Apollon Final Report
1 Objectives and Set-Up The APOLLON project aimed at demonstrating the positive impacts of cross-border domain-specific Living Lab networks, by setting up an advanced pilot composed of 4 thematically focused European-wide Living Lab experiments. In the experiments, SMEs are enabled to take part in cross-border Living Lab experiments beyond their home markets, and are supported by large industrial companies, academic centres and other stakeholders. The pilot aims at the sharing and harmonisation of Living Lab approaches and platforms between networks of exemplary European Living Labs, and the subsequent evaluation and exchange of results on a European and even worldwide level. The pioneering approach of Living Labs is to improve the innovation process by establishing business-citizens-government partnerships that enable users to participate in R&D at an early stage. European Living Labs are at the forefront of defining and putting into practice this new approach within the context of their local ecosystem. Currently, Europe-wide federation and networking between Living Labs is primarily aimed at harmonising best practices for setting up and conducting individual Living Lab research. In addition, Living Labs are collaborating across Europe at an individual project level. It is commonly thought that strongly increased cross-border Living Lab collaboration would potentially yield huge added value for Europe, as it enables firms, most particularly SMEs, to participate in domain-specific innovation ecosystems at a European scale, without losing sight of local circumstances and idiosyncrasies. Therefore, the next step in Living Lab networking is to pilot a more intensive, permanent and scalable collaboration, resulting in methodologies, tools and sustainable organisational structures for cross-border domainspecific Living Lab networks. The APOLLON project has answered to the call of the European ICT-PSP work programme to pilot and share best practices across Living Labs involving SMEs as key user- and provider-participants. APOLLON addresses four major domains in which ICT products and services innovation may benefit most from cross-border Living Lab networking. These are: (1) Homecare and Independent Living, (2) Energy Efficiency, (3) eManufacturing and (4) eParticipation and Social Media. In each of these domains, innovation is crucially dependent upon good knowledge of / embedding in local ecosystems on the one hand, and the ability to scale up to a European level on the other hand. Also, in each of these domains a set of dynamic projects and initiatives connected to lead markets, as well as a number of prominent Living Labs, industrial and SME stakeholders, can be identified that have a clear expressed need for scaling up through cross-border networking. Moreover, cross-border Living Lab networking in these domains responded to a range of national and European policy priorities. In each of these domains, real-life experiments were specifically designed to pilot and validate that cross-border domain-specific collaboration between Living Labs leads to measurable improvements in ICT product and service innovation, that it brings significant added value to SMEs including micro entrepreneurs, and that it leads to sustainable networks strengthening the European innovation fabric. Furthermore, each experiment had a complementary focus on specific harmonisation and networking aspects, i.e. a common ecosystem, a common benchmark framework, a common technology platform, and a common integration framework. The APOLLON general framework for piloting a cross-border domain-specific Living Lab network is depicted below.
ICT PSP Project Reporting Template
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Final Version
