Paolo Aversano from the ENoLL office interviewed Marco Combetto, Coordinator of Trentino as Lab, on topics including regional Living Labs, open innovation in Italy, Public-Private-Partnerships, regional open data initiatives and more. Here is a transcript of the interview.

Good afternoon Marco! Could you briefly introduce your Living Lab? 

Trentino as a Lab (in short: TasLab) is a regional Living Lab that wants to offer new tools/solutions to the region, in particular to support local public administration using open innovation paradigms.

This initiative promotes the vision of Trentino as a regional innovation network, a laboratory of innovation in ICT enabled by a set of favorable conditions present in this territory: cutting-edge technology infrastructures, citizen’s willingness to contribute to the innovation process, first-rate research centers and a district of ICT-focused SMEs. Final goal of our Living lab is to enhance development of public administrations in Trentino region.

– How did Trentino as a Lab start its activities?

 It all started in 2006 when trying to establish a new innovation vehicle to maximize local investments in ICT (both provincial and EU investments), with the final goal of constituting an innovation agency in the long run. The goal of this initiative, established in 2007, was to enable a permanent innovation process by developing a network of local innovation research centers, companies and public administration. The aim was to cluster local actors and ease collaboration on innovation projects to develop better public services.

Our Living Lab was founded thanks to Provincia Autonoma Trento that wanted to stimulate cooperation between research centers working with/for PA. Trentino as a Lab was created to reply to this kind of questions: how to create more jobs in Trentino? How to could public services have an impact on citizen’s everyday life? How to maximize investments and make innovation increase? 

– What role does your Living Lab play when developing innovative services for/with public administrations?

Figure below summarizes the role played by Trentino as a Lab in the provincial innovation process. 

Trentino as a Lab’s main goals are to:

1)          Connect local stakeholders using a few methodologies and involve final users;

2)         Engineer projects (Innovation Management);

3)         Bring projects to life through dissemination, training, adoption schemes, IPR. 

A strategic role is played by the so-called innovation managers. These innovation experts talk to the different actors (e.g. 200 local ICT companies, PA, users) to develop projects and bring technology to the market. TAS Lab wants to help PA reach citizens using valuable products/services, and ease internationalization of the best innovations developed in Trentino.  

– Trentino as a Lab is an innovation network clustering regional public actors, private companies and research centers. How is collaboration with other partners going? 

Two levels can be analyzed. If we look at public actors, we started with the regional administration but we also had good experiences with municipalities, although we never focused only on local cities and urban development. We are now very involved in “digital commons” activities, using open data (PSI) as a tool/resource to create open innovation and adopt open source. If we focus on research centers, we have very good relationships with different local actors. With the establishment of Trento Rise (the main Trentino Innovation Agency), Taslab started focusing on last-mile ICT, working with regional offices to introduce new ICT technologies on on-going e-services (eg. Tax Assessment, Environmental monitoring).

The link to European networks like ENoLL was crucial to discover how open innovation was managed in other countries and connect Trentino’s SMEs and PA to other organizations. We join innovation networks not only for project acquisition purposes, but also to share and discover best practices on open innovation, so as to transform our local research projects into winning products/services.

 – Could you mention a recent co-design experience made with users in Trentino?

At Taslab we try to learn from best practices. We are now adopting an ethnographic approach, having a dialogue with public administration officers, researchers and SMEs.

A local best practice I would like to mention the last year event “Aprirsi per innovare”, an initiative aiming to support SMEs innovate more efficiently in collaboration with other local actors (read more here, in Italian and see picture). 

– Looking at the national innovation landscape, what challenges do open innovation actors face in Italy? 

In Trentino (as well as in Italy) we often work with limited resources. This situation is mainly due to limited economic growth, but also to continuous changes in the innovation governance scenario. In that sense, these years are not the most favorable one to work on innovation. On the other hand we know that innovation happens especially in times of crisis, so we don’t give up even if we might have less resources than before.

– On the other hand, what are the main opportunities Italy offers to Living Labs?

I have the feeling that in Italy we have a very good mix of skills, creativity and ability to overcome contextual difficulties by finding new opportunities. Even if the INOLL (Italian network of Living Labs) proposal didn’t take off, there are several Living Labs in operation, (they aren’t always linked to ENoLL).  Some industrial players are doing investments in this direction (e.g. the Trentino’s Mobile Territorial Lab supported by Telecom Italia) and we have social fabric that is open to user involvement when experimenting new technologies and services.

– Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) in Italy: what’s the status?

PCP is an opportunity. We often looked at the USA: since this was done there, why couldn’t we do it in Europe? We were probably optimistic in approaching this scheme since we didn’t have all resources and possibilities that major American institutions had. PCP is a good tool, but sometimes a bit slow and with too many steps. In Italy the process takes a very long time, rarely less than 2 years. Then, the impact of PCP on the ICT sector has to be analyzed further: what are the opportunities, what the limits? When we talk about Public Private Partnerships we could envisage other solutions like project financing, through which public institutions could delegate private actors to manage services with a fixed-term contract.

– Looking at the near future, on which activities will you focus during the second part of 2015?  

The Living Lab will work on the final stage of the Trentino Open Data initiative involving SMEs and Citizens. Open data is considered vital to make space for private actors and make them develop new services and businesses. We will also work on innovation matchmaking between research centers, startups and SMEs organizing some specific meeting/events before summer and another one in autumn. We are also working on some EU proposals in order to financially sustain SME involvement. Looking at smart specialization, there is a high potential but limited work done so far in Trentino. We hope to have a role in our Province, involving companies and defining tenders for local actors.

– What are instead the main goals of your Living Lab for the five-year period 2015-2020?

We are working hard to keep being part of the provincial innovation plans. We do so by reinforcing the role of Informatica Trentina as a key innovation actor that can work together with the new local innovation agency that is about to be established. Some directions:

1)          Supporting SMEs in adopting open innovation and open data in their business models;

2)         Helping public administration co-design innovation with users and other local actors;

3)         Working more with municipalities.

Paolo Aversano