Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The transfer of the Living Lab from the countryside toward a metropole led to a new organization and the definition of 3 beneficiary targets. Erasme’s service offering is divided into three levels:
  • The first level concerns all digital projects carried by Lyon Metropole, with the Directorate of digital innovation and computer systems. Beneficiaries are the inhabitants that may be interested by a multiservice card or a better life in a smart city, for example.
  • The second level concerns diverse internal departments of Lyon Metropole for improving public services about child health, culture, transports, Public Service Houses, and so on.
  • The third level concerns the offer for external partners. It may be a municipality that seeks methodological support in the framework of a European programme. Or it may be private companies working for urban services, for example.
  • Co-creation process

    Since 1999, policy makers have imagined the Living Lab as a public service with a dedicated place and a team of experts in digital technologies at the service of local development. In this first stage (1999-2015), Erasme was used to work with museums (Muséolab programme) or teachers (ICT in education). When Erasme delocalized towards Lyon, in 2015, the Living Lab was at a mature stage with a strong experience. Since then, exhibitions are organized “outside the Lab” to mobilize inhabitants around some themes of public interest such as: culture, education, elder or poor people, smart city (urban regeneration, collective transport…). More than a Living Lab that mobilizes users to imagine new concepts or prototypes, Erasme claims to be a “Do Tank” to innovate and change urban life with digital technologies. The co-creation process is divided into two stages: the “Mix” and the “Lab”. This methodology has emerged from the long-term experience of the Living Lab since 1999.
  • The “Mix” is an event in which a specific place (museum, station, church, etc.) is “invested massively” by users for 2 or 3 days. It is a time to produce ideas and first prototypes but also a way for transforming organizations thanks to agile methods, collective intelligence and by creating contributive communities.
  • The “Lab” is a time for creating an innovative product or a digital service. Innovation requires a few weeks and sometimes several months for transforming prototypes into operational tools and services. Professional skills from diverse ecosystems are associated in neutral contexts and tests are realized in real life with end-users.
  • Digital Transformation Process

    Erasme Living Lab claims to be a “Use Laboratory” for the people and not a Lab dedicated to test digital technologies for new markets. Digital tools (software, device) are designed, prototyped, tested then developed in new technological device but to improve life of inhabitants in different public fields: culture, education, health, elderly, mobility and Smart City. The Living Lab mobilizes experts in culture and education but also in digital technologies, a mix of skills that creates a special alchemy to invent the museum of the future (Muséolab, Museomix, digital arts), digital workspaces for pupils, digital tools for aged people to keep in touch with their family, for example. The aim is to solve problems of inhabitants thanks to digital solutions but with a focus on public services, even if some innovations are developed with Start-ups or even with big firms of the region. More recently, Erasme Living Lab is working on the “SelfData project”, which makes it possible to invent services from citizens’ data while ensuring the security of the personal data beyond the requirements of the GDPR. Moreover, the “Grand Lyon Smart Data platform” (www.smartdata.grandlyon.com) makes it possible to co-create new urban services with users and private stakeholders. Lyon Metropole is also associated with the cities of Nantes and La Rochelle, in the west of France, to experiment the “Territorial SelfData”, a project launched with a national think tank called FING (New Generation Internet Federation) which is a leader in exploring the future of Internet and digital transition for people.

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    Co-creation workshops deal with four themes of public interest, which produced some services or products.
  • Culture (since 20 years): recent digital technologies were tested such as RFID, e-paper, Ubicomputing, Tangible interfaces, with the help of digital artists, in particular for a science and society museum (Musée des Confluences at Lyon).
  • Education (since 20 years): ICT education then e-learning environment for primary and secondary schools. The ENT (digital work environment) is open to teachers, pupils and their parents. Enriched year after year, it became a digital platform (laclasse.com).
  • Seniors e-care (since 2005): A tool (Webnapperon) was prototyped and tested with the elderly in retirement homes for dependent people. Improved in 2011 in the framework of a European project to co-design with 15 users, a service called “Host-communication” was implemented with open source software to create a social network between the elderly, often alone and far from their family.
  • Services for people in social difficulty have been a new field of experimentation for Erasme since 2015: The aim was to rethink the “Public Service Houses” of the Metropole in particular to welcome foreigners who do not speak French and do not know their social rights.
  • Smart city is also a recent field of experimentation: All citizens are end-users that can test new products or services, such as mobility with public transports.
  • Challenges & Bottlenecks

