Living Labs: public innovation laboratories

Context

The City of Montréal is faced with a number of major urban issues, and wants to help create more sources of innovation to resolve them. One of the methods it has selected for this are Living Labs— public innovation laboratories, based in libraries and other public places, where city residents can sit down with a variety of experts and make an active contribution to research, co-creation, and testing and evaluation of solutions to these issues, by experimenting with them under real-life conditions.

Initial Deployment Schedule (Action Plan 2015-2017): 2016

Actions planned

• Set up co-creation and co-design circles where city residents can identify the urban issues that affect them, and respond to those issues with a collaborative mixture of individual and collective projects.
• Recruit and mobilize entrepreneurs in the startup and development stages, community and cultural organizations, researchers and interested citizens to take part in these processes
• Develop a methodology for putting participants’ ideas, products and services to the test; for sharing knowledge and creating collaborations and partnerships; and for guiding the emergence of innovative, implementable solutions.
• Ensure the presence in these groups of staff members from other libraries or institutions, to facilitate knowledge transfer and acquisition.
• Propagate this process of open innovation throughout the city’s library network.

Results targeted

• Use libraries as service centres to catalyze and facilitate citizen activity, but also as spaces for incubation and experimentation
• Develop a culture of collaboration among city residents
• Develop skills in co-creation, living labs, open innovation, and design thinking
• Improve the design of products and services to increase their impact
• Test products and services in an urban setting
• Establish a framework for conceptualizing and testing out new public services under development (for individuals and businesses)

Benefits to residents:

• City residents will have a better understanding of services and urban issues, and will be more inclined to make use of them.
• They will have access to the tools of “design thinking”, and to spaces, resources and collaborations within the community that will help them find creative solutions.
• Communities and social networks will be more dynamic

Financing structure

Municipal
Provincial

Sources of inspiration

Barcelona Living Lab
Mindlab
Percolab
Art of Hosting
Chicago Public Libraries
Aarhus Public Libraries