During the OpenLivingLab Days 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland ENoLL signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Australian Living Labs Innovation Network (ALLIN). The MoU was signed by representatives of two partners –  Tuija Hirvikoski on behalf of ENoLL and Phil Donaldson on behalf of ALLIN.

Aim of ALLIN is to:

– Promote Living Labs in Australia

– Develop the practitioner base to support Living Lab development

– Foster collaboration opportunities with existing Living Labs in Europe and the Asia Pacific

– Promote collaboration on strategically relevant topics such as entrepreneurship, smart cities and communities, health, wellbeing and ageing

– Promote inter-disciplinary approaches to innovation across universities, business, industry and government

– Provide Living Labs leadership nationally and regionally

– Leverage the potential of technology to promote enhanced collaboration and impactful outputs

With the MoU we aim to strengthen our engagement with Australian Living Labs Network. The two networks have come together with the common intention to collaborate and develop the global Living Lab community.

Tuija Hirvikoski, who was Chair of ENoLL Council when the MoU was in development said in her statement that “for the past five years, as an ENoLL council member and as its President, it has been my great pleasure and privilege to be able to follow and to contribute to the exemplary development of the Australian Living Lab movement. As a fellow ENoLL member, we at Laurea University of Applied Sciences are looking forwards to fruitful collaboration with you in establishing transnational co-creation and innovation piloting activities between Australian and European Living Lab stakeholders”.

The newly elected ENoLL Council Chair Fernando Vilariño has confirmed that “ENoLL is supporting a vision of Europe as a Lab open to the world, a place for exploring how the living lab multi-stakeholder citizen-centric approach -a human centric approach- can contribute to innovation-led growth and positive societal transformation”. He added that his “personal commitment is to work hand in hand with the Australian Living Labs in this vision for the democratization of the access to knowledge and innovation to everyone, empowering our living labs and their communities as effective instruments for socioeconomic impact and change: together we will definitely be stronger”.
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