COIN Service Platform for Living Labs
“Unleashing User-Centred Open Innovation from Enterprise Collaboration
and Interoperability, the Living Lab way”
A White Paper
Towards Service Platforms For Living Labs
COIN Project
COLLABORATION AND INTEROPERABILITY FOR NETWORKED ENTERPRISES
This white paper is addressing the Future Internet Services and User-Centred Open Innovation in proposing to use the COIN Service Platform, a Semantically Enabled Service Architecture (SESA) within the PaaS cloud computing paradigm and SaaS business model, for delivering Interoperability and Collaboration Services to the Living Labs community (ENoLL), Implementing this way a Social Innovation Ecosystem.
Marc Pallot, COIN Angel, France
COIN Service Platform for Living Labs
(COIN4LL)
COIN Partners
© 2010 COIN Consortium. This document may be reproduced, in whole or part, provided acknowledgement to the COIN project is given.
ISBN 0 XXXXX
Edited by. Marc Pallot, COIN Angel, Paris, France
Contributors: Conte M., Gusmeroli S., Pallot M., Santoro R, Brigitte Trousse. Published by. the COIN Project
An electronic version is available at: www.coin-ip.eu
User Partners Academic & Research Partners
Abstract
This is a brief summary of the COIN4LL initiative.
he COIN project has launched a specific initiative, named COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL), to explore/study a win-win cooperation model in which COIN would provide an open, self-adaptive and scalable cloud computing platform for delivering collaboration and interoperability utility services to the Living Labs community (ENoLL) as forming a wider Social Innovation Ecosystem.Conversely but synergically, the COIN Service Platform would embed the Living Lab User-Centred Open Innovation approach for delivering specific science and innovation services to COIN-equipped Enterprise Networks for implementing Open Innovation among collaborating entities (Public Administrations, Regional Development Agencies, Industry and especially SMEs, research centres and academia, freelance professionals and users/citizens).
Overall, the Living Labs community would
benefit from the use/adoption of the COIN Enterprise Interoperability and Enterprise Collaboration (EI/EC) utility like services and of its Generic Service Delivery Platform for plugging existing Living Labs services and for creating some new ones. Reversely, the COIN project and more specifically its industrial pilots would benefit from the platform embedded Living Lab User-Centred approach, unleashing their Open Innovation potential and bringing it to action.
The final result of this synergy will be the ideation and specification of a COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL) which shall include the integration of specific Living Lab science & innovation services to extend the COIN service platform offer towards a User-centred Open Innovation. Furthermore, it would constitute an upper research and business ecosystem at the confluence of technology push (COIN) and application pull (Living Labs) approaches where basic services would be collectively developed, shared, re-used and maintained by an open forum of Living Lab science and innovation service developers and users. In this specific context, the COIN Service Platform for Living Labs would be addressing the Front-End Innovation market segment where plenty of SMEs and Professionals do not have actually the necessary resources (people and expertises, methods and tools) for massively innovating.
PVC University Research Centre Retiree Individual Professional Consultant VT Professional Service CUSTOMER Large Company SME Need for Knowledege Service PVC University Research Centre Retiree Individual Professional Consultant VT Professional Service CUSTOMER Large Company SME Need for Knowledege Service
Goals and Objectives
This section provides an overview on the COIN4LL goal and objectives.
OIN for Living Labs, as an Open Innovation Platform delivering Interoperability and Collaboration Services to Living Labs, is explored through several complementary dimensions namely Social, Economical, Structural, Technological, Empathical and Legal/Ethical.
The main goal of the COIN4LL study and resulting White Paper is to explore/study the use by the Living Labs community1 of the COIN Service
Platform as an instantiation of the PaaS (Platform as a Service) cloud computing paradigm and under the SaaS-U (Software as a Service) business model. In particular, Living Labs play an intermediating role in the social innovation environment involving industrial organisations like Large Enterprises and SMEs, research centres, users/citizens and local authorities in territories such as regions, agglomerations and cities as well as their public development and/or innovation agencies.
A sub-goal is to explore and study the appropriateness of the Living Lab User-Centred Open Innovation approach within the COIN-equipped Enterprise Networks for implementing Open Innovation among collaborating entities such as Public Administrations, Regional Development Agencies, Industry and especially SMEs, Research Centres and Academia, freelance Professionals and Citizens.
Another complementary sub-goal is to foresee how the overall community of technology providers, Living Labs and users could form a business ecosystem around the COIN Service Platform specialised for Open Innovation. It means that Living Labs could use the COIN Platform for plugging their existing LL science and innovation services and for developing some new ones in such a way that basic services would be shared, consolidated, mashed-up, re-used and maintained by the overall community. It further means that SMEs would be able to identify and compose their Open Innovation collaborative environment according to their specific context and related needs.
Objectives of the COIN4LL study through the development of this white paper are the following:
Describe the COIN4LL User-centred Open Innovation Vision;
Describe the current state-of-the-art;
Compare COIN4LL OI Vision and state-of-the-art;
Identify and analyse barriers and potential gaps;
Identify enablers for overcoming the gaps;
Introduction:
Future Internet
This section provides an introduction about the current trends in term of utility services available on
the Internet.
owadays, there are various utility services available over the Internet such as telephone, TV, VOD and Web access with plenty of online applications. Tomorrow, there might be a true collaborative web (collaboration through knowledge connection without borders), as soon as the semantic web and social web will get together, based on 3D media (for a new web experience), connected things (IoT) and composable services (IoS) as well as autonomous semantic networks (IoN) with advanced wireless and optical technologies. No-one is actually able to encompass the massive opportunities for creating and delivering new services that the Future Internet will be offering us. This is no surprise as a long time ago, in fact in 1969 when the Arpanet emerged, no-one was able to predict the success of the Internet, email and web either. Even the most famous and genius prospective guy would have not been able to predict that NASA would develop an interstellar (space) internet in creating a new Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol in order for spaceships to communicate with each other, even when they’re too far away to keep a constant connection alive. For sure, it is not yet intended for astronauts to spend time with web streaming (either watching videos or listening music) but rather expected to ease the management of multiple vehicles (landed, mobile and orbiting) during complex missions as announced by NASA. All of this has instilled a prospective view where the Internet is going to turn lot of electronic equipments and software operations into much more simple to use Plug and Play (PnP) utility services like electricity and water and more recently triple play offer with unlimited telephone, TV and Web over the internet.
