in real

living labs?

3rd problem: The innovating or/and learning dilema

To innovate versus to learn?

1. What the user want at Citilab? To learn, specially ICT.

2. Are there innovators?“Nobody offered to me the oportunity of doing it before”.

3. User have innovative ideas. But they are not trained to make it real.

4. Can this process be learned with the help of a formal trained personnel in innovation?

Breaking the barriers between innovation and learning

- Introducing PBL and PLE methodologies. Learning through innovation.

- Peer2peer PBL? Adapting PBL to a Web 2.0 era.

- Learning technologies to innovate.

-How about design thinking? – CMU core curricula on design:

“ The role of design in liberal professional education”. Preston Covey

A new hypothesis: You can learn to innovate. “La innovació s'apren”.

90s. “Internet is for everyone”2010. To innovate is for everyone.

Can LLs become schools of innovation?:

a kind of organization dedicated to train people to innovate, to solve problems, to develop projects in all the areas of economic, social or cultural interest

for the community.

4th problem: Who rules? How to manage a LL?

Who rules? Cultures in conflict and cooperation.

-Politicians, managers and researchers: different cultures in conflic and cooperation.

-Taking advantages of everyone.– Local politicians know everyone.– Researchers translate demands into innovation projects.– Managers connect with the economic world.

-Yes, but ...who rules? – Co-creation needs Co-direction.– Tentative solution: “Collegiated Direction” at

Citilab– Deeper solution: Innovation in managing, the ever-

beta organizations (Stark,D.)

The new cooperative structures: Why a Foundation?

Citilab is a non-for-profit foundation (like i2cat,...)-New cooperative structure allowing a) PPPPb) New goals like innovation, training,...c) More flexibility to manage.d) A neutral collaborative point in the community.

Other juridical formats are possible.

How about companies?

A living lab should include companies, specially SME

Companies are increasingly interested in open innovation

Do not confront open innovation and living lab.

Can a Ll work for a company?

5th problem: How to get funding?

Citilab funding model and its process

1. Starting by local institutions.Contribution with local infrastructure and basic operationalteam budget... (consolidated step)

2. Then, regional and national funding bodies providing grants for information society projects. Plan Avanza. SETSI. (consolidated)

3. Then exploring European funding. (initial steps)

4. Simultaneously with commercial partners. (initial steps)

5. Finally, engaging users as co-funders via training and new services (initial steps).

Looking for a bottom-up innovation funding model

Traditional innovation systems are based in top-down funded models, big national agencies (DARPA, NSF,...), big corporations. Few institutions get majority of funding. Concentration.

Open innovation systems need a different bottom up funding model. Long-tail funding model. User-driven funded models.

How?

Tips to develop an open LL funding model.

1. Introducing innovation projects and structures at the local and regionals policies, connected globally.

2. Developing with Small and Medium local innovation projects for local SMEs communities with applied sciences universities, instituts of technology and other local innovations institutes.

3. Educating the local citizen in having responsibity in their economic and social future. Co-payment of the training and innovative services. Microfinancing.

III. Some topics for the future agenda

1. Research issues.

Open innovation sytems

-Are Lls an alternative to clusters? Are there opposite models?

France. Discussion about “pôles des competitivité” and Lls.

-Developing living labs pilots from technolgy parks and regional clusters and pôles des competivités.

Livinglabing, livinglabism, innovationship

Lulea, Livinglabingi2cat, Livinglabism (J. Colobrans) or innovationship

How to spread the culture of innovation to the general public?

Research lines:– Learning to innovate.– Elaborate an innovativeness index– User-based micro-financing model

Multiscale and blended Living labs

-Multiscaling.– Metropolitan, SMCs, and rural living labs– Beyond “The world is flat” (Friedman)

and “World is Spiky” (Florida)

-Blended Lls– Physical structures and virtual networks– Lls and COINS, collaborative innovation

networks

A Living Lab's revolution?

Can innovation be developed as a culture, as a shared knowledge and practice in your community, company, university or city? How?

2. Final practical suggestions

May be we need a open Journal on Living Labs and a networked media channel with lots of contributions

May be we need an open School of Living Labs during all year long.

May be we need open Institutes of Lls promoting research and innovation on the new innovation systems.

Moltes graciesartur.serra@i2cat.net