    Challenges originated in the creation of Erasme Living Lab by political decision: in 1999, a Senator interested in ICT and Internet decided to create a place to foster digital tools in cultural and educational fields, in particular in the countryside (his electoral constituency), where innovations are scarce. The transfer of Erasme towards Lyon in 2015 was also a political decision, to invent a smarter urban life but also to create a new administration with common goals after the merge of Lyon Metropole and the Rhône Department whose missions were different. Bottlenecks are diverse. First of all, the Living Lab is a “service of missions” which has to find budget for/thanks to new projects each year. The budget instability is a problem to follow more and more projects with a small team of managers. Young researchers or experts are sometimes recruited with a fixed-term contract thanks to the ERDF funds or other national or regional project funds but skills and competencies disappeared at the end of the contract. The lack of budget and its instability are also a problem to create a dedicated place for the Living Lab. Even if mobile workshops in the city are a good solution to attract citizens to the experimentations, a dedicated place is necessary for the development and innovation stage when professionals from diverse ecosystems have to meet and share their competencies.

    Transferability & Replicability

    Diffusion of innovations is important for Erasme. For example, prototypes of the Muséolab were diffused in museums, even at an international scale. The table Museo Touch is commercialized by a private firm. In education, the digital platform laclasse.com is used by more and more educative institutions in France. As Erasme is the oldest Living Lab in France, the question of replicability is very important for the management team. As Erasme belongs to different networks, at a local, national or even European scale, the co-creation model called “the Mix” was experimented elsewhere. Moreover, the reputation of the Erasme team generates solicitations from other geographical areas, even from around the world for the ”Museum of the Future”. Internationally, Erasme is registered in networks such as the Arts Sciences Network, Enoll (in 2010) or EUROCITIES (from 2017). Nevertheless, as Erasme claims a value creation in the service of general interest, transferability of the co-creative approach (Mix, Lab) is not easy with economic ecosystems in the region. But the theme of Smart City opens the partnership to businesses even if big firms are not used to open innovation, open source or Creative Commons License. Once they agreed with these principles, big firms use Erasme as a training centre to co-creation methods for their own employees. Barriers to co-creation are step by step transformed in a way to diffuse co-creation methods in the economic ecosystem of Lyon urban region. The future creation of an “Augmented Third-Place for Urban Worlds” (Smart City, Smart Territory) by a collaboration with another Living Lab in Lyon (TUBÀ), the university and other institutions, is the result of the Erasme reputation acquired step by step since 20 years.

    Success Factors

    The success of Erasme Living Lab depends on diverse factors.
    • The management team is composed of engineers, designers, developers, makers who are familiar with open innovation methods, animation and project management. They share competencies with diverse creative and professional communities, all experts in a specific field (culture, education, technology, health…) at a local, regional or even national and international scales.
    • Established step by step during 20 years, the methodology of co-creation with users and stakeholders is proven: a first phase of “Mix” with users (from ideation to prototypes); a second phase of “Lab” with professionals and users (from prototypes to tests then development of an innovative product or service).
    • Education to the “right to fail” through a communication about “lessons from experience”. Because failures can be a source of value rather than a barrier to co-creation.
    • A Living Lab approach “out of the walls”, in public spaces with citizens rather than in a dedicated place, is a way to promote co-creation to the general public, digital artists or social innovators. But a dedicated place “as neutral as possible” is better for associating professional ecosystems such as big firms, creative start-ups or higher education institutions (design, digital coding, urban planning…).
    • Thanks to its 20 years of seniority, Erasme Living Lab is well identified by the metropolitan ecosystem, and even beyond the region.

    Lessons learned

    For the managers of Erasme, many Living Labs look more like Think Tanks. Erasme claims to be a “Do Tank” because the management team has the will to “make” without being so far a Fab Lab. Erasme is actually relying on existing Fab Labs to make some prototypes. End-users are invited to the co-creation process but at specific moments: 1) upstream in the ideation phase (one or two days) and the rapid prototyping phase (10 days); 2) downstream to test the prototypes. Between these two stages, time (several weeks even months) is given to private and public stakeholders for the development phase (further prototyping, tests, returns and iterations) of innovations that can be put on the market (diffusion phase). To be efficient during theses different stages, the Living Lab need a management team for maintaining a clear purpose (production of solutions and not only concepts and prototypes) and for offering a methodological accompaniment to users and stakeholders. But the respect of freedom in a “neutral” space or place is necessary in order to foster creativity, the emergence of disruptive ideas, and agility necessary for prototyping out of usual operating constraints. Paid professionals are a necessity to mobilize experts in the development phase, to be able to cross technical competences with artistic skills in dedicated domains (education, culture, health, smart city…). But the number of professionals have to be limited to maintain proximity among the stakeholders when it is necessary to obtain a consensus about the final product.