One might get sufficiently inspired for thinking about the opportunity of setting-up the best SOA platform for turning collaboration into another utility service to be delivered through the internet. However, beside the fact that one needs to assume that it is technically feasible and that almost all individuals and organisations will have to collaborate from distance, for sure, there is no absolute guarantee that they will adopt it. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that collaboration effectiveness and efficiency is highly depending on capacities for overcoming distance factors, hence it is tightly tied with interoperability issues among collaborative nodes.
In the meantime, an EU integrated project, named COIN, is developing an open, self-adaptive and scalable platform for delivering collaboration and interoperability services as being utility services for networked enterprises operating different types of business, from the most traditional supply chain up to the most advanced and dynamic business ecosystem.
Enterprise 2.0 is a system of web-based
technologies that provide rapid and agile
collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended i
Introduction:
Empowering Users
Another fascinating piece in this picture is about empowering users like it is done with Web2.0 applications such as YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, and Twitter where users are creating content and value. There are even examples of stigmergic or mass collaboration where citizens are collectively creating content (e.g. Wikipedia) for the society at large. Web 2.0 in the context of business organisations is translated into Enterprise 2.0 (Enterprise Social Software2) which, according to Carl
Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen (2008) covers traditionally “a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise”. For the purpose of this study this could also entail virtual worlds.
A number of methods are available for involving users in the R&D process, as recommended in the ICT Work-programme 2009-2010, such as Action Research, User Centred Design (UCD) and User Co-Creation (UCC) which are all applied in the context of the Living Lab approach. A Living Lab is an Open Innovation ecosystem frequently operating in the context of competitiveness clusters and local authorities (territories) such as cities, agglomerations, regions and public development agencies social innovation environments. It operates around a technology platform to provide access to science and innovation services allowing enterprises and user/citizen communities to explore, experiment and evaluate breakthrough scenario ideas, concepts and designed technological artefacts that could be turned into major innovations for the wealth of the society (eHealth, Ambient Assisted Living, eInclusion, eTransportation, eGovernment, Smart City, ICT for Energy, ICT for Environment).
Nowadays, 129 Living Labs are members of the European Network of Living Labs that are geographically located within the enlarged European Union and in other regions such as South Africa, Asia and South America. All of them have the mission to involve users at the earlier stage of the R&D process not for only being observed subjects but rather for co-creating value. A living Lab is an open research and innovation environment involving user communities (market pull), solution developers (technology push), research labs, local authorities and policy makers as well as investors. The multicultural and multidisciplinary aspects of Living Labs allow getting the emergence of the best ideas and concepts and the crystallising of the best solutions leading to successful breakthrough innovations. The Social aspect of the Living Lab approach ensures a wide and rapid spread (viral adoption phenomenon) in the society for the benefit of all. The Living Lab environment is built around a technology platform and offer science & innovation services as well as user/citizen communities enabling the exploration of innovative scenarios including new concepts turned into technological artefacts. Then, the experimentation and evaluation of the resulting scenarios and technological artefacts are driven by users within a real life context through a socio-economic (societal, environmental, health and energy cost/value), socio-ergonomic (user friendliness) and socio-cognitive (intuitive level) as well as adoptability perspectives (potential level of viral adoption).
Frappaolo & Keldsen, 2008
Introduction:
COIN4LL Initiative
The COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL) initiative was built-up at the crossroads of Future Internet, Open Innovation, User Co-Creation (Living Lab), User Content and Social Interaction (Web2.0), Mass Collaboration (Wikipedia), and Cloud Computing paradigms - Internet is the cloud, also named “the disappearing IT infrastructure”, delivering various categories of applications such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Web Services in the cloud, Database as a Service (DaaS), Service Front-End (SFE).
The COIN4LL initiative is intended to study in which way Living Labs (LL) could take benefit of the COIN service platform in the context of Open Innovation and reversely, the appropriateness of embedding the Living Lab user centred approach within COIN-equipped Enterprise Networks for implementing Open Innovation among collaborating entities (Public Administrations, Regional Development Agencies, Industry and especially SMEs, research centres and academia, freelance professionals and users/citizens).
The COIN Service Platform could be hosting LL science and innovation Services in the context of Networked Enterprises. It means that these Services would be available for industrial companies, especially SMEs having limited access to science and innovation services, in order to confront their product/service ideas, concepts and technological artefacts as well as usage scenarios to users’ expectations, users’ experiences and users’ value models.
Beside the Interoperability and Collaboration Services provided by the COIN Service platform, another idea has emerged from the COIN4LL workshop during the ICE’2009 conference where a number of service categories were identified by participants. This idea consists in federating, integrating and sharing Living Lab science and innovation Services, which are either already developed and used by a specific Living Lab or could be jointly specified and developed on a COIN4LL platform that would be coordinated and maintained by a neutral organisation for hosting Living Lab Services that would be offered to ENoLL members.
A specific win/win business model, based on the SaaS-U model, would be developed for allocating credit points to software providers and Living Labs that would host and plug their services into the COIN4LL platform and for charging debit points to successful innovations according to the level of used services. This approach would allow, for an optimum cost, (avoid the NIH syndrome, redeveloping the wheel,) to rapidly explore scenarios on other regional markets as well as potential adoption by local users/consumers, develop Living Lab know-how on processes, methods and tools (consolidate and share knowledge, increase the level of understanding on various phenomena) for turning breakthrough ideas, concepts and innovative technological artefacts into successfully developed and adopted innovations.
COIN provides both researchers and practitioners with a valuable SaaS-U model
Interoperability and Collaboration Service
Platform.
Enterprise Interoperability and
Collaboration
This section provides a brief overview of the COIN project.
he COIN vision is assuming that by 2020 enterprise collaboration and interoperability services will become an invisible, pervasive and self-adaptive knowledge and business utility at disposal of the European networked enterprises from any industrial sector and domain in order to rapidly set-up, efficiently manage and effectively operate different forms of business collaborations, from the most traditional supply chains to the most advanced and dynamic business ecosystems.
The mission of the COIN Integrated Project is to study, design, develop and prototype an open, self-adaptive, generic ICT integrated solution to support
the above 2020 vision, starting from notable existing research results in the
field of Enterprise Interoperability (EI) and Enterprise Collaboration (EC). Enterprise Interoperability and Enterprise Collaboration are the two sides of the same COIN. EC and EI have been the two major research catalysts for DG INFSO D4 "Networked Enterprise & RFID", and aggregated tens of projects and hundreds of researchers in their projects clusters initiatives.
