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.

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!

I'm here at the Helsinki School of Economics presenting at the HSE - 2006 | CKIR Workshop in Helsinki 29-30 August, 2006 which has a theme this year of "The challenge of 'Open Innovation' to firms, regions and public agencies' and a number of the presentations [pdf], are attempting to look at the changing nature of service and business development, work and technology in the Internet world.

Into the earlier morning session and I need to follow up on
The Wisdom of Crowds
and
Europe INNOVA initiative presents the first comprehensive cluster mapping report in the EU-10 new Member States

With the Finnish launch on November 20th, 2006 of a European Network of Living Labs, this IST Event 2006 European Network of Living Labs session is an important close relation to the event.

I noted with interest this news item Microsoft, Lessig Launch New Creative Commons Copyright Tool posted relatively recently to the AMI communities site, and attempted an install.

Not a particlarly quick or simple task in the end. Here was my experince.

To download the tool you must visit the Microsoft Download Center
Office Add-in: Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office

One very important item to note, you must have Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1 installed on your machine first.
To get it there are two further downloads you must make
1) Microsof .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package
2) Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1

I've used the online tool Frappr to create a map for the network of European Living Labs.

Not that the map is complete in any way, shape, or form. The idea is that any Living Lab site can add themselves to the map as they see fit, and can also use the map to give an overview of the type of Living Lab that they are.

I think it can be of some use in the future, as we will all be able to see the Living Labs around Europe at a quick glance, and not only that but individuals will have control to add themselves, change their profile and show their linkages to other Living Labs.

Currently attending the Living Lab/CoreLabs workshop(s), in connection with the main "Preparatory Workshop for Launching a European Network of Living Labs" (targeting the Launch 20 Nov, at the IST Conference 2006 in Helsinki.