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    MCW is a workshop within the InciLab of MLP. As a PSINSI, its focus is on non-technological innovation and it created a space to connect different actors who experiment together to rethink the life in the city. In MCW, five citizens, four civil servants, one promoter and one mediator collaborated over 15 days to create solutions to improve pedestrian mobility in the heart of Madrid downtown.

    Co-creation process

    MCW is better understood within the new public governance paradigm, as a prototyping workshop within a living lab. It constantly produces networks that fit into the PSINSI’s definition (Desmarchelier et al., 2018). The MCW, being one of those PSINSIs, focused on innovations related to products, namely interventions in public space. But beyond product innovation, MCW also aimed at other type of innovations:
    • new forms of collaboration and co-participation;
    • new methodologies, tools and protocols to reduce the distance between public institutions and people;
    • new forms to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal departments themselves and social, civic, and educational entities.

    Digital Transformation Process

    Not applicable.

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    This initiative produced a meeting place for citizens and municipal officials to experiment and learn together around initiatives that contribute to improving life together and optimising resources in the city of Madrid. Its main contributions were (are) along three lines of action:
    • Open research group about experimentation in public administration, to build case studies. Based on successful experiences in other regions and countries, participants in this line reflect on what tools and strategies are useful to develop public intelligence and innovation (under public values ​​and placing social justice and equity as referents).
    • Motioning around the city is a series of workshops open for the collaboration between public servants and citizens to develop initiatives around moving and motioning in Madrid.
    • Working group to support municipal transformation. This is a space for a learning and practice community set up with HR managers from the municipality to identify key changes and intra-innovation areas within the municipal organisation.

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    For citizens, barriers were:

    • Fear of being used (do a volunteer or unpaid work for people who are paid, the public servants).
    • Frustration of earlier projects or initiatives that did not prosper (fear of losing time): “The idea of ​​coming to work for free for the City Council is present. And then I’m not even going to be the one to take it forward.” Or another workshop that does not move forward.
    • “it is difficult to manage the expectations and wishes of those who come to participate: Everyone wants the official’s phone number.”

    For public officials, barriers were:

    • To find incentives (define when to do it, where and the extra services they demanded like children playroom or snacks).
    • The fear and vulnerability they feel when facing neighbours asking them for explanations.
    • To engage different public servants than those aware or related to the initiatives.
    • Officials who participated did so more as consultants than as true participants.

    Overall barriers:

    • The workshop demanded an enormous effort of animation and diffusion. For promoters it is not easy to invest that much energy without success or some reward..
    • Expectations and wishes of those who come to participate are difficult to handle: From those who aspired to come with a solution and its implementation to those who were satisfied with generating a favourable climate on the subject.
    • Participants tend to think beyond the prototype and want to achieve results: “achieve more than a bunch of good intentions and reach future commitments”.

    Transferability & Replicability

    Our case, beyond the relevance of the prototype developed by a group of agents that got together by the workshop, serves to expose the practices to routinely produce PSINSIs with a two-fold aim:
    • Produce social innovation and prototype solutions for wicked social problems of any sort
    • Arrive to those solutions putting together individuals that do not know each other, but who after the process have discovered the power of networking, agreement and co-creation. In this context, each new community of agents built this way – i.e., the PSINSI itself – is an innovative product itself
    The MCW lasted from February 5 to April 25, 2019 and the network formed followed the established practice of the workshops of the InCiLab (Citizen Innovation Laboratory – Laboratorio de Innovación Ciudadana). In there, citizens, public servants, promoters, mediators and a guiding team met for 15 days to experiment on ways to allow pedestrians to move freely in the area known as Madrid Central – the central district of Madrid. But their generic aims were:
    • To explore new forms of collaboration and co-participation in public affairs that contribute to the generation of more democratic, inclusive and diverse citizen services.
    • To test methodologies, tools and protocols that help reduce the distance between public institutions and people.
    • To detect opportunities to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal administration and social, civic, educational entities, etc.