EC comes from a business perspective and identifies the process of enterprises, mainly SMEs, for setting-up and managing cross-enterprise win-win business relations in response to business opportunities; EI originated by the ICT world and identifies a capability of enterprise software and applications to be integrated at the level of data, applications, processes and models. COIN promoters believe that EC and EI are different concepts which cannot be merged or confused but that they are so interdependent and simultaneously present in every networked enterprise, that they can be really considered as the two sides of the same COIN.
The COIN EC services are devoted to support the life-cycle of business-oriented collaborations, from their preparation in proper long-term environments, to their formation matching business opportunities with possessed competencies, to their operations and management by measuring and governing proper performance indicators, till to their dissolution and the re-use of the experience gained. Moreover, COIN EC services will support the development of some Future Internet Enterprise Applications, namely collaborative product development, production planning and project management.
In the context of collaborative new product-service development, one peculiar aspect of COIN services is when new product-service design opportunities are generated from inside the long-term cluster, by a joint interaction between
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Sergio Gusmeroli, TXT Group, Italy
Knowledge brokers increase the effectiveness of Open Innovation processes.
Open Innovation
This section provides an overview on Open Innovation.
owadays, companies are shifting from close innovation processes towards a more open way of innovation. Henry Chesbrough defined the Open Innovation paradigm as being “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” (Chesbrough, 2003). Chesbrough is also arguing that “Open Innovation paradigm assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology”.
He provided the following list of factors that are eroding closed innovation (Chesbrough, 2003):
Mobility and availability of highly educated people;
Large amounts of knowledge exist outside research labs of firms;
Employees change jobs and create knowledge flows between firms;
Availability of venture capital boost promising ideas and technologies to be further developed outside the firm, for instance in the form of:
o Entrepreneurial firms;
o Spin-offs or through licensing agreements, are growing.
Supply chain companies, e.g. suppliers, play an increasingly important role in the innovation process.
The Business Technology Office is claiming that executives are looking at new ways to delegate more of the innovation management to networks of suppliers and independent specialists as well as customers that interact with each other to co-create products and services. Technology could link these outsiders into development projects for creating better ideas for new products and develop those ideas more quickly and cheaply than today.
In the Inside Knowledge magazine, Milton Correia de Sousa introduces the concept of knowledge brokers and how these can increase the effectiveness of open innovation processes. She explains how the movement from internal R&D to external connect and develop opens the door to companies - large and small - to reach beyond their core competencies to remain competitive in an increasingly complex, uncertain and changing environment. Then, she is claiming that knowledge brokers can act as intelligent change agents that stimulate innovation while keeping focus and creating momentum for action.
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Milton Correia de Sousa, www.ikmagazine.com
Models of a user-centred design process help software designers
to fulfil the goal of a product engineered for
their users. In these models, user requirements are considered right from
the beginning and included into the whole
product cycle. Their major characteristics are
the active participation of real users, as well as an iteration of design
solutions.
User Centred Design
This section provides an overview on User Centred Design (UCD).
he methodologies already exist for involving users in the R&D process, such as Action Research (Lewin, 1946) that is a spiral process of comparative research on fact-finding about the result of the conditions and effects of various forms of social action. Lead User method (Hippel, 1986), which is normally applied for exploring user innovation capacities. User Innovation is also mentioned as being socially and socio-technically distributed innovation (Tuomi, 2002). It was recently characterised as User-Centric Innovation in New Product Development (Bligram; Brem; Voigt, 2008).
It has leaded to the User Centred Design (UCD) philosophy that is characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process with the active participation of real users in the validation of design solutions based on the observation of users’ behaviour. UCD is often related to User Experience depending on the complexity and multiplicity of interactions design that users have to explore. UCD is also strongly related to Designing For Usability (Gould and Clayton, 1985), which is based on the following three principles: early focus on users and tasks, empirical measurement, and Iterative Design. Usability studies often involve prototyping, ergonomics (ISO/TR 16982:2002) and cognitive dimensions and walkthrough (Human-Computer Interaction) as well as heuristic evaluation.
However, the design of most objects is still felt by users through the generated emotional connection as explained in Norman’s book entitled “Emotional Design” (Norman, 2005). Various models of User Centred Design, such as Cooperative Design (Erlbaum, 1991), Participatory Design (Schuler, Namioka, 1997), Contextual Design (Bayer & Holtzblatt, 1998), and Emotional or Emphatic Design (Leonard and Rayport, 1997) are intended to consider users’ behaviour and requirements right from the beginning through ethnographic or field studies. These four models of User Centred Design are compliant with the Human-centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems (ISO13407).
Rarely mentioned, semiotics can be used in the context of ergonomics or Human-Computer Interaction, also named Computational semiotics. Design Semiotics (Monö, 1997) represents the study of the use of signs in product design.
While usability tests have already been successfully implemented within the downstream side of the R&D process, very few has been done so far regarding the earlier involvement of end-users within the upstream side of the R&D process. This is especially true in the context of Front-End Innovation, during the exploration of new innovative concepts and observation of related users’ behaviour. It is important to note that as user experience widens the concept of usability (Norman 1998, 2004, 2007; Garett 2002). User experience methods to assess user experience have to tackle wider dimensions as done by traditional usability evaluation methods.
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Ambient Intelligence research increasingly needs to allow people to live in their own future in
order to bring research closer to the needs of citizens and businesses.
User Experience & Ambient
Intelligence
This section provides an overview on User Experience and Ambient Intelligence.
ethodologies for studying user experience are, admittedly, still in their infancy, although many ingredients are already available. Contrary to assessment methods, several approaches try to understand experiences and their context of origin. Examples are cultural probes (Gaver et al. 1999; 2004), which are collections of materials that are designed to provoke inspirational responses from people in diverse communities or the experience sampling method (Csikszentmihalyi et al. 1987; 1997). This is based on the repeated assessment of individual or group behaviour and experience in their daily context. Other methods refer to experience prototyping to simulate experiences in different situations or idea generation methods.
