Interesting article on IEEE Spectrum: IBM Takes the Guesswork Out of Services Consulting, which may have some barring on the Living Labs approach and in particular on our attempt to describe the "Open Innovation Services of the Living Labs". Although as with the Living Labs definition there is some way to go before the services science has a clear charter.

Services Science:
Curricula, training, and research programs that are designed to teach individuals to apply scientific, engineering, and management disciplines that integrate elements of computer science, operations research, industrial engineering, business strategy, management sciences, and social and legal sciences, in order to encourage innovation in how organizations create value for customers and shareholders that could not be achieved through such disciplines working in isolation.

Living Lab:
Environment for building a future economy in which user-centric innovation will be the normal creation technique for new products and services.

This vision is moving the goal posts from a position where the user is seen as the research object and consumer of industry lead innovations, to a position where the user and user communities are contributors and co-creators of product and service innovations.

As ICE'2007 conference chair, I would like to invite you to submit an abstract to the Call-for-Papers: www.ice-conference.org

Main theme of the conference is: “Concurrent Innovation: An Emerging Paradigm for Collaboration & Competitiveness in the Extended Enterprise“

I also would like to encourage you to attend ICE'2007 and test the French "south" hospitality without to mention the traditional food and wine taste that are awaiting for you.

We have all worked hard and are finally here, the launch day of the Living Lab network

It has taken some organisation by the European Commission, the Finnish government, and CoreLabs , but the community website is ready at www.openlivinglabs.eu, the event is in a lovely location in Helsinki and has high participation, you couldn't ask for more.

It was an early start, 8.00am to start the network session, a couple of pictures were taken and I have uploaded these to a flickr account.

It was interesting to see and hear some similar and some diverse Living Labs from across Europe. Well the doors are open we are all ready to collaborate!

On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, I participated in a seminar “Hong Kong – Guangdong Your partners for success in China – 8 November 2006 Helsinki.” The Scandic Hotel ball room was full of people. Couldn’t count them all, but I guess several hundred participants and maybe one hundred Chinese and Hong Kong business development officials, entrepreneurs and businessmen / women.

Rapid economic development in China has created major opportunities in two areas: a fast expanding market for goods and services, and a sophisticated production base for manufacturers and retailers. Successful companies realise that China is not one market, but a series of regional markets. Currently, most foreign companies concentrate to the Pearl River Delta region (PRD) on the southern tip of the Chinese mainland, closely connected to Hong Kong.

What is the difference? Yesterday I was interviewed over Skype concerning Web 2.0 applications an practices at KK-Net. The audio interview will be published in the coming next days. The story is a part of the preparations for IST 2006 Helsinki and is also related to "CONSEN - CONSEN (EEIG) Euro-Group is a Grouping of European SMEs who have agreed to cooperate as Euro-Cluster in Information Society Technologies projects, tenders and business throughout Europe."

To become the worlds most advanced information society EU has to clearly realize something very "simple and stupid" on 500 million people's personal level: We all have someone like us or/and completing us in every EU country. Finding them in continuous personal team with them we could find good solutions to our problems and create competitive solutions for union- (and world-) wide benefit.

I strongly believe in an "Personal EU era" and will together with you show that it can successfully be done.

I have a feeling that we need to get down to some very practical , down to earth work, or we will continue to search for the best collaboration models for years.

- Collaboration
- Engineering
- Knowledge
- Leadership
- LivingLabs
- Logistics
- Media
- Mobility
- Rural
- SEEM
- Well-being-Services

What could be the first practical thing?

EGIAS

An expression of interest for Living Labs has been launched recently by the CORELABS and COMIST projects (see the home page).

My personal vision for the European Network of Living Labs in 2010 is the following:

Having a lot of networked local, regional and global (virtual or on-line) living labs all over the EU operating as integrated open co-creation labs or centres where all EU citizens could have a chance to express their creativity in contributing to societal, organisational and technological innovations according to their main motivations and interests.

Web 2.0 could very well be a marketing thing. As such, some of the Web 2.0 services are getting better and easier to use for the masses. Or another thing might be that the masses have learned to use web based tools much better than before the web 1.0 bubble. It can also be a path out of the bubble, into new business and application fields. Web 2.0 attracts money - at least at the west coast US and Silicon Valley. Connecting people is one thing, connecting millions of people into social networks is another thing. The connectivity thing is expanding. The web is moving towards the masses and that's what it was intended for initially, maybe? Cross-cultural and Cross-national social collaboration is an important movement. This platform is an example of that.