    Success Factors

    • Most collaborators and all proponents had participated in similar activities and, in some cases, have years of experience in participatory processes.
    • They valued the importance of this workshop as a space to share ideas, generate empathy and open the mind.
    • The experience has helped them to clarify their original idea of the project and focus their energies on the most important aspects.
    Participants came motivated because they could learn more about the operation of the Administration: “this is a physical meeting space where we can talk, beyond the counter window, conflict or haste. We can create new dynamics and see what we have in common”.

    Lessons learned

    Mobility in a city is critical in its day to day and mediates the quality of life and social relations in it. Today, municipalities and citizens alike understand that motioning around the city has a fundamental impact on the configuration of the city, on social equality and on citizens’ rights. It is then a key issue when configuring new options, or keeping old standards affecting culture, education or health. The MCW addressed this in a very novel, participatory way. The MCW raised debates and participatory processes, organised experiments and prototypes (participants in this workshop set a physical prototype in a street-crossing in Madrid), analysed and visualised preliminary data and documented the process to report their findings: “If what we look for is to improve mobility of pedestrians, green lights for vehicles should be eliminated giving right to pedestrians at all times”, can summarise the prototype of this workshop. “The strategy to implement this prototype starts with communication. Then selection of simple targets, and measuring impact, and then scale it within the central district of Madrid, and later to the rest of the city”. “They [the Mobility Department] will study the proposal to test it in September 2019”.

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    The stakeholders formed a multidisciplinary team with the technicians of the Directorates, the Neighbourhood Association, other neighbourhood entities and individual neighbours. The team was organised and dynamized by external consultants (GEA21 and Basurama). The beneficiaries of this project are the neighbours of the San Fermin neighbourhood in Madrid, Spain.

    Co-creation process

    The Area of ​​Culture and Sports of the City Council (through its General Directorate of Intervention in the Urban Landscape and the Cultural Heritage and the General Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums) and the Municipal Company of Housing and Land (EMV), pressed by the long-standing neighbourhood’s demand, decided to start a process of participation with different agents to design the new library and its uses. The content of the participation process included three related elements:
    • The library model. What library do you want for the neighbourhood? What services, activities, functions should the facility fulfil and how should they be produced? How will the future library be related to the other facilities, entities and projects of San Fermín?
    • The library building. What spaces should the library have? How should the distribution of spaces be, considering their future uses and users, and also including the public employees and management and volunteers?
    • The surrounding public spaces. How should the library relate to its surroundings? How to get the best out of the public space surrounding the library?

    Digital Transformation Process

    Not applicable.

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    The designing, developing and management processes of the library in the San Fermin neighbourhood (LSF) has become one the symbols of the past government of the municipality of Madrid. San Fermin is a modest neighbourhood located in the south-west outskirts of the city of Madrid[1] and the LSF became one (if not the most) relevant example of collaboration between public institutions, private facilitating entities, civil organisations and individual citizens that can be found in the municipality of Madrid, from 2015-2019. Out of the information we have gathered about it, the Madrid City Council started the construction of this library in response to a local demand that under the slogan “Library in San Fermín NOW” had been active for more than 25 years (since 1994, and more effectively since 2008). A neighbourhood with a desire for culture and books (promoted by the initiatives of the Neighbourhood Association of San Fermin) is the backbone of the new proposed services to different population groups, including the marginalised or in a situation of exclusion: Kids from families with few resources, elderly willing to bridge the age breach, or young people at risk. These services had the objective of completing an offer of culture and leisure of quality that helped achieve the overall ideas of “confluence and dynamism” [7] currently driving all agents of the LSF project. [1] The neighbourhood covers an area of 1.47 km2 and 23,794 inhabitants, 23,5% of immigrants (Padron municipal, http://www-2.munimadrid.es/TSE6/control/seleccionDatosBarrio. Accessed 4-6-2019).

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    As a pilot project, LSF participants faced a very steep learning curve, motivated by the initial distrust between each side. In fact, in the beginning, they felt as two sides. But before engaging in the first meeting, “internal opposition [within the municipality itself] was the first hurdle. We solved it selecting for the team those people we thought were more open, flexible.” Then, they needed to generate trust, externally and internally. They were helped by professional facilitators, because there are a lot of amateurs regarding methodologies, approaches. Still, “although everyone was called in to participate, the ones that did not participate were the technicians of the District Council. We had some decisions to make about the facility, which ultimately is theirs, but they didn’t come. Still, they are informed of everything.” Another internal issue needing clarification was “to check if this participatory type of design differs from the design made by the municipal architect that adds one more facility to the 50 he has already planned and which those differences are.” It resulted in a process that “lasted longer than usual due to the technical adaptation of the municipal architects. And probably the one that suffered the most was the architect, because he was the more reluctant to work this way. It is much more complicated to change management than design.” The issue of the over-extended design and execution times seems contradictory: “Probably, the only drawback was the time that was probably over what is conventionally usual. But we didn’t go over the nine months that were expected.” But the overall feeling is that “The process has been long, at times disappointing but with commitment we have achieved the result.”