Various scientific communities are interested in better understanding the behaviour of individual users as well as group or community of users on the internet, notably HCI (Human Computer Interaction) research community, Social sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Data mining which provides tools to process massive and evolving data sets. While there is such a common interest, very little effort has been done to share resources, to combine point of views, and in most cases each discipline simply ignores the others. The approach of "User Experience" encompasses all aspects of end-users’ interactions, widen the scope of previous research fields and engages researchers from different disciplines to create new Meta-heuristic (i.e. genetic algorithms, ant colony algorithm, differential evolution algorithm) based analysis tools.
Experience Design (Aarts & Marzano, 2003) is more focusing on the user experience quality, through the use of interaction model impacting user perception, than on the number of functionalities. Experience and Application Research (EAR) has been proposed by the ISTAG committee in 2004 as a means of addressing the challenge of creating a human-centred approach to R&D in ICT Ambient Intelligence for supporting integrated research and concurrent assessment of Ambient Intelligence technologies and systems.
EAR involves research, development and design by, with and for users. In fact, ISTAG suggested that Ambient Intelligence research increasingly needs “to allow people to live in their own future” in order to bring research closer to the needs of citizens and businesses. EAR technologies should enable prototyping of novel interaction concepts while resembling natural environments of use. These experience prototyping environments should also be equipped with observation technologies that can capture and analyse the behaviour of people that interact with the experience prototypes.
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ISTAG Committee, 2004 HomeLab at Philips ExperienceLab ShopLab at Philips ExperienceLab CareLab at Philips ExperienceLabUser Experience & Ambient
Intelligence
Philips’ ExperienceLab is the embodiment of sense and simplicity in developing technology not as such but rather for creating products that enhance people’s lives in a meaningful way. It’s about listening to and observing customers and consumers to understand what motivates them, what they want and what they really need. This is the goal of experience research with the existing three Philips ExperienceLab applications: HomeLab, CareLab and ShopLab.
PlaceLab is a joint MIT and TIAX research by designing and building real living environments - mentioned as being a “Living Lab” - for studying technology and design strategies in context. It is a residential condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designed to be a highly flexible and multi-disciplinary observational research facility for the scientific study of people and their interaction patterns with new technologies and home environments.
GERHOME lab is a CSTB lab, part of the infrastructures proposed by the living lab "ICT Usage Lab" in Sophia Antipolis (France), for developing, trying out and certifying technical solutions, supporting the assistance services for enhancing independence of the elderly at home. It is based on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) technologies for house automation to ensure autonomy, comfort of life, security, monitoring and assistance to the place of residence. According to a medical clinic protocol designed with doctors specialised in geriatric at CHU of Nice 15 elderly persons, recruited by the regional committee of retired people and elderly in Alpes-Maritimes, were experimenting living in this AmI equipped home.
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PlaceLab at MIT
Gerhome Lab at CSTB. living Lab "ICT Usage Lab"
Virtual World and prediction market are emerging as essential tools for supporting the creation and evaluation
of breakthrough scenarios by users.
User Co-Creation
This section provides an overview on the User Co-Creation approach.
eside the formal User Centred methodologies such as User Centred Design, Contextual Design or Participatory Design, the Web environment has also induced open user-centred approaches such as the Web2.0 for empowering and connecting users. In the Web 2.0 approach users are creating content and forming online social entities such as self-organised and emerging groups or communities. Plenty of Web2.0 applications exist nowadays where users are creating content and value in sharing their creations such as videos, photos, links, like YouTube, Flickr, Delicious; their current status with Twitter or for social-networking with FaceBook.
There are web applications, named Crowdsourcing, illustrating the Open Innovation process in posting call-for-solutions on the web where individuals and communities are invited to submit proposed ideas (i.e. InnoCentive, uTest). Other web applications are also building on user co-creation and mass collaboration in a stigmergic approach where a large number of users are collectively authoring content to serve the society (i.e. Wikipedia).
The Collective Intelligence application on the web is illustrated by the Wisdom of Crowds as presented by James Surowiecki in his book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,
Economies, Societies and Nations”, published in 2004, for aggregating individual and community opinions. Frequent types of application are Prediction market and Ideas Stock Market which was demonstrated at the ICT2008 Exhibition in Lyon and during Laval Virtual 2009 with Innovation City (3D world) and Idem tool. The main objective of this kind of experimentation is to collect data for a foresight study on urban planning in evaluating future city equipments. Visitors are immersed into a virtual world to be virtually walking through the various sites and innovative equipments while concurrently asked to play with an idea stock market in selling and buying ideas’ shares according to their own experience.
Web 2.0 in the context of business organisations is translated into Enterprise 2.0 (Enterprise Social Software3) which, according to Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen
(2008) covers traditionally “a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise”.
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Simon Richir, Arts & Métiers ParisTech, Presence & Innovation Lab, France
More multidisciplinary research (Human Science, ICT) is required
for supportinga Living Lab approach.
The Living Lab Approach
This section provides an overview on the Living Lab approach and unveil differentiation with the
more traditional methods such as Action Research, User Centred Design, and User Experience.
s demonstrated by the Web 2.0 in empowering users, approaches where users are not considered anymore as being the observed subjects but rather as being able to contribute and create value are emerging. William Mitchell, MediaLab and School of Architecture and city planning at MIT, argued that a Living Lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts. He has identified several impact and benefits such as integrating the user into the development process for ensuring highly reliable market evaluation; the reduction of technology and business risks; beneficial to SME, micro-organizations and start-ups, since they can share resources without so much venture capital; Large companies have access to a broader base of ideas. In fact, building up User Experience prototyping for exploring new innovative ideas, scenarios, concepts and better understanding users’ behaviour and real needs is radically different from building-up a testbed for testing functionalities against requirements. Hence, Living Labs result into a considerable increase of collected data both in terms of amount and complexity. However, it is more than coping with massive amount of data as there is also a need for multidisciplinary research combining expertise and knowledge among domain scientists for being able to better understand phenomena in concurrently interpreting collected data from different perspectives.
From an Academic point of view, the Living Lab approach is shifting users’ involvement from traditional User Centred Design methods towards User Co-Creation methods as they earlier emerged on the web (Crowdsourcing, Mass collaboration, Collective filtering and tagging). Though, the User Experience component remains at the heart of the system. It turns users/citizens from being traditionally observed subjects into pro-active agents immersed into a specific world (reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, twilight reality) for co-creating value. Beside User Experience Design, User Co-Creation methods include many other techniques, often based on Collective Intelligence, such as the aggregation of community opinions (Wisdom of crowds or collective wisdom), ideas stock market (Prediction Market) and related crowdsourcing, collective filtering for users’ recommendations.
