Building “Knowledge Cluster” in Flanders Flanders, Belgium SYNTHESIS

Building “knowledge cluster” in Flanders

SYNTHESIS

The Knowledge Cluster is an ERDF co-financed project implemented by the i-City Living Lab based in Hasselt in the region of Flanders, Belgium. Founded in 2004, i-City is a fully- fledged, internationally recognised living lab with a focus on testing, demonstrating and valorising innovative applications and services for a mobile user. To support those activities i-City develops and maintains a state of the art infrastructure (both hardware and software), a large population of dedicated test users, an experienced staff and a unique ecosystem facilitating collaboration. As a living lab one of the objectives is to help to bridge the gap between research and market, developing and testing applications, which correspond to a real market demand and meet the needs of society. The laboratory closely cooperates with companies, working together with end-users who test potential future mobile applications. The cities of Hasselt and Leuven are converted into experimentation environments for future mobile applications with some 650 users equipped with personal handheld devices (PDAs) testing new applications in real life situations.

The Knowledge Cluster project has as main activity to establish thematic working groups including participants from the whole value chain of a product or a service (e.g. business, academia, public bodies, practitioners and end-users). The purpose of the working groups discussions is to identify concrete needs of the society in specific areas and to come up with ideas for possible public or private services responding to them delivered via mobile devices such as PDAs, mobile phones or laptops (mobile applications). The project initially envisaged to cover eight thematic areas: food and retail, tourism, culture and heritage, mobility, healthcare, e-government, education and logistics.

The Knowledge Cluster project and its working groups are seen as the breeding ground for new ideas and solutions. They also provide opportunity to assess the new ideas and possibly launch them in the form of a new application to be later tested in the i-City living lab. In this way, the ideas have a chance to reach a development phase after which they may be commercialised.

The project encountered technical and organisational problems, which slowed down establishing all envisaged working groups. To date, only three working groups were set up, that is healthcare (late 2005), mobility (October 2006), and tourism and leisure (June 2007). Participants are mainly companies, governments, researchers (mostly from the Hasselt university) and practitioners. Remaining working groups will be launched in 2008 and should cover the domains of logistics, education, e-government, food and retail. If an urgent need emerges, a new working group can be launched faster, as will probably be the case for e-government.

The i-City as a whole has contributed to development of more than 25 applications. The i- City lab is currently developing and testing a mobile city guide, local news applications, and media sharing services in cooperation with business partners. In general, businesses had used the 'living lab' to test their own applications whereas i-City had mainly tested and developed local-based applications for public services.

It is too early to appraise actual benefits stemming out of the working groups, since: − i-City, as a young organisation, needed more time than expected to become a fully operational structure − i-City was confronted with other requests (e.g. setting up a commercial entity for the technology developed in the living lab) which lead to a change in the management structure − the process of launching ideas into new business is confronted with many challenges, e.g. financial, technological, adequate human resources, market hurdles, etc.

Nonetheless, as yet none of the newly developed applications had been based on ideas developed within the Knowledge Cluster working groups most probably because of the short duration of the exercise. The working groups, notably the one on healthcare, however, have produced a list of potential applications, which may be explored further.

The Knowledge Cluster project has not delivered upon its initial goals The initiative, however, cannot be seen in isolation and should be looked upon in the context of the whole concept of a living lab. The project illustrates possible problems, which can be encountered by any truly innovative and risky initiative exploring novel approaches. Such projects are mainly learning initiatives and their main value-added are lessons learned, even if they are learned mainly from unforeseen problems. Undoubtedly, the approach of i-City to reaching stakeholders is based on an original idea, which as such seems worthwhile.

Background information

Country: Belgium Region: Limburg Project title: Knowledge Cluster

Key words: information society: services and applications for citizens, services and applications for companies; support for enterprises: start up, spin off, incubators, new business process; technological and market innovation

Duration of project: 2005-2006 (extension to 2007)

Funding: Total budget €267,985 ERDF contribution €76,563 Regional budget €191,422

ERDF Objective: Objective 2

2 1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Knowledge Cluster is an ERDF co-financed project implemented by the i-City Living Lab based in Hasselt in the region of Flanders, Belgium. I-City was founded in 2004 and is a fully fledged, internationally recognized living lab with a focus on testing, demonstrating and valorising innovative applications and services for a mobile user. To support those activities i-City develops and maintains a state of the art infrastructure (both hardware and software), a large population of dedicated test users, an experienced staff and a unique ecosystem facilitating collaboration. As a living lab one of the objectives is to help to bridge the gap between research and market, developing and testing applications, which correspond to a real market demand and meet the needs of society. The i-City core activities can be located in between the applied research phase and commercialisation, including developing and testing prototypes. The laboratory cooperates with companies working closely with end-users who test potential future mobile applications. These are both ICT companies as well as other companies from ICT unrelated sectors.

The overall budget of i-City was €3.6m for the first three years (2004-2006). The budget was built out of equal contributions from the six founding private companies and the Flemish public authorities. The budget for 2007 amounted to €4m. One of the first steps and major investments of i-City was to develop a common software platform to test and analyse the mobile applications.1 The cities of Hasselt and Leuven are being converted into experimentation environments for future mobile applications. Currently, 650 users equipped with personal handheld devices (PDAs) are testing new applications in real life situations. This approach is known as a living lab.2

The Knowledge Cluster project objective was to establish thematic working groups including participants from the whole value chain of a product or a service (e.g. business, academia, public bodies, practitioners and end-users). The working groups discuss current and future market trends and try to anticipate the needs of society. The purpose of the discussions is to identify concrete needs of the society in specific areas and to come up with possible mobile applications, which can help to respond to them. Mobile applications are understood as services delivered via a mobile device such as PDAs, mobile phone or laptop. The project initially envisaged to cover eight thematic areas: food and retail, tourism, culture and heritage, mobility, healthcare, e-government, education and logistics.

As a living lab is based on the open innovation paradigm a key success factor is the mobilisation of stakeholders interested in innovative application, services and products. There are several instruments to mobilize those stakeholders: one-to-one meetings, conferences, a community website, working groups, networking, promotion during events, etc. All those instruments can be used to gather innovative ideas. Such approach is seen as the breeding ground for new ideas and solutions and provides opportunity to assess the new ideas and possibly launch them in the form of a new application to be later tested in

1 The platform was commercialised by a spin-off of i-City called City Live. See http://www.city-live.be/ 2 A Living Lab is a system based on a public-private partnership, which enables the end users to take active part in the research and innovation process. Products and services are developed in a real-life environment in a co-creative way based on constant feedback mechanisms between the producers and the users. It is characterised by confronting (potential) users with (prototypes or demonstrators of) technology early on in the innovation process, not just at the end phases as, for example, in more classical field trials or user testing of products. For further information see e.g. http://www.ami-communities.net/wiki/CORELABS or http://www.livinglabs-europe.com.

3 the i-City living lab. In this way, the ideas have a chance to get to a development phase after which they may be commercialised. The process of launching ideas into new business is confronted with many challenges, e.g. financial, technological, adequate human resources, market hurdles, etc. This complex context has to be taken into account when evaluating a knowledge cluster as instrument to create and valorise innovative ideas.

The working groups meet five times a year. Their work follows agenda agreed for a period of one year. Each group has one coordinator who is either i-City team member or a hired expert in the field. Every year, a brokerage event involving every member of the working groups is organised in order to discuss and disseminate results of the i-City activities.

Exhibit 1. The i-City “eco-system”

To date, only three working groups were set up, that is healthcare (late 2005), mobility (October 2006), and tourism and leisure (June 2007). The three thematic areas were addressed first as they received most support and interest from the i-City partners. Participants are mainly companies, governments, researchers and practitioners. In order to make the working groups function, the number of participants in each group is limited.

Setting up all envisaged working groups was slower than initially planned. The remaining working groups will be launched in 2008 and should cover the domains of logistics, education, e-government, food and retail. If an urgent need emerges, a new working group can be launched faster, as will probably be the case for e-government.3

To date, 25 applications have been developed within i-City laboratory. The i-City lab is currently developing and testing a mobile city guide, local news applications, and media sharing services in cooperation with business partners. In general businesses had used the living lab to test their own applications whereas i-City had mainly tested and developed local-based applications for public services. Nonetheless, as yet none of these newly developed applications had been based on ideas developed within the Knowledge Cluster working groups. The working groups, most notably the one on healthcare, however, have produced a list of potential applications.

3 Following requests formulated by the police representatives participating in the Working Group on Mobility.

4 The ERDF funding constituted a small share of the overall funding of i-City initiative and as such only contributed to the idea of developing the Knowledge Cluster with which I City would have gone forward in any case. Nonetheless, preparing the application for the ERDF project helped the i-City team to structure and better organise the Knowledge Cluster.

2. POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC CONTEXT

Supporting research and innovation, notably open innovation4, are key priorities of the region of Flanders. The region aims to create an “innovation-driven economy in which creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship are key”. Living labs are part of this vision and have, therefore, become a high priority on the Flemish agenda. There are plans to establish a living lab for each key sector in Flanders.

According to the Ministry of Economy of Flanders, one of the main advantages of the region, as a relatively small and densely populated area, is that 99% of the population can be connected to broadband Internet. This offers a base to develop competences in mobile communications. In this context, the i-City project aims to enable the region to go a step further in the sense that Flanders can become a gigantic hot spot for wireless communication and data transmission around local-based services for which a market is emerging. Furthermore, the strong presence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the employment structure of the region is considered an important asset, which allows for a flexible specialisation and fast response to the market needs.

The province of Limburg, where Hasselt is located, is dominated by the automotive sector. The authorities aim to diversify the regional economy. One of the priorities of the Objective 2 programme for Limburg for the 2000-2006 period5 was to support business and employment, including actions offering assistance for SMEs to encourage diversification of the local economy, support for innovation and technology through sharing of know-how and networking as well as specific aid for modernisation and diversification of tourism equipments. In this context, the availability of an infrastructure such as i-City laboratory gives the regional stakeholders, most notably SMEs, new business tools and opportunities to enter unexplored market niches.

3. IMPLEMENTATION

3.1. Project design and planning Ambitions to make Hasselt a true “i-City” with all kinds of useful and informative applications over the Internet have grown from the original idea of simply offering wireless Internet in the town. At the request of the mayor of the city the feasibility of establishing a wireless testing ground in Hasselt was investigated since 2003. At the end of

4 Open innovation refers to a strategic use of internal and external knowledge flows to accelerate company’s innovation processes. The approach underlines that in the situation where knowledge is widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research capacities and should maximise their innovativeness by acquiring new knowledge, inventions or intellectual property from other companies. For further information on the concept see Chesbrough, H. W. (2003) "Open innovation", Harvard Business School Press, Boston and http://openinnovation.haas.berkeley.edu 5 For more information see http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/country

5 December 2003, a consultancy firm was commissioned to carry out a feasibility study. Through the efforts of the Chief Executive Officer of i-City at this time and the nascent consortium consisting of Microsoft BVBA, Telenet Operations NV, Siemens NV, Concentra Media NV and Fujitsu Siemens Computers NV, the initiative was set in a wider context and the project got under way in consultation with the City of Hasselt.

At the beginning of 2004, the project was presented to the Interdisciplinary Institute for BroadBand Technology (IBBT) research centre. It endorsed the concept and encouraged the construction of the living lab, in particular by means of user-oriented research, the collaboration of industry and government and the idea of opening the lab to the academic world. In March 2004, the results of the feasibility study were presented to the consortium and accepted. On 4 June 2004, the Flemish Government approved the grant with the result that i-City officially opened its doors on 13 July 2004.

The objective of i-City is to test, demonstrate and valorise innovative applications and services for a mobile user. Four types of i-City projects can be defined: − society projects: like mobility, healthcare and tourism-leisure projects, − venture projects: commercialising developed technologies through launching spin- offs, − research projects: receiving users’ feedbacks, − business projects: companies come and test their products.

The i-City team considered it a priority to develop local and regional networks of companies, experts, researchers and end-users, who would be involved in their initiatives. This was organised under the name “partnering programme” which ran from the end of 2004. The Knowledge Cluster project is a formalisation of these activities.

The Knowledge Cluster project started in July 2005 with the aim of setting up eight comprehensive thematic working groups: food and retail, tourism, culture and heritage, mobility, healthcare, e-government, education and logistics. The choice of the workgroups’ themes was not based on formal research. It followed the regional government priorities based on a selection of thematic areas chosen by the Flemish Science Policy Council. The selected areas may be subject to changes in the future.

From the outset it was assumed that the Knowledge Cluster project would outlive the ERDF funding period as it was designed to contribute to the whole functioning of i-City. It was also foreseen since the beginning of the project that applications developed within the project could be commercialised through the launch of spin-off companies.

3.2. Management, monitoring and evaluation system One person is responsible for the day-to-day management of the working groups (e.g. invitations, logistics) whereas a group of project managers focusing on specific areas and technology fields gets involved once the discussions within the working group are advanced. A member of the i-City's team moderates the discussions. If the i-City staff members are not qualified to lead the discussion, then an external expert is invited, e.g. as in the case of the healthcare working group. Issues relating to intellectual property rights are clarified at the very beginning of the working groups meetings.

6 The progress report submitted by i-City to the ERDF managing authorities for the second half of 2006 presents quantified and qualitative objectives developed for the Knowledge Cluster project. Most of the initial targets were not reached after one year of activity. At the end of 2006 only three workgroups were created (mobility, healthcare, tourism-leisure) instead of planned eight. Only five meetings of workgroups took place instead of planned 40. The delay can be partly by explained by: − the complexity of mobilising key stakeholders for workgroup activities; − interference with the overall evolutions of i-City (e.g. renewal of management board); − insufficient management capacity (most notably due to the spin off creation).

3.3. Governance: partnership and leadership The i-City model is based on a public-private partnership. The initial investment of the six founding partners (Microsoft, Concentra, Telenet, Fujitsu-Siemens, Research Campus Hasselt, Siemens) in the project was €100,000 per year for the period 2004-2006 (€300,000 total for three years). This funding was matched by the public sector contributing €1.6m in the same period.

The strategic governing body of i-City’s is the board of directors representing all the main partners. The board determines the strategic direction of the organisation, stimulates collaboration with new partners and sets guidelines for the i-City management team. Early in 2007, the approach to funding changed. Now companies have only to pay for the access to users and for testing their products. Membership fee amounts to €250 per year. The initial high investment was justified by developing the testing platform. This change of funding structure is expected to contribute to a more open governance system of i-City.

As of mid 2007, the board of directors consists of representatives of six private companies (Concentra Media, Microsoft, Research Campus Hasselt, Siemens, Telenet, Hewlett- Packard) and six representatives from various Flemish public sector organisations including the province of Limburg, the provincial Chamber of Commerce, research organisation (Interdisciplinary Institute for BroadBand Technology) and representatives of the education sector.

The I-City manager has to report to regional authorities on an annual basis. The region is involved in i-City work at the strategic level. Interestingly, it was the Flemish government that urged i-City to have an open structure in terms of intellectual property rights, since a significant part of the budget was public. Research data collected through the Living Lab’s operations is, therefore, open to every member of the organisation (even if they are competitors). One the board members from the business sector argued, however, that if the structure is too open, entrepreneurial skills and knowledge created by the organisation might be trivial.

The i-City partners have different motivation to participate in this initiative. By building a wireless city and using a software platform on which wireless applications can be tested and researched, the Flemish authorities expect to improve awareness of their citizens’ needs. The initiative is part of the strategy making Flanders a leading and internationally recognised player in information society related activities. For the industrial sector, it appears important to take part in this project since it gives them a better understanding of the expectations of consumers, which can lead to new product development in the future.

7 Furthermore the platform developed by i-City is open to every kind of Internet Protocol (IP) system, which makes it interesting for all telecommunications operators. It is also interesting for them to monitor the interest of the public sector in the area of mobile applications. The public sphere may become an important source of business in the future (e.g. e-government, e-health).

In this context, the Knowledge Cluster project is an element of the i-City concept reaching out to encourage a wider participation of regional stakeholders in the activities of the laboratory. It can be seen as an attempt to enlarge and open up the wider partnership of the organisations. The working groups bring together indeed mainly regional stakeholders with different educational and professional backgrounds. i-City is an open organisation. New partners are found mainly through informal contacts and networking activities. The organisation needs to build its credibility and reputation as well as to create awareness on the added value of its activities in order to attract new participants to the working-groups. Interestingly, stakeholders who refused to participate in i-City activities at the beginning now want to be involved in the project since it is becoming more and more visible to the external world.

3.4. Innovative elements and novel approaches to implementation The whole i-City project is based on an open innovation model in which the development of technology should be user-driven. The aim is to focus on developing and implementing technologies which are accepted and tested by the society. For the moment, the applications developed by i-City focus mainly on the provision of location-based services through the wireless networks deployed throughout the cities of Hasselt and Leuven.

Ideas can be developed from downstream by companies that check the acceptance of their product in the Living Lab, as well as from the upstream side of innovation, through end- users providing ideas to companies (e.g. the i-Visit project6). Gathering people from the whole value chain and not direct competitors makes it possible to take into consideration real-world needs in designing a project. For example, in the healthcare working group, local and international companies are brainstorming with doctors and nurses to develop ideas on how mobile applications could help them in their daily work. Specialists can also find test-users in their patients to validate their ideas.

In order to ensure a good exploitation of the network and a strong communication, a congress is organised each year, which should ensure a greater visibility of i-City and help attract new members. The objective is to make it an international showcase. It is foreseen to organise workshops during the event and to continue exhibitions and demonstrations, which proved to be very successful (more than 800 people registered in 2007).

In the case of the creation of a commercial company out of i-City activities (e.g. City- live7), i-City is rewarded via a joint risk structure. Since spin-offs cannot pay for immediate fees, i-City will be paid from future cash flows and includes therefore a risk fee.

6 http://www.i-visit.be 7 http://citylive.be

3.5. Key implementation obstacles and problem-solving practices

The i-City laboratory took more time to start than initially thought, mainly because of the need to develop a IT testing platform needed to diffuse and test rapidly the applications to be developed by the test-users. The platform was created only at the beginning of 2007. The general delays of kicking-off with the core i-City activities had an influence on the Knowledge Cluster project. The i-City team reported this situation to the ERDF managing authorities. It became clear during the first working groups meetings that in order to motivate stakeholders to participate, it was necessary to have a capacity to test the proposed ideas and application (i.e. operational testing platform and test-users). Since the platform has been operational only since March 2006 and 500 test users were equipped with test-devices only in September 2006, the Knowledge Cluster project had been significantly delayed.

As a consequence of the delay it was decided to focus on three thematic areas as the management realised it would not be feasible to run eight thematic groups in parallel, even with the required technology in place. It is foreseen to launch new working groups gradually. The changes required the adaptation of the ERDF co-funded project including its extension until 2007.

Implementation of working groups proved more demanding than expected. First, it was challenging to identify and select the right people, explain the idea and convince them to participate in the meeting. It was particularly challenging as the participants come from different professional backgrounds. For practical reasons of satisfying everybody’s agenda, the meetings take place in the evenings.

Second, once the working group kicked off, there appeared a need for qualified moderators with expert knowledge in the relevant fields. The i-City staff was not always capable of providing specialised knowledge and setting agendas. In the case of the healthcare working group, external experts have been invited to support the work of the group. It appeared that the healthcare market is a difficult area for innovation because of the complex regulatory framework, cost-containment considerations, financing as well as privacy and security issues. There are, therefore, many obstacles for bringing technologies into the market in an open way as the i-City concept foresees. The group focused on identifying these various obstacles in order to be able to overcome them. The healthcare working group is now in a “re-launch” phase with many new members joining the group in order to revive the discussions.

Third, in practice it proved not feasible to launch too many working groups at same time due to coordination difficulties but also because of lack of demand from stakeholders. The i-City team had to learn to understand that establishing a group requires a good timing when interests of different stakeholders coincide around a specific area. The conclusion was to phase in the creation of new working groups over a longer time. The initial assumptions were clearly unrealistic.

In addition, the i-City team encountered problems related to the workload need for reporting procedures required by different public funding bodies. It was suggested that using an e-form for submitting the reports could substantially help in reducing the workload.

4. INNOVATION RESULTS

The funding provided by the ERDF to the Knowledge Cluster can be regarded as an indirect support to innovation, which aimed at improving the innovation linkages and knowledge flows between the different actors in the innovation system, most notably between end users and application developers. The approach of open innovation and of the Living Lab is in general an interesting approach that could bring interesting results for the commercialisation of products able to responds to customers needs. The i-City Living Lab is now part of the European Network of Living Labs, an initiative launched by the Directorate-General for Information Society of the European Commission, which aims at putting under a common structure around 50 European Living Labs.

Given lack of concrete results in the form of new applications, one can consider the Knowledge Cluster working method an organisational innovation result. The working method follows a simple logic and begins with brainstorming and identification of ideas, it continues with creating a business plan and, if feasible, it moves to development and deployment of the test applications. However this working method differs from project to project. The leader of the concrete project has to be somebody from business, who strongly believes in such an open innovation model.

Exhibit 2. The development of an application within i-City

When an interesting application emerges out of the discussions, the interested members define the scope, budget, and timing of the project and then launch a call for expression of interest in order to identify partners and to gather financial means. In case some members are not interested by the topic they are free leave the discussions or to follow another business idea. The projects participants will then have to determine which organisational and financial models to use as well as which technology to launch based on the users’ experiences collected through the Living Lab’s operations. An ICT application should then emerge and be exploited. The working groups should also identify new calls for tenders launched by the government in their domain and determine if the participants of the working groups are eligible to apply. Key issue when new ideas are generated is the funding of the implementation.

In this context, the first meeting of the working group on mobility clearly highlighted the need to develop an application for an intelligent parking system. Therefore, it was decided to develop a project on this topic. Then individual discussions were held with the different members in order to know what they were ready to invest, in which time frame and in

10 which way. Once clear objectives and resources were defined, the project has been officially launched during a kick-off meeting. The group remains open for new partners.

It is too early to appraise actual benefits stemming out of the working groups, since i-City needed more time than expected to become a fully operational structure (only since September 2006). Furthermore it is not a technology lab, with results easy to assess. It can be acknowledged that a lot of applications have been tested in the Living Lab environment, with 25 applications developed to date and two spin-offs are envisaged to be launched (City Live and i-Visit).

City-live is a spin-off launched in January 2007 by the former Chief Executive Officer of i- City, which commercialises the software platform developed by i-City. Both entities maintain close relationships. i-City receives royalties out of the commercialisation of its product and can use the platform for free. i-Visit will be another spin-off resulting from the i-City activities, which is an interesting case in a sense that the consumers (test-users) accepted the application before the companies. There are also advanced discussions on the project with De Lijn (the Flemish public bus company) on automated traffic gantries and the control of traffic flows.

Nonetheless, so far no new applications had been developed as a direct result of the working groups discussions even if there is a list of potential applications. Main hurdle remains as how to move from an idea to implementation phase. In general, the companies had used the Living Lab to test their own applications whereas i-City had mainly developed local-based applications for public services.

5. SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFERABILITY

5.1. Sustainability ERDF funding supporting the Knowledge Cluster project constituted a small share of overall funding of i-City initiative. The Knowledge Cluster will continue its operation after ERDF project ends. The Knowledge Cluster contributes to the whole functioning of i-City. At least five new working groups are expected to be set up before the end of 2008.

5.2. Transferability There are initiatives to transfer the i-City model to other domains. According to the management team of i-City, there are already cities like Barcelona or Brussels that are interested by i-City model. The city of Brussels aims at starting a similar project called i- Brussels and has already prepared a budget. There are plans to cooperate with i-City and transfer their experience into this new structure. Throughout Europe living labs in different domains are popping up. I-City launched recently a joint project with the Living Lab in Barcelona (Spain) and the Living Lab in Lulea (Sweden).