    Transferability & Replicability

    LSF has left an invaluable legacy for Madrid and how facilities can be designed and built: “What it is that we have learnt about this process? The learning about silence, noise, or the collaboration with neighbours are in the requirements of the new bids (tenders) for the six new libraries in Madrid. In these new projects, the Architects Association of Madrid firstly were worried about the new public tender requirements based on the learning from LSF, but then they were especially happy with them.” The role of community or neighbourhood symbols: “The facility needs to be distinctive, a banner of the neighbourhood. A place everybody loves, where everyone is welcomed. Needs to be physically different to the rest of the district buildings. And this is a ‘strong idea’.”

    Success Factors

    Specific success elements of a co-design process are generally related to the level of attachment of each participant to the project. In the LSF case, since the number of participants was so high, the project caught on the spark that the neighbours’ association had started years ago and really produced a significant social impact. They expressed this as: “Our experience with participatory processes was similar to someone’s who comes and asks what’s your opinion on X? In this case, they came and said ‘there is nothing planned’. And this had an extremely catalysing effect. Also, the work relationship was horizontal, without hierarchies, interchanging experience and information (including telling where the limits were). This was very rewarding.” But other benefits were also exposed by our interviewees:
    • “The good co-design may be seen as slowing the process of decision making. If everyone has an opinion and shares it, that enriches the discussion; and then through discussion, the project gains trust and commitment. Participation shows people that they have authority. The rest, the results, are secondary.”
    • “It has never before happened to me. The collaborative process was so engaging, so wonderful, and the people were so nice. We were a great team. There was not a single problem. Four months were enough time to accomplish many things.”
    • “Co-design may mean to work on-demand, but with the regulative limits of an administration, and that resulted in tolerant, knowledgeable neighbours.”

    Lessons learned

    This project’s agents perspired satisfaction. They were proud of the work they have done, the output, and process they created. And they believed this new alternative to design public services arrived to stay at the municipality of Madrid. From a public policy perspective, the case presents the following highlights: At the tactical level:
    • Co-design with users is engaging for every agent
    • All agents must agree on every decision; formal decisions are as important as content decisions, and co-design involves both
    • All agents need a constant process to educate them along the co-design process
    • Finding a common language is a need of every session. More than games and other dynamics, it is videos and pictures that make this work
    • Members of the working team do not need to represent all potential users or public agents; members though need to have access to several sources of information
    • Non-users, such as consultants or members of the community, should be involved anyhow. They enrich the project, both in form and content
    • Public services, from the neighbours’ perspective, are more than the coverage of a number of needs: In the LSF case, neighbours see the library as a main driver of community cohesion, and the bridge to enact the connection of elderly and youth
    At the strategic level:
    • The public team must be carefully selected.
    • A champion facilitates¾not necessarily makes it easier¾the project. Without her/him the PSL paradigm might not be feasible due to its richness and unexpected outcomes.
    • Time is not an issue. Co-design processes do not take longer than conventional design.
    • Neighbours become absolutely engaged and supportive using co-design.
    • Service co-design might be lacking from a complete set of metrics that connect the social and framework outputs with the economic and political ones.
    • The connection between this type of citizen engagement and the effectiveness in terms of votes is not clear. We know the satisfaction levels with the Council have peaked to maximum. But we have not asked how much of that satisfaction is linked to having participated with the Council in developing Madrid.

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    The main target of the programme is Roma community. An experiment has been carried out in Paris and Toulouse.