Living Labs require tools addressing growing data sets, refining users or network modelling, and new multidisciplinary methods articulating usage mining approach and human factors expertise (Pallot & al, 2008). Hence, it is believed to increase the quality of User Experience and Exploration (quantity as well as quality of collected data) of new ideas and emerging concepts that are transformed into technological artefacts leading to new innovative products/services. Furthermore, cognitive and socio-cognitive approaches are crucial in the pre-processing of usage data in terms of data cleaning, data structuring as they help to understand the proper useful
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Alarge scale of user involvement in the
innovation cycles ensures that new and
better ICT based services are introduced
in our lives, which satisfy the Social,
Knowledge and Business expectations of
the individuals. User driven open innovation
creates marketable solutions, and more importantly, it mobilizes the people to create new intangible values as the essential fuel of the new emerging economy in
harmony with the planet.
A Living Lab Definition
ser Experience requires research methods that could be combined for being able to better understand and interpret phenomena through an integration of different perspectives. It should go beyond the current socio-cognitive and related methods such as Applied Cognitive Task Analysis, Cognitive Function Model, Cognitively Oriented Task Analysis, Interacting Cognitive Subsystems, Unstructured and Structured Interviews, Group Interview, Walk-through, Cognitive Walk-through, Talk-through, Formal Usability Studies, Ergonomics Checklists, Situated and Distributed Cognition, and worth mentioning ethnographic or field studies. It also requires an enhanced User Experience model that could include contextual and emotional profiling enabling better interpretation of phenomenon induced by users’ behaviour and trusted relationships.
A Living Lab could be described as a user-centred open innovation ecosystem integrating concurrent research and innovation processes within a Public-Private-People Partnership leading to the following definition (Pallot, 2009):
The Living Lab approach is intended to engage all stakeholders, especially user communities, at the earlier stage of research and innovation in order to:
Co-create breakthrough ideas and scenarios, concepts and related technological artefacts;
Bring together technology push and market pull (i.e. crowdsourcing, crowdcasting) into a diversity of views, constraints and experience/Knowledge Sharing;
Explore, experiment, and evaluate new ideas and innovative concepts as well as related technological artefacts in real life situations through the analysis of socio-ergonomic, socio-cognitive and socio-economic aspects;
Observe emerging usages and behaviours and the potentiality of a viral adoption of new technological artefacts through a confrontation with the value model of users.
However, there is a need to formalise both a Living Lab process and its enabling technology platform. The role of the technology platform is to support the interoperability and collaborative work of multidisciplinary teams and user communities, knowledge sharing and consolidation, as well as social intelligence. A spiral process allows activities combining both technology push and market or application pull. Such a spiral process is composed of the following four concurrent sub-processes: Co-create, Explore, Experiment and Evaluate new innovative ideas, concepts and their resulting technological artefacts. The process starts with designing breakthrough application scenarios, which are embedded into a specific context based virtual world. It enables stakeholders, especially users, to easily explore new innovative concepts and related technological artefacts while researchers collect data and make observations on emerging usages and behaviours.
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The Living Lab Process
everal loops, in between Co-Creation and Exploration sub-processes, might be necessary for reaching a mutual understanding among involved stakeholders (scientists, users, technologists, engineers, architects, designers, marketers, sellers, financial investors, buyers, regulators) and a good maturity level (interpretation and understanding of occurring phenomena such as the potential level of adoption) that would lead to the decision of launching the following sub-process.
It consists to translate the breakthrough application scenarios into real use cases or usage scenarios for measuring the potential impacts generated by the occurring phenomenon. This is the Experimentation sub-process, which is interacting simultaneously with the Exploration and Evaluation sub-processes, enabling the engineering of the digital life-cycle of solution alternatives (manufacturability, testability, supportability), until the evaluation is completed in a satisfactorily level (depends on the degree to which alternative solutions have a good balance in between usability, reliability, and adoptability).
Usage scenarios are declined into assessment scenarios for evaluating alternative solutions. This is the Evaluation sub-process, which is closing the loop with the Co-Creation sub-process through the design of exploitation scenarios. Beside the Co-Creation sub-process, the three other sub-processes are also intended to feed the spiral process with induced new ideas in order for example to innovate on the life-cycle processes.
All sub-processes are articulated around a technology platform offering Science and Collaborative Innovation Services for co-creating, exploring, experimenting and evaluating innovative ideas, scenarios, concepts, technological artefacts and solution alternatives. Hence, new concepts, artefacts and solution alternatives are emerging from the resulting increase of knowledge, hence increase of understanding of occurring phenomenon. COIN4LL, besides delivering interoperability and collaboration services to the Living Labs community, is expected to provide a service delivery platform where Living Labs could plug their IT based services and develop some new ones. These services would be shared among the ENoLL community members, which would enable studies to be carried out across several Living Labs within different regional cultures.
Furthermore, the use of the PaaS Cloud Computing paradigm for implementing the COIN4LL Service Platform could provide a “Living Lab out of the box” offer enabling the set-up of an on demand co-creation environment anytime and anyplace.
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The Living Lab spiral process matures breakthrough scenarios into innovative products and services
The establishment and operation of a Living Lab depends upon a
series of factors, including the specific
sector which the Living Lab is serving, the local and regional context in which the
Living Lab will operate and the nature
of the economic texture involved,
The Living Lab Ecosystem
This section provides an overview on Living Labs Open Innovation in the regions.
n the recent history of the European Industry, a strong focus has been set on technological excellence of products and services and on their usability and relevant demand. Even though Europe is continuously producing the highest number of patents world-wide, which it is indeed a clear indication about knowledge and technology excellence especially in the most advanced industrial sectors, an insufficient capability of translating such an excellence into successful business with significant commercial and societal impacts has been observed. Moreover, the large European SMEs Industrial base, characterized by dynamic players, with low overheads and the ability of forming partnerships on a peer-to-peer basis, could exploit the opportunities of providing new, added-value product and services to Customers. However, this huge potential is not fully exploited for the following reasons (Santoro & Conte, 2009):
Insufficient ability for vertical integration of complementary competencies at SMEs level. SMEs must be organised in collaborative networks, which can aggregate pools of relevant complementary resources and competences.
Lack of mechanisms and processes for the use validation of business opportunities originated by the industry, especially if the targeted market is characterised by the classical dilemma: technology push or market pull?
