Based on more than three years of experience the EU funded project LIVING INNOVATION presents major outcomes in 9 showcase videos. 

Many of them will be the starting point of future exchange and networking, as the project will continue to organize online dialogues and virtual innovation corners (for upcoming events please visit our news section)

 

This video presents a new and business-oriented narrative on Responsible Innovation based on three elements: 

• Managing Impacts of innovation means to innovate with positive impact and accept responsibility beyond markets. It increases a company’s value and reduces the risks of sunken costs and societal follow up costs.
• Co-creating Innovation refers to a company’s responsibility to put societal needs in the center of innovation processes and to innovate in a truly inclusive manner. It contributes to more and better fitting ideas and tackles grand societal challenges.
• A systemic perspective is a company’s responsibility for future-oriented solutions and drives innovation by understanding interrelationships. It allows individual companies to become an industry game-changer and increases societal resilience and sustainability at the same time.

These three elements link the societal benefits of RRI with concrete business cases and highlight the deriving opportunities for companies. More details can be found in the LIV_IN Policy Brief “A New Narrative For Responsible Innovation”

 

Co-creation is a frequently used term in EU policies and programmes. It turns people into partners and takes the diversity of stakeholder interests into account. As a result, implementation is often done faster and with fewer conflicts.

In this video we present a toolkit for co-creation in corporate innovation processes. It addresses aspects of strategic planning, quality criteria, methods and practical considerations of effective and successful co-creation processes.

You can download the co-creation toolbox here 

 

Design Thinking is a well-established tool for innovation managers, which provides them with a better understanding of user needs and allows faster prototyping of results.

In the LIVING INNOVATION project we integrated key aspects of responsibility and sustainability into design-thinking with a sound scientific basis. We then tested our concept, which we call “Responsible Design Thinking”, in a series of workshops. 

In this video, we briefly introduce the concept and show you how you can apply it. 

 

As part of the LIVING INNOVATION project, we launched a series of webinars to share the diverse experiences, raise awareness of innovative teaching concepts and to encourage teachers to do more than just teach via Zoom and MS Teams. We discovered some truly innovative applications of virtual, augmented and extended reality which have great potential for the future.

In this video we present the advantages of extended reality (XR) in teaching and training and suggest a virtual one-stop shop that documents these benefits and acts as a reference platform for the various applications. It should take stock of already existing solutions, develop innovative applications from early prototypes to market-ready products, and support their dissemination. 

 

Most of the well-established tools are not appropriate when it comes to facilitating a workshop with blind or visually impaired participants. The result is that we tend to exclude blind and visually impaired people from innovation processes.

In this video we show you how you can design your workshop in a truly inclusive manner and what tools are appropriate for blind and visually impaired participants. These tools were developed and tested in a series of workshops organized by the Siemens Accessibility Competence Center. 

For more details, please see our guide “Seven practical points for facilitating workshops with blind and visually impaired people” 

 

How will business travel look like in the future. Will we get back on the planes after the pandemic with all the resulting CO2 emissions, costs and time required? Or will we remain in front of the computer screen and suffer from digital fatigue and reduced creativity? Could holographic telepresence be a third and better way of conducting business meetings? 

In this video we present a concept of how holographic telepresence could replace business travel which we developed in the LIVING INNOVATION project.  Imagine being able to rent a Holobox for a short time in a hotel, restaurant, petrol station, post office, in an airport or railway station, or a hospital or care facility. You could meet business partners or even friends and relatives holographically. 

Such a holographic network would not only avoid business trips, but we could also use it privately, to meet friends, relatives and people in hospitals and nursing homes, who would then be less lonely. This is a responsible, sustainable and systemic innovation that we would really like to see in reality.

 

Using public transport can be difficult for some, especially for people with reduced mobility. While for people with buggies, in wheelchairs or with walking aids, a lot has already been achieved in recent years, the daily challenges faced by blind and visually impaired people have received comparatively little attention so far.

