Central European Living Lab for Territorial Innovation
The systemic impact on the economy, the environment and the quality of life in the Central European regions derives from the increase in the “innovation attractiveness” of the Central Europe space, as it develops and articulates the innovation demand coming from its citizens and businesses and sets in place the governance mechanisms to ensure policy coherence and optimise the benefits of single initiatives.

Living Labs (LLs), first experimented at MIT in 2003 “to study people and their interaction with new technologies in a living environment”, have since gained a specifically European dimension based on the co-design of innovative ICT services in local and regional communities. The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), launched by the Finnish EU Presidency in December 2006, has become a pillar of the European Innovation Strategy and now counts 212 LLs throughout the EU and abroad.

The project CentraLAB aims to transform Central Europe into a broad-reaching laboratory for innovation, including the social and organisational as well as technological dimensions. CentraLab thus aims to clarify the competitive advantage of a new model of innovation that draws on Central Europe’s deep, common cultural heritage to strengthen territorial cohesion, promote internal integration and enhance competitiveness through reciprocal learning and partnership building. CentraLab is based on a promising approach that has emerged in the arena of ICT under the name “Living Lab”. In this model, technology R&D brings infrastructures into real-life contexts to enable a “co-design” process with end users.

CentraLab adopts a bottom-up approach towards construction of the transnational, multi-level governance structure. Its networking philosophy is action-oriented while organic and open, using the pilot method to achieve a stable, sustainable configuration.