Insufficient capability of accessing new, complementary competences, especially at international level, suitable for providing the needed partner to ideally complement a project team.
Lack of legal competencies to manage IPR created during the project and to leverage the background.
Scarce availability to knowledge resources, necessary to support the innovation processes within SMEs.
Insufficient readiness to collaboration of SMEs personnel, which results in ineffective work with people belonging to other SMEs.
Lack of consolidated processes enabling the involvement of Customers, End-users and Citizens in new products and services R&D. Such processes can help the European Industry to manage and minimise the risks associated to new products and services development.
In this scenario, there is the need to adopt a new model for regional development, the “Open Innovation Functional Region”, which goes beyond traditional Cluster and Incubator approaches and is suitable for supporting the innovation process in Industry, especially SMEs, by overcoming the above mentioned gaps.
This can be done through the ability of amalgamating all the different stakeholders in the R&D processes, from SMEs to Customers, from Regional Development Agencies to Citizens in the new model of the “Open Innovation Functional Region”. User-centred innovation can play also an important role in speeding up
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Marco Conte, Collaborative Engineering
COIN4LL provides researchers, developers
and users with a technology platform delivering services for
Living Labs allowing plugging existing and developing new Living
Lab science and innovation services.
COIN4LL Vision
The COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL) vision captures the
shift from the traditional close innovation towards User-Centred Open Innovation.
he COIN4LL vision is to exponentially increase the adoption of the COIN technologies and services in directly involving user/citizen communities (viral adoption where users co-create their own future) in the R&D process and, at the same time, dramatically increase the innovation capacities through the assembling of the Open Innovation paradigm and User-Centred Living Lab approach. In the competition for new products and services, usage mining and analysis, understanding of users’ behaviour as well as experience re-use and analysis of artefacts appropriation by users will soon become a must for the industry at large.
COIN4LL promotes the use of the Internet of Things4 (IoT) and Web of Services
technologies for building-up new applications based for example on Ambient Intelligence5 (AmI) technologies and services, by and for users/citizens, within
Living Labs operating as a knowledge and experience gathering environment. The early involvement of users/citizens, as recommended in the ICT Workprogramme6, conducted according to the principles of the User Centred
Open Innovation paradigm in applying the User Co-Creation method for involving users/citizens in research and innovation pathways. This combination of market pull and technology push is expected to have a positive impact on the
development and adoption of innovative technologies and services. The COIN4LL open service architecture and platform will enable a seamless, trustworthy and pervasive infrastructure to bridge the conceptual, applicative and technological gaps between the societal, the information and the physical spaces in enterprise environments; while Living Labs, developed and run at business ecosystem level within specific territories in the European Union, enable the Product-Organization-Process-System perspective for the development of new innovative technologies and services.
Usage and experience mining require devices, sensors, recorders, actuators and other technological artefacts for collecting data (Ambient Intelligence) processed by data mining tools that feed decisional analysis and Knowledge Discovery in the context of interconnected people-concepts leading to content and things (sensors, actuators, other devices,…). COIN4LL would allow plugging Living Lab science & innovation services or even developing new ones that would enhance the COIN service platform offer.
COIN4LL promotes the use of Interoperability and Collaboration Services for Living Labs. Up to now ICT for collaboration is implemented to integrate the design of product and processes within a life-cycle perspective. Nowadays, the Open Innovation principles are pushing enterprises towards a networked collaborative and distributed organisation, hence the need for Interoperability and Collaboration Services.
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Marc Pallot, COIN Angel
A simplified view of COIN4LL Platform layers
Taking into account the heterogeneity of
knowledge of developers and users is a key issue in the design
of all the services supporting user-centred
open-innovation projects.
Embedding the LL approach
The COIN Service Platform would embed the Living Lab User-Centred Open
Innovation.
he COIN Service Platform would embed the Living Lab User-Centred Open Innovation approach for delivering specific science and innovation services to COIN-equipped Enterprise Networks or business ecosystems for implementing Open Innovation among collaborating entities (Public Administrations, Regional Development Agencies, Industry and especially SMEs, research centres and academia, freelance professionals and users/citizens).
A brainstorming session, which took place during the ICE’2009 conference, for identifying needs, requirements and the most expected services in the context of a collaborative platform for developers and users involved in user-centred open innovation projects. The following core services were identified by participants:
Collaboration Services: services to share documents and information among group members (e.g. Shared Workspace) as well as capacity and competence management;
Idea Services: services for idea creation, management and evaluation;
Ownership Services: services for IPR management within collaborative developments and open innovation context;
Connection Services: services to support knowledge connection through the networking of people and concepts linking to knowledge resources, as well as things linking to collected ambient data;
Context Services: services for the contextualisation of the user interface and access to services being part of the Service Front-End;
Modelling Services: services for ontology management to support mutual understanding and interoperability among disciplines and Living Labs;
Community Services: services to support social activities such as blogging, micro-blogging, tagging, chatting, conferencing and online presence;
Exploration Services: services to explore and evaluate the way people use products and services through data mining as well as analysis of usage patterns;
Recommendation Services: services to build-up recommendations to users and developers.
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Brigitte Trousse, INRIA, COIN4LL Workshop at ICE’2009
COIN4LL Holistic View
The COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL) study deserves a
holistic view.
he choice of having a holistic view is due to the fact that a Living Lab is an ecosystem that behaves as a complex system, it means that its properties cannot be determined by its component parts alone. Based on the holism7
theory, this is rather the ecosystem as a whole that mostly determines how the parts behave. Further to this, emergence8 is said to be the way complex systems
and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.
Emergence is defined as being "the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems" (Corning 2002). A living lab is also involving human beings as components of the ecosystem which means that socio-cultural behaviour is playing an important role in its dynamic or evolving process to produce emergence. The ecosystem nature of a Living Lab is also an opportunity for the application of the famous Reed’s law or Group Forming Networks (Reed, 2001) leading to an exponential increase of connections exhibiting an emergent behaviour where several entities are forming more complex behaviours as a collective one. Collective intelligence and mass collaboration appear as a form of networking enabled by the Internet and Web technologies. The stock market, the World Wide Web and the Internet, the architecture and cities urban development are often cited as self-organised complex systems exhibiting emergent behaviours.
Hence, having a holistic view in this COIN4LL study appears to be the most appropriate approach.