In this video we present a smart mobility app which was developed and implemented by the Siemens Accessibility Competence Center in the course of the LIVING INNOVATION project. In the German town Padderborn 100 buses were equipped with Bluetooth via which they communicate directly with the Padersprinter Kompass App. It informs blind and visually impaired people waiting at the bus stop which bus is approaching and where it is going. When getting on or off the bus, they can request that the bus is lowered and trigger an acoustic signal to find the door. 

The app also supports them during the journey, providing information about which stops are coming next and they can conveniently submit a stop request via the app. 

 

The COVID-19 lockdowns led to a massive shift towards home offices and increased the amount of time we spend sitting even more. As a result, many of us suffer from neck pain and spinal problems. As part of LIVING INNOVATION project, global IT company, ATOS, worked with citizens, experts and scientists to identify the pain points and find a solution for this problem. 

This video presents a smart office chair. Equipped with a variety of sensors, the chair continuously measures the sitting position and posture of the user and provides targeted feedback on how to improve and prevent discomfort. Through feedback and suggestions, unhealthy postures can be corrected, and, over time, a learning curve occurs, meaning that a correct and healthy sitting position becomes natural. Once this improvement has been achieved for one employee, the smart office chair can be passed on to the next employee. Alternatively, the smart office chair can be rented for a certain period, so that the business model is not the sale of the chair, but the health prevention service.

This product is not only interesting to those wishing to prevent back pain, but also for companies in the health and the insurance sector. This product also offers an excellent example of Responsible Innovation as a business opportunity.  ATOS did not focus on one single technology at the beginning of the innovation process, but rather looked at societal trends and listened to the needs of citizens through a series of workshops. ATOS’s aim was to innovate both with the people and for the people.

 

Every year, several hundred thousand Europeans lose an arm, foot or leg due to accidents or circulatory disorders caused by diabetes or smoking. In such a situation, it takes more than anonymous information and written advice. What really helps is not being alone and having a personal exchange with people who have faced and overcome the same challenges. 

In this video we present MOVAO, an online community platform for people with arm and foot prostheses which we developed in the course of the of LIVING INNOVATION project. Ottobock, the world market leader in the development and manufacture of prostheses, organized a series of workshop with and for amputees, carefully analyzed their needs and co-created a platform that enables direct exchange between amputees, while guaranteeing trust, security and privacy.

Ottobock's Movao Platform is interesting from the point of view of responsible innovation as perfectly shows how the focus of an innovation can be expanded from a product to the underlying need, the entire everyday lives of those affected and their difficult situations. Movao aligns with the increasing trend of patient empowerment In the health care sector, and is a good example of the participatory aspect of Responsible Innovation.

LIVING INNOVATION is one of the first industry driven initiatives on Responsible Innovation in Europe.

Major companies, leading researchers and civil society organizations joined forces to explore the diverse business opportunities resulting from Responsible Innovation. Together we co-create responsible solutions in the area of smart homes and smart health and co-develop innovation tools that can be applied in other business sectors as well.

LIVING INNOVATION combines a vibrant online community with a series of on-site workshops and online dialogues. By engaging citizens and lead users we strive to co-create the way we will live in 2030 - combining creativity and business acumen, human-centred design and responsibility.

New approaches

LIVING INNOVATION developed a series of new approaches and tools for companies, facilitators and experts. They are not bound to any specific sector, although most of them focus on innovating with, and for, people. Therefore, companies working in B2C might benefit more from our tools than companies only focusing on B2B might. Our tools and approaches can not only be used by innovation managers, innovators, CSR- and sustainability-managers, but also by facilitators and moderators of design thinking processes and stakeholder dialogues.

Co-creation Toolkit: Co-creation is a frequently used term in EU policies and programmes. It turns people into partners and takes the diversity of stakeholder interests into account. As a result, implementation is often faster and has fewer conflicts.