    Co-creation process

    The Melting Potes network gathered numerous partners: – the Unis-cité association, and in particular the Toulouse office (as architect of the project) – the Civic Service Agency is a Public Interest Group under the supervision of the Ministry of National Education. – the Di-Air (Inter-ministerial Delegation for the Reception and Integration of Refugees), which is the structures in charge of refugees in temporary accommodation centre), CHU (University Hospital Centre), CADA (Centre for Asylum Seekers). – the National education, in particular the Academic Centre for the education of newly arrived allophone pupils and children from itinerant families and travellers). The teachers of FLE who are involved in the Unis-cité programme. Schools in which allophone families will register their children. Schools for French as a Foreign Language. -The platform “health-precariousness” of the city of Toulouse, which is a platform gathering all the actors of precariousness (health, housing, professional integration). -The regional and departmental directorate for youth, sports and social cohesion), in charge of managing long-term programmes on territorial level. -Other partners are also part of this innovation network, health professionals, for example school medicine, volunteers of the Médecin du Monde association and associations dedicated to refugees. -Funders: Unis-cité private national funders, the Civic Service Agency, the National Education, local funders (local authorities, etc.).

    Digital Transformation Process

    This case study is not about a digital transformation process, but it’s a social innovation. Social innovation refers to the target of the programme, the search for diversity and cultural mix  and the community support.  

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    It is difficult to measure some of the integration process, but the integration of refugees or Roma through the community support is effective. A snowball effect is noticed from the moment a child of a community is sent to school thanks to the actions of the community support. Even if the impact is difficult to estimate, an increase in social cohesion due to the reduction of prejudices among young people in civic service, the sensitization of young people by the Melting Potes group and the sensitization of the families of young volunteers has been noted.

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    The main challenges that the programme faced during its implementation was related first of all to human obstacles. Roma are often confused with Travellers, which gives the image of people who would not want to settle on the territory. In addition, young Roma or some refugees are subjected to discrimination when they want to open a current account to undertake their civic service. Another obstacle relates to differences in equal treatment depending on the territory.  The new law regarding refugees is still very recent, it has emerged that the Civic Service Agency does not give the same answers on the admission of refugees into civic service according to the territorial offices.   Financial barriers are important for the Melting Potes programme, especially in its Roma Melting Potes version. Indeed, large private companies and local authorities are reluctant to put a large amount of money into helping Roma communities, even if they would like to. Companies do not want to associate their image with that of the Roma, and communities are concerned about the return of voters who may blame them for this initiative. There are also logistical challenges. Melting Potes volunteers are forced to undertake missions corresponding to office hours (9am-5pm) and not on Saturday. This temporality limits the missions. Another potential obstacle for the next year group is the recruitment of refugees.

    Transferability & Replicability

    The ambition of the Unis-cité association, hosting this innovation network, is to develop this programme throughout the country. Unis-cité has just obtained a partnership with the DI-Air (Inter-ministerial Delegation for the Reception and Integration of Refugees) to increase the number of refugees welcomed throughout France. This method is now being spread to other associations willing to invest in this type of programme.  

    Success Factors

    Among success factors, a key role has been played by the city of Toulouse and the amendment of the 2010 law. To be more specific, the city of Toulouse has carried out with the Interministerial Delegation for Housing and Access to Housing (DIHAL) an ambitious and intelligent territorial strategy for the reduction of slums. Since 2012, the DIHAL has been monitoring the dismantling of illegal camps in the territories and has provided financial support for partnership initiatives to reduce the number of slums. A total of 329 people (115 of them minors) were rehoused, including 298 in the City’s insertion and accommodation system. The operation was carried out under good conditions and in partnerships with the services of the prefecture, the town hall of Toulouse, the Departmental Directorate of Social Cohesion, the Central Directorate of Public Security, the municipal police and social workers from the Soliha and France Horizon associations, and the French Red Cross. The successful running of these operations and pre-existing partnerships in the territory have helped to facilitate the development of the Melting Potes programme.   Second, the amendment of the Civic Service Act has allowed beneficiaries of international protection, and some other refugees, to access civic service.

    Lessons learned

    The hosting structures were initially difficult to convince, on the one hand because the association did not have any concrete results to present on this programme, and on the other hand because the programme had to be set up over a very short period of time. As a result, the local coordinator began by offering this program to Unis-cités’ historical partners (Emmaüs, Les restos du cœur, la banque alimentaire). When the programme was presented, some associations were reluctant to welcome young people from the Roma community, explaining the difficulties they might have in communicating with this community. Paradoxically, solving these types of communication difficulties is the purpose of the programme. The aim is to resolve the difficulties of understanding which exist between the French community and the Roma community or the families of refugees. From the third year group of Melting Potes, the trend was reversed, i.e. a large number of associations and organisations came forward to ask for Melting Potes civic service volunteers. More generally, this case study revealed the importance in the case of social innovation of disseminating innovation and sharing good practices between associations.

