Living Labs: Helping to Meet the Needs of Ageing People?

This paper introduces a new enabling method for open innovation, called living labs. Living labs are spaces where companies, public organizations such as councils or health and welfare organisations and communities can work together to develop and prototype new products, technologies and services in real environments embedded in the community or market place. The paper also outlines the steps being taken to establish a living lab in Northern Ireland, called TRAIL (Technologies for Rurality, Ageing and Independent Living). The objective of TRAIL is to conduct community-facilitated and user-driven studies that create service and product innovations that will enable rural and ageing citizens to live independently in the heart of their communities. TRAIL will develop pilot products and services for this sector of the community, with the added benefit of validating and fine-tuning the innovation methods. Importantly, TRAIL will support a fusion of innovation models, technology and integrated community care-based approaches.