• Co-creation enables broad participation and goes beyond lead user innovation

• Co-creation treats all participants equally

• Co-creation has to consider the needs of the participants

• Co-creation requires professional process management

• Co-creation needs resources

Our Co-creation Toolkit provides tools and guidelines for starting and running a responsible innovation process. It is based on experiences from the 19 workshops with over 150 participants in Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which were implemented and evaluated in the course of the LIVING INNOVATION project.

→ Download Download the Co-creation toolkit for free.

→ Download a handout on Inclusive Innovation

Responsible Design Thinking integrates key aspects of Responsible Innovation into the well-established scheme of Design Thinking by 

• a set up phase;

• explicit focus on societal needs;

• systems thinking; and

• consideration of the future impacts of the developed solutions.

We developed our approach of Responsible Design thinking based on a series of expert interviews with Design Thinking professionals and innovation managers. We tested it in several workshops and presented it at the ISPIM 2021 conference (International Society for Professional Innovation Management). If should apply it, please contact us, as we are highly interested in an exchange of experiences.

→ Watch an introduction into Design Thinking with Bettina Maisch.(Professor for Entrepreneurship at the Munich University of Applied Sciences) 

→ Watch a Webcast with Alexander Grots.(Chief Creative Officer of EWOR) 

→ Watch a presentation of Christophe Vetterli.(partner at walkerproject ag) 

Inclusive Innovation means to go beyond lead user and open innovation by including people into innovation processes who are often not considered: children, the elderly, people with special needs and people from poor neighborhoods. If you include them, you receives more, and better fitting, ideas and you can design products that fit the needs of all people. 

→ Download our guideline for facilitating workshops with blind and visually impaired people

→ Watch a webinar on how to include people with blindness or low vision

→ Watch a webinar on how low-income families can co-create innovations

Inspiring insights

LIVING INNOVATION is a central hub to exchange views and experiences on the different aspects of Responsible Innovation. It covers process related aspects (such as inclusive innovation and Responsible Design Thinking), technologies (such as digitalization, smart homes and smart health) and management aspects (such as leadership challenges and business cases).

Responsible Innovation Stories: Over a period of three years, we carried out about 100 video interviews with leading experts and decision-makers from all around the world. They provide valuable insights into the diverse aspects of Responsible Innovation, how it can be implemented, what challenges arise and how it pays off.

→See here or visit our YouTube chanel or search by themes in the news section of our website 

Policy Briefs summarize our key findings and address policymakers at EU and national level. In five minutes reading time, they provide a brief overview and recommendations on three important areas:

→ A new narrative on Responsible Innovation for the business sector

→ A Multi-Stakeholder Initiative on Responsible Innovation

→ Engaging Citizens in Co-Creation processes

Background Papers: Over the last three years, we published ten background papers on different areas of Responsible Innovation. To access and download these so called "Knowledge Units", one has to register as a member of our expert community.

→ Holographic Telepresence - Technology & Application

→ Smart Healthy Living, Wellbeing & Prevention

→ The Internet of Things in the future home

→ Responsible Innovation in ISO 56002

Fruitful Dialogues

LIVING INNOVATION organized more than 50 virtual and on-site events over a period of three years with more than 1,000 participants. As most of them were video-recorded, their key findings are at one´s disposal - everywhere and free. Please find a selection of events below. For more, please screen through the news section 

→Discussing Responsible Innovation with a Minister and two CEOs

→Living in a smart future - homes, health, technology & responsibility

→Your innovation, my life - Inclusive Innovation for & with the people

→Learning how to put Responsible Innovation into practice

Leadership challenges and technologies in remote working: As the Covid-19 pandemic forced many of us to work from home, new leadership challenges arose and high hopes were put into digital technologies. We organized a series of online dialogues on these aspects:

→Balancing work, life and health in remote working post-Covid 

→New careers, skills and remote working post-Covid 

→Holograms and Virtual Reality in Remote Working 

→Trust, Surveillance and AI in Remote Working 

→Challenges of Remote Working - