Building “Knowledge Cluster” in Flanders Flanders, Belgium SYNTHESIS
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Building “knowledge cluster” in Flanders Flanders, Belgium 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. 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. 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.