Dimensions of the COIN4LL holistic view
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The realisation of the multi-perspective research
challenges highlighted by the COIN4LL white paper will beneficially support the complex way
towards the optimal Service Platform interaction between Large
and Medium & Small Enterprises and user communities as well as other stakeholders such as
local authorities and innovation agencies
COIN4LL Dimensions
The COIN Service Platform for Living Labs (COIN4LL) holistic view is built
on various dimensions.
he COIN4LL holistic view has six complementary dimensions, namely, Social, Economical, Structural, Technological, Empathical, and Legal & Ethical. Living Labs are often perceived as being social innovation spaces where users are engaged into co-creation activities for innovating in the area of socially enabled technologies.
The social dimension considers the human and social aspects that are, beside the traditional usability studies, often inadequately addressed in the case of ICT R&D activities. In contrast, the Living Lab approach involves communities of users in mass collaboration activities such as ideas generation, the design and exploration of breakthrough scenarios as well as the evaluation of innovative concepts and related technological artefacts. Socio-cultural anthropology, being the study of group behaviour evolution in its live environment, and more precisely ethnographic study, as a qualitative research method, allows holistic considerations through systematic observation.
The economical dimension deals with the capacity for organisations, especially SMEs and professionals, to mobilise the necessary resources for engaging communities of users/citizens as well as scientists in their R&D activities while reducing costs. There is a natural bridge with the social perspective through socio-economic studies. There are issues related to service cost models such as Platform as a Service (PaaS) model and Software as a Service (SaaS) model that would allow sharing the cost of distributing science and innovation services.
The structural dimension is related to national, regional and local initiatives for clustering various groups of stakeholders involved in traditional R&D in order to identify potential synergies and recognised domains of excellence. It is also dealing with open innovation and collaboration policy as well as vertical integration capacity of complementary competences, especially for SMEs and professionals. The technological dimension considers infrastructures, service platforms, networking technologies and distributed applications and their capacity to support plug&play collaboration and interoperability amongst collaborating stakeholders. The empathical dimension is related to the capacity of engaging users in the research and innovation processes through their social capital, intellectual capital and emotional capital. Traditional recognised methods are user-centric innovation, emotional design, participatory design, contextual design, experience design, crowdsourcing and mass collaboration.
The legal and ethical dimension deals with tracking ideas ownership and Intellectual Property Right (IPR) management while keeping an appropriate level of security and privacy aspects.
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Claudia Guglielmina, TXT eSolutions
We are good at connecting people - phone, fax, email,
shared data, etc. But Collaboration is about partnerships, relationships
& teaming... this needs co-operation, openness, sharing and trust.
Social Dimension
This section presents the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the social
dimension, covering human and social issues.
ocial issues are often inadequately addressed. This partially explains why people have difficulties in adopting new working approaches like the use of information technology or open innovation. Table 1 provides an overview where five key topics illustrating the barriers or gaps identified in the current situation, foreseen solutions, and research needs are outlined.
Table 1 –Social Issues: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
The most important topic to be addressed is to turn the traditional people culture of close innovation into an open innovation one while instilling the ability to operate within community organisations such as user communities. Several complementary topics are related to this change such as collaborative behaviour, community of practice or knowledge, trust and confidence in a distributed context. A better understanding of distance factors and artefacts to overcome their impact on effectiveness and efficiency is of paramount importance as well as the role of social intelligence and distributed cognition. Rewarding mechanisms encouraging a collaborative behaviour and involvement of user communities are also perceived as being crucial components. Finally, the training capacity on user-centred open innovation and collaboration in a distributed environment through serious gaming constitutes another key element.
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Liz CarverLearn benefits and experiment new ways to involve user communities into R&D process Understand distance factors and openness barriers
Economical Dimension:
This section outlines the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the economical
dimension.
conomical issues are often tackled in isolation, which explains why formal modelling techniques are not extensively used. However, many business elements ought to be integrated with other elements such as market enablers (i.e. technologies, standards, services). Table 2 gives an overview of the most important topics to be addressed in the context of user-centred open innovation.
Table 2 – Economical Issues: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
Market enablers such as new technologies, standards and services, most probably, constitute the launching step of the COIN4LL service platform market in the context of an innovation ecosystem. However, there are other crucial elements such as more reliable user value models integrating social, intellectual and emotional aspects. Interestingly, it could lead to a better understanding of the viral adoption phenomenon assuming that relevant experiential data could be collected for measuring the propagation capacity.
Other topics such as the mutualisation of Living Lab science and innovation services would open more global markets, across the EU member states and abroad, especially for SMEs and professionals. Though, a certain level of standardisation is also required for enabling interoperability amongst various Living
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Andy Priscott, UKFormalise more reliable user value models integrating social, intellectual and emotional aspects.
Structural Dimension
This section covers the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the structural
dimension.
tructural issues are addressed by the capacity of integrating SMEs and professionals into a networked organisation, within a technology push and application pull approach. Table 3 provides an overview where five key topics illustrating the barriers or gaps identified in the current situation, foreseen solutions, and research needs are outlined.
Table 3 – Structural Aspects: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
As mentioned above, the vertical integration capacity of SMEs and Professionals represents the first step towards open innovation and collaboration amongst organisations. The ability to explore new ideas and breakthrough scenarios in experimenting related technological artefacts and evaluate the potential adoption by user communities deserves to mobilise scientific and innovation expertise. Federating these resources through the distributed access to Living Labs science and innovation services requires a service platform supporting distributed collaboration and interoperability. Furthermore, the ability to organise the development and maintenance of those services within an open source like ecosystem would allow to considerably reducing the cost in re-using those services and increase their reliability for the benefit of both the Living Lab and SME communities in facilitating innovation while decreasing its risk of failure.
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Jens Ove Skjærbæk Combine technology push and application pull in breakthrough scenarios to explore the user valueTechnological Dimension
This section outlines the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the
technological dimension.
echnology issues are mainly addressed through the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) angle. However, it is clear that other technological domains related to environmental, energy and health issues where ICT is embedded are also considered. Table 4 gives an overview where five key topics illustrating the barriers or gaps identified in the current situation, foreseen solutions, and research needs are outlined.
