Curating Media and Design — Aca-article: Future Internet and Living Lab Research Domain Landscapes - Filling the Gap between Technology Push and Application Pull in the Context of Smart Cities

Aca-article: Future Internet and Living Lab Research Domain Landscapes - Filling the Gap between Technology Push and Application Pull in the Context of Smart Cities

This paper explores the domain landscape of Living Lab and Future Internet research areas as well as the emerging Smart City landscape. It is believed that these landscapes provide valuable insights for articulating Living Labs between the technology push of Future Internet testbeds and the application pull of smart cities.

By: Marc PALLOT, Brigitte TROUSSE, Bernard SENACH, Hans SCHAFFERS, Nicos KOMNINOS

Abstract: While new paradigms such as Open Innovation and Web 2.0 as well as Living Labs operating as a User Centred Open Innovation Ecosystem promote a more proactive role of users in the R&D process, a number of existing methods for involving users are described in the literature, such as Lead User, User Driven Innovation, User Centred Design and User Created Content as well as User Co-Creation. Interestingly, the Internet evolves concurrently with research streams such as peer-to-peer, autonomous, content-centric and ad-hoc networking that have already demonstrated improvements on network performance and user experience. Peer-to-peer networking has demonstrated both the feasibility and economic potential for delivering services to millions of users. Cloud Computing is a more recent paradigm for transparently sharing among users scalable elastic resources over a limitless network. This paper explores the domain landscape of Living Lab and Future Internet research areas as well as the emerging Smart City landscape. It is believed that these landscapes provide valuable insights for articulating Living Labs between the technology push of Future Internet testbeds and the application pull of smart cities.

Conclusions
Technology push is still dominant in the actual research agenda. A recent Forrester survey states that smart city solutions are currently more vendor push than city government pull based. However, the survey points out that, “smart city solutions must start with the city not the smart”. The positive impact of available smart city solutions on European cities has not yet been demonstrated, nor have the necessary funding mechanisms and business models for their sustainability been developed. The domain landscapes of Living Lab, Future Internet research and emerging Smart Cities appear to be a source of insights for researchers in filling the gaps between technology push and application pull. They also help to reach a broader understanding of the Living Lab movement towards more participative design for Future Internet and Smart City innovation ecosystems. In this context, the Future Internet represents the technology push, Smart Cities represent the application pull and Living Labs form the exploratory and participative playground in between the FI technology and Smart Cities’ applications. Future Internet research and experimentation represents a technology-oriented and longer term contribution. Cities provide a potentially attractive testing and validating environment. However, as shown above, a wide gap exists between the technology orientation of Future Internet research and citizens’ expectations. Hence, the concept of open and user-driven innovation ecosystem, such as the Living Lab approach, brings the necessary combination level of digital skills, creativity and innovation methods that properly bridge the gap between technology push and Application pull. Finally, a roadmap towards Smart Cities, under refinement, will provide the necessary framework and methods for successfully connecting push and pull developments

Access the full article here, open access.

Refer also to the article “Is there a Need for a Cloud Platform for European Smart Cities” from the same conference proceedings.

eChallenges e-2011 Conference Proceedings; Paul Cunningham and Miriam Cunningham (Eds); IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2011; ISBN: 978-1-905824-27-4