Living Lab Guide
Pilot projects concerns innovative and ethical interventions (early detection, prevention/mitigation, and de-radicalization of violent extremism) in four key domains: prisons and judiciary system, schools and learning centers, local initiatives (cities and immigration hotspots), and the Internet and media. The following guidelines were edited by Jordi Colobrans in order to enable the MINDb4ACT partners to apply the Living Lab methodology to the 17 pilot projects that will be carried out in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom) throughout the project’s life span. The full report can be accessed here.
• Living Labs are harnessed to facilitate technological, social and/or cultural innovation
• Open methodologies and collaborative methods are employed in Living Labs
• The experiences of their users are investigated in Living Labs for the purposes of person-centred innovation
• People with a wide range of professional and institutional profiles take part in a Living Lab and they work in an interdisciplinary way
• The MINDb4ACT Living Lab is a socially innovative Living Lab specialising in finding solutions to the phenomenon of violent radicalism
• A variety of pilot projects are coordinated from the MINDb4ACT Living Lab
• Methodological support is provided by the MINDb4ACT Living Lab to execute the pilot projects
• In order to set up the MINDb4ACT Living Lab it is necessary to establish a promotor group, an operating group and a community of users and to activate a process of research, design and validation of solutions
• The MINDb4ACT Living Lab needs to establish a mechanism for communicating between its members and a way of organising the documentation that is generated
• The MINDb4ACT Living Lab has the task of documenting and validating existing solutions to the problem of violent radicalism and designing and validating new solutions
• The MINDb4ACT Living Lab has the task of devising a plan for training professionals on the basis of the results obtained during the research and the process of creating and validating solutions
• The MINDb4ACT Living Lab has the task of designing the plan to scale up the solutions that have been found and demonstrated to be effective
• The activities of MINDb4ACT Living Lab need to be documented
• The impact of MINDb4ACT Living Lab needs to be evaluated by comparing the goals with the results using a suite of indicators
Author
Jordi Colobrans is Associate Professor at the University of Barlceona (UB) and Professor at the Online Business School (OBS). Since 2009, he funded a consultant agency ‘LivingLabing’, working as Living Labs’ consultant and evaluator of technological and social-cultural innovations. He holds a PhD in Sociology and a BA in Cultural Anthropology. He also has some expertise in the field of Marketing and eLearning.
Links