Table 4 – ICT Aspects: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
First of all, Interoperability is an important technological issue for enabling plug & play collaboration especially in experimenting innovative artefacts within user communities. Though, it depends much more on how are organised and structured concepts to be shared by stakeholders than relying solely on tools integration. These are strongly related to user interface design based on semantic meaning and context, which is an important issue for Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Standardisation aspects of cloud computing service platforms and connection with remote devices (things) appear to be a crucial element as well as defining Living Lab reference architecture. Other topics such as developing user cocreation tools, dynamic profiling, powerful evaluation tools, shared experience and knowledge connection would speed-up the research and innovation process.
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Sergio Gusmeroli, TXT GroupDefine a Reference Architecture and interoperable science and innovation
services for Living Labs.
The relevant aspects of business operations are brought together in this COIN4LL white paper. CIOs are guided for implementing the Open
Innovation paradigm through the user-centred
Empathical Dimension
This section presents the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the
empathical dimension.
mpathical issues, meaning in fact the way users are engaged into the research and innovation process, are tackled concurrently with the human and social aspects, and structural aspects to ensure that ICT requirements are identified for the full scope of the user-centred open innovation (Living Lab approach). Table 5 provides an overview on key topics.
Table 5 – Empathical Aspects: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
Beside the existing approaches and tools for user-centred design and experience design, very few have been done to support user cocreation. The empathical dimension embeds the complexity of human beings social capital, intellectual capital and emotional capital aspects that constitute the basis to group discussions, recommendations and undertaken decisions. Hence, the elaboration of a model integrating social, intellectual and emotional aspects and investigating its impact on the exploration, experimentation and evaluation of breakthrough scenarios, concepts and innovative technological artefacts represent the most important elements. However, the capacity of mining user data and their filtering with user dynamic profiles for producing reliable recommendations appear also as a crucial component. Last but not least, knowledge connection approach and tool embedding correlation mechanisms for identifying relevant sources of experience
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Enforce social, intellectual and emotional aspects within user cocreation.Marc Pallot, Centre for Concurrent Enterprise, Nottingham
University Business School
User Co-Creation is the essence of Living
Labs. It embeds the complexity of human
beings due to the multiple interactions in between their social
capital, intellectual capital and emotional
Legal & Ethical Dimension
This section outlines the gaps, foreseen solutions and research needs of the legal and
ethical Dimension.
egal and ethical aspects in terms of ownership and privacy policy, regulation and contractual issues, either with business partners or individuals, are complex and least understood. This partially explains why it is time consuming and why it is difficult to effectively implement Open Innovation and distributed collaboration amongst stakeholders. Table 6 gives an overview on key topics.
Table 6 – Legal and Ethical Aspects: Gaps, Solutions and Research Needs
Key Topics
User-centred Open Innovation activities such as crowdsourcing, user content and mass collaboration are pushing ownership towards creative common, open research and open source approaches or a mix of them. Interestingly, Open Innovation does not necessarily mean that everything is open and user-centred does not necessarily mean that users have to co-create. However, in this context it is particularly difficult to get an agreement with all stakeholders on ownership policy and IPR management. Furthermore, the involvement of users in cocreation and experimentation activities makes ownership issues even more difficult as well as security and privacy issues due to the use of data mining and user dynamic profiling that contribute to the ethnographic studies. Investing the implementation of IPR management in the context of user generated content is considered as a promising element of this dimension.
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Integrate ownership and privacy policy, regulation & contractual issues together.Enablers:
Experience Model
This section presents the KSB experience model.
xperience model could be turned into a Knowledge-Social-Business (KSB) set of principles. Bifulco and Santoro argued that the fundamental principle on which communities are built up is that the “collective intelligence” can emerge only if three fundamental dimensions are simultaneously addressed in a comprehensive and balanced way (Bifulco & Santoro, 2005).
The three fundamental dimensions are:
Knowledge (intellectual and cognitive aspects)
Social (interconnectedness, trust and centrality aspects)
Business (economical, legal and ethical aspects)
The balance of the three fundamental dimensions is considered the key to the full deployment of knowledge workers creativity and productivity. According to the communities’ holographic nature, the KSB principle (Knowledge-Social-Business) equally applies to the community as a whole, which is deemed to be sustainable, motivated and durable only if a comprehensive and appropriate inclusion of the three dimensions is addressed.
As a matter of fact, the absence of the business dimension would result in a limited activity scope, putting at risk the community sustainability and members’ viability to spend significant time in the community activities. The lack of the social element, ensuring trusted relationships among the members, would limit the readiness to approach business opportunities and impair the free share of knowledge among members. Not addressing the knowledge development element would limit the usefulness of the community for the build-up of the knowledge society, reduce motivation of the knowledge worker and impairs his aspiration to obtain higher recognition and even economical reward.
This KSB principle infers a tri-dimensional value system for the community, which can be represented in the “KSB Chromo-Framework”, which takes advantage of the analogy of the three fundamental dimensions with the three fundamental colours (Blue for Knowledge, Green for Business, and Red for the Social dimension). Each KSB entity is then represented by a specific blending of the three basic colours, resulting into a single chromatic integration.
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The KSB Chromo-Framework
Enablers:
Experience Model
The Community “oxymoronic” interactionsThe collective intelligence aimed at by communities is enabled by the seemingly contradictory interactions among three opposite elements:
Knowledge diversity within the same specified scope. Though the knowledge scope of a given community is specified, membership is open to diverse disciplines (even generic unstructured knowledge) and aims to allow interactions among members with different age, culture, expertise, etc. It has been proven (Lee Fleming, 2004) that the diversity of team member’s disciplinary knowledge increases the probability of breakthrough innovation. The community enables the interaction of diverse knowledge within a focused environment (same principles, same values, same intent, etc.)
Connectivity among separated environments (multiple belonging). The members belong to the community and, at the same time, belong to other business organizations, even in the sense that they may be employed by a traditional corporate organization and are allowed to spend independent time within the community. The ability of the team to exploit members knowledge diversity is enhanced by team members’ simultaneous participation in multiple professional and social networks (Violina Ratcheva, 2005)
Collaboration among conflicting interests. Value within a community is generated collectively (higher value generated by the interaction of multiple individuals) and occurs through members’ interaction in sharing and creating of value objects. The collaborative principle implies a joint intent among the individuals and their autonomous decision to participate in the activity.
This collaboration is also competitive in the sense that:
Within the same collaborative team, members compete to gain knowledge rights’ allocation;
Several collaborative teams compete to access business opportunities;
Members compete to become “hubs” of social relationships with others.
Co-creation is enhanced by competition (individual intent increases motivation and creativity.
