Living Labs Europe

From the very beginning Living Labs Europe was conceived as a strategic place branding instrument, addressing European competition among the 150.000 communities and regions. The intention was to create a clublike (yet open) network of those cities taking the lead in developing Mobile Solutions, as both innovative economic activities and services to their communities. Living Labs Cities are non-competing – it is an alliance to build mutual strengt? and share resources to become competitive leaders. This is further strengthened by the European mClusters Programme, in which Living Labs Catalunya is one of 9 European reference regions for excellence in mobile solutions clustering. It is as much a strategy as a branding action. Historically, Europe’s leading cities and regions have considered themselves as competitors – yet an increase in international benchmarking activities and networking has led to alliances being made such as Baltic Sea Region (New Hanseatic League):

• Joint Branding and inward investment strategy Cluster strategy, business groups related to clusters Baltic Ports Association
• Competitors team up to form a Branding Alliance for global visibility UK – Oresund Life Sciences Alliance Endorsed at highest-political and business levels
• Vision to create globally leading life science regions Oresund Region: Cross-Regional / Nationa collaboration on Innovation, Science, Inward Investment, Infrastructure, Marketing and Education

Living Labs Europe is driven by the recognition that place branding can no longer be seen as a closed system, but that network and co-branding synergies can add substantial value. Living Labs Europe provides this branded international framework which enables the Brand? Proposition of individual Living Labs to be more credible:

• Association & Collaboration with Europe’s best to partners and markets across Europe
• 100% Compatibility with EU R&D and Information Society policy International End-User
• Communities for User-Centric Innovation Urbanisation of innovation activities – Living Labs are city based resources with close end-user linkages

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Living Labs Europe, Living Labs, Livinglabs, Branding, Place, Interlace-Invent, Clusters, Place Branding, Attractiveness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.