After the “Helsinki Manifesto” issued on 20th November 2006 put the “human-centric way” at the very centre of the measures needed “for turning the Lisbon Strategy into a living reality”, the topic of competitiveness and innovation in Europe has been enriched of a further dimension, namely, co-creative collaboration with the forthcoming users of the developing products and services.

This is especially useful in the field of (private and Government) e-Services, where the people can be considered as “twice” beneficiaries, namely of public services as such – impacting per se on their lives and businesses – and of ICT based or supported services, where the question becomes to which extent this novel user-centric approach can improve customisation (if not “tailoring”) to individual needs and requirements.

In a purely business perspective, a Living Lab can be seen as a service providing organisation in the topic of R&D and innovation, based on the “co-creation” concept, which focuses on people in their daily living environments as active, if not decisive, contributors to products and services design, development and testing.

In spite of a limited evidence on the known experiences – most of which could count on a significant external funding - it can be affirmed that the cost of building up and maintaining a Living Lab from scratch (i.e. deploying the communication and collaboration infrastructure, gathering and orchestrating the community of users, carrying out the requested evaluation services) can be substantial, thus preventing a long-term impact into the regional innovation systems.



Here is where the TELL ME initiative starts up.
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