Roberto Santoro highlighting the importance of Living Labs in Europe

In an interview with Citilab (a center for social and digital innovation in Cornella

In an interview with Citilab (a center for social and digital innovation in Cornella de Llobregat, Barcelona), Roberto Santoro highlighted the importance of the European Network of Living Labs:

I think that they can play an extremely important role within the new strategy being developed at a European level regarding the digital Europe and the Information society. This affects for the first time the innovation scoreboard at a European level. There is a new element that might influence how they perform in terms of innovation at a European level.

This element is said to be the “user involvement”. They have created a new term to say “there are innovators, yes, but there are also super innovators”. The super innovators are those who involve the users in the process of innovation. This is great, and my guess is that the user’s voice will be heard more and more in Europe.

The Living Labs and other Labs are those places which make available the means, the technology and the processes to the user, thus giving people the opportunity of really unleashing its potential for innovation and creativity, in order to solve some of Europe’s future problems.

The interview was recorded after a presentation he gave at their First Conference on Knowledge Centers, on March, 26th 2010: