
In Catalonia and throughout Europe, governments are called on to provide new and more effective responses to major societal challenges (population aging, climate change, pollution, mobility, etc.), and must do so, urgently, within a context of limited public resources. Their failure to create effective responses to these challenges and to societal needs has distanced European citizens from the public administration.
In this context, over the last few years we have seen the emergence of spaces for participation and open innovation in which citizens and different entities work together and organise themselves to generate effective responses to societal challenges and needs, often without the participation —or with little participation— on the part of the public administration.
The conference on «Living labs, innovació oberta i universitats» («Living Labs, Open Innovation and Universities»), organised by the University of Barcelona and the European Network of Living Labs (EnoLL), served to demonstrate that there are many players in Catalonia that understand the importance of establishing such spaces for open innovation. Living labs, citizen or social laboratories and digital manufacture facilities, are collaborative spaces for meeting and experimentation that enable stakeholders to tackle complex societal challenges by designing, developing and testing innovative solutions.
Living labs are often established by enterprising citizens and by universities, and are financed by the public administrations, mainly local authorities. However, the Government of Catalonia also supports such initiatives by providing funding through RIS3CAT calls for proposals. At the first call for PECT local territorial projects, funding was awarded to fourteen lab projects. Universities have also financed living labs through OTRI calls for knowledge transfer projects. Similarly, the Government of Catalonia promotes the reorientation of the Punt TIC network towards innovation laboratories that promote the participation and involvement of citizens in designing local public policies and managing public facilities and services in the local sphere.Llegeix més »