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    Library Living Lab was incepted as a good example of inter-institutional collaboration with all relevant stakeholders making up the “quadruple helix”: the City of Sant Cugat del Vallés, the Provincial Council of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Computer Visión Center (CVC) and the Association of Neighbours of Vollpellieres. Some support from the powerful industrial base surrounding the area was also acknowledged. The beneficiaries are the library users, who have spanned thanks to the different pioneering and activities delivered (let alone the rise of new “communities of knowledge” that have been built thanks to the library).

    Co-creation process

    Users are fully involved in co-producing and co-innovation and decisions are taken along with the project director. Notwithstanding this, co-creation is not based upon “open participatory processes”.   A co-creative strategy was rolled out based on the definition of different user profiles. Thus, users have been classified according to the degree of involvement (and accordingly, co-creative potential):
    • Alpha users.
    • Beta users.
    • Gamma users.
    • Delta users
    Alpha users the most motivated/engaged users and delta users the lowest.

    Digital Transformation Process

    This case study is not about a digital transformation process

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    Development of robust metrics to measure performance is a pending (and crucial) issue in the Library Living Lab. Nevertheless, a protocol has been set up to define actions, as all projects and activities are shaped according to a triplet of (Social) challenge- Action-Return. This approach based on three different stages is aligned with the main pillars described in the Responsible Research and Innovation approach (European Commission, 2016), which is used to tackle dimensions such as awareness, transparency, and openness. Notwithstanding this, some projects have been monitored and followed up in a more ad hoc and closer way and some KPIs rolled up accordingly. Unfortunately, possible lessons learnt have not been capitalised to be somehow “plugged & played” to other projects.

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    The definition of the governance & sustainability model has proceeded at a low pace, and it has been very recently when the model has been consolidated with the hiring of a Living Lab manager, who was considered to be an imperative need from the beginning. The consideration of the Library Living Lab as an example of a multi-layer institutional collaborative project implied a tremendous effort of alignment to set up a common language to be shared across all institutions by fixing terminology and procedures, defining new fields of common knowledge, understanding what was and what was not allowed in the public space, etc. Something which is still in the pipeline is the idea of a “living lab as a service” implying the design of a “service portfolio” to be offered to different stakeholders. This is a (still lacking) and relevant step that could help jump the lab to a higher status in the future, as well as ensure a lab self-sustainability path over the coming years. Finally, some cultural barriers may still exist (e.g. library assistants, once in the library, may realize that some required tasks are not sufficiently known or expected, and some kind of reluctancy may arise).

    Transferability & Replicability

    One of the inspiring figures of L3 was the former Mayor of Sant Cugat, who eventually became the President of the Provincial Council of Barcelona. As President of the Provincial Council, she supported a new project, called BibloLab. BiblioLab entailed the commitment to spread the experience of the L3 to the whole network of libraries located in the Province of Barcelona, that is to say, 250 libraries. This new shift allowed working on a new model where the library becomes a space of interaction amongst communities around.

    Success Factors

    The Library Living Lab has enabled the achievement of a new range of experiences offered, thus opening the library up to other types of the library users, who probably otherwise would not visit it, and increasing the possibility of user participation in joint projects with rich profiles. The concept of “community of interest” or “community of knowledge” is something which is behind the library success, as it has become a rather creative space where something new or not previously planned can happen as a result of a collaborative work ensemble. One major contribution of L3 is that decision making processes are fully open, and library users (along with other stakeholders) are engaged in such dynamics. This is a distinctive and differential aspect of the Library Living Lab when succeed in building up and consolidating communities. In fact, user co-creation practices started at very early stages, when they were required to identify communities of practice in order to build and scale projects around.

    Lessons learned

    Technology is considered to play a relevant role around this initiative, but as an enabling factor. In fact,  L3 is about people and around the mechanisms governing individuals and inter-institutional collaboration. The society may obtain transformative socio-economic impact from the innovations arising from the collaborative processes only when people are truly engaged (i.e, users and other stakeholders). As a result of this initiative, the libraries are no longer considered “book repositories”, but “meeting points of knowledge exchange”. The motto of these libraries is the same: “create, explore, innovate”. To sum up, the main contribution of the Library Living Lab is the push towards a systemic change and as such, it can be deemed as a rather pioneering initiative.