ABOUT LIVING LABS GLOBAL
Living Labs Global - a global driver for innovation
Wireless infrastructures and the mobile internet are now widely available, challenging the global telecommunications industries. Mobility represents a paradigm shift not only in technology, but more importantly in the business of providing services. Where previously operators held the key to service concepts, business models and terms of delivery, the user has emerged as a demanding and powerful stakeholder.
Living Labs Global is an initiative to build a global marketplace for mobility, an association of public and private actors with the common goal of delivering new services to users. mWatch Surveys have shown that users demand customised solutions, incorporating offers from a range of public and private sources. The mWatch Showcase today presents 230 such solutions in European communities alone.
mWatch Surveys also highlight the fact that these innovative solutions do not spread from one community to another. Mobile tourism services found in Stockholm cannot be found elsewhere in Europe; mobile payment solutions in Salzburg have not changed the way we use public transport in other communities; and Tallinn’s mobile parking service has taken years to migrate to outside cities, many of them busily re-inventing the same applications. Unlocking this market, or providing an international lead market, will provide a clearer path to service design, implementation and go-to-market. This is the mission of Living Labs Global.
Living Labs are full scale urban laboratories for such service development and innovation. The city is a natural experimenting ground in which the interests of users, public administrations and business converge with sufficient density.
Our goal is to find local challenges that can become global solutions. Business models change as a consequence, adapting more closely to user-expectations of value-creation rather than the traditional utilities thinking of the telecommunications industry. And finally, commercialization perspectives within an international marketplace build confidence among investors that solutions are in fact not just one-offs, but meet global demand.
Living Labs therefore represent both the pioneering solutions and the continuing commitment by a community of public and private stakeholders to transparency in the marketplace, openness to cross-border collaboration, international procurement, and a common vision of mobility that drives excellence and efficiency in services, both public and private. Those cities and communities that are able to lead the adoption of new organisational, technology and business models, are likely to prevail in the global competition for talent and resources,.