STRATEGIES OF PLATFORMS ECOSYSTEMS NETWORKS AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES (Prof. Hofacker)

Living Labs’ key principles: are they always applicable? The Modena Automotive Smart Area case

SILVIA DELLA SANTA - GIULIA TAGLIAZUCCHI - GIANLUCA MARCHI

Objectives. Living Lab (LL) concept enters in the European policies in 2006 with European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL), an umbrella organization active worldwide which has boosted the number of LLs among the European countries increasing the interest authors have in this topic (Hossain et al., 2019), defining them as “user-centred open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings” (openlivinglabs.eu/aboutus). Growing attention has been devoted to, till reaching the Italian landscape recently: LLs are formally mentioned for the first time with the Italian 2015 – 2020 National Program for the Research (PNR), that sees LL as a tool in support of a more applied and industrial research and provides the allocation of resources to finance some LLs across the nation. Within the PNR a definition of LLs is provided, likening them to places of research and experimentation carried out in real contexts in which companies, research centers, public administration and, especially, final users develop new applications, technologies and services. Albeit the interest the topic has gotten in the policies, also at a national level, there is still a problem in illustrating LLs due to the indeterminateness and pluri-definition of the elements characterizing them. In particular, a clear identification of the criteria necessary to recognize a particular organization as a living lab is missing. In the last decade, an increasingly number of scholars has been starting to study LLs as units of analysis to understand the innovation processes and outputs from different perspectives and diverse fields (Greve et al, 2020; Leminen and Westerlund, 2019; Leminem et al., 2017; Ballon et al., 2005). Given the fact that we are dealing with a quite recent phenomenon, the literature proposes different definitions. LLs can then be defined, among others, as a form of test and experimentation platform (TEP) (Ballon, 2005), a methodology (e.g.: Eriksson et al., 2005; Feurstein et al., 2008), a network (e.g.: Westerlund and Leminen, 2011; Ståhlbröst and Bergvall-Kåreborn, 2011), a regional system (Oliveira et al., 2006) and an innovation management tool testing, developing and validating new products or services through jointly work among several institutions and with a direct participation of citizens and users (Eriksson et al., 2005; Almirall et al., 2012). The aim of this paper is then to determine a set of founding principles for the LL construct based on the extant literature, namely Openness, Empowerment of Users and Realism, and to use them in the characterization of a real case. We then take in consideration the Modena Automotive Smart Area (MASA) as case study in order to investigate whether a relationship exists between the tested technologies and the intensity by which the three key principles are involved in the formation and in the early stages of the observed LL. MASA is configured as an open-air laboratory, pivoting around technologies concerning autonomous driving, and its objective is to test in a real-life context Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and protocols of interaction among vehicles and the surrounding urban environment (V2V and V2X). Some of these innovations match with the notion of “creative destruction” coined by Schumpeter. They challenge current best practices in the automotive industry, by pushing towards a stronger replacement of the existing products or processes (König and Neumayr, 2017) and requesting urgent changes in firms’ competencies. Furthermore, they may produce also deep effects at the societal level (Fagnant and Kockelman, 2015), by heavily affecting collective and individual mobility behaviors.

#autonomous driving #Empowerment of Users #Living Labs #Openness #Realism