Any similar initiative requires a clear strategy and business plan, active participation of private and public sectors, well-developed technological capacity, efficient management structure and access to the test-users. Given the high costs of development and high risk of investment the projects require a very careful planning and commitment especially from private sector.

11 6. CONCLUSIONS: MAIN SUCCESS FACTORS

The Knowledge Cluster has not delivered upon its initial goals and, therefore, cannot be considered a success story as a project. The initiative, however, cannot be seen in isolation and should be looked upon in context of the whole concept of i-City laboratory. The project illustrates possible problems, which can be encountered by any truly innovative and risky initiative exploring novel approaches. Such projects are mainly learning initiatives and their main value-added are lessons learned.

The i-City initiative would not have gone forward without some key facilitating factors. The most important factors are presented below, however, it has to be kept in mind that they refer the whole concept of i-City rather than the Knowledge Cluster project, and their presence does not guarantee success of all projects that are part of the scheme.

Strong public-private partnership The first point to be highlighted is that i-City managed to develop a strong public-private partnership and to leverage a high amount of private and public funds to support its activities. This is evidence of a shared vision and strong belief in a future potential of living lab initiatives.

Political support i-City has had a strong political support from both the Flemish governments and the City of Hasselt. This proves that the public sector stands behind its strategic vision of making Flanders a competitive region in mobile applications development. The renewed support signifies that the government also understands that innovative undertakings take a long time to show results.

Shared vision and enthusiasm According to the management team of i-City, one of the main success factors is the enthusiastic operational team, which strongly believes since the very beginning in open innovation in an 'ecosystem' where the user is central. All members of the board (public and private) also share this vision, which appears to be driving all i-City activities. It was emphasised that the team has to be well balanced and entrepreneurial minded and flexible to be able to catch emerging opportunities, but at the same time be able to think in a structured way.

Open communication Another important factor is the way people communicate activities of i-City. By paying a lot of attention to the external world in comparison to other Flemish actors, i-City managed to gather a growing attention and interest in their activities leading to e.g. success of the brokerage event in 2006.

Clearly defined regional dimension The cities of Hasselt and Leuven are now forming a regional system in which the developed products can be tested by people, who might be also not especially interested in technologies at the first place but who will be the end-users. The territorial dimension is often mentioned one of key prerequisites for building a successful living lab.

12 One of the key lessons learned from the Knowledge Cluster project is that uncertainty involved in innovative projects requires a elaborate risk management plan not only taking into account the risk events but also the required actions to overcome the risk event (if it occurs). Innovative initiatives have to be aware of uncertainties and risk, and therefore need to be especially cautious in setting out their goals and envisaging the project’s outputs, results and outcomes. In the context of Knowledge Cluster project, one may distinguish three planning and management requirements, which should be taken into account in planning of every similar project:

Risk assessment at the time of designing the project The planning of the project did not take into account risks related to the fact that the Knowledge Cluster project was dependent on development of other parts of i-City, i.e. completing the testing platform (software). Risk assessment should be an inherent part of planning, especially in the case of innovative projects. Should such a risk have been identified the design of the project would have included an indication on which measures to take in case of delays caused by developments independent from the project.

Need for qualified moderators for thematic working groups The realisation that running thematic working groups requires specific knowledge could have come at the time of project planning, most notably following selection of thematic areas for the working groups. The list of potential stakeholders (at least organisations) and experts in the field could have been prepared in advance. The selected stakeholders could have been involved already in the design phase. This would have saved time and ensured better performance of the established working groups.

Solid estimation of required resources Similar logic applies to the late realisation that there was a lack of capacity (human resources) to organise eight thematic groups in parallel. The effort needed to set the working groups in different domains was underestimated.

PROJECT CONTACT DETAILS

Name: Daphne Tubée Position: CEO and Director Partnerships

Organisation: i-City

Address: Kempische Steenweg 297/3 3500 Hasselt Belgium

Telephone: +32 478 474 418 Email: [email protected]

Further information: http://www.i-city.be

The information contained in this case study is up to date as of: July 2007

This case study has been prepared by Michal Miedzinski and Nelly Bruno in the framework of a study carried out by Technopolis Group on behalf of the European Commission. The contents and views expressed in this case study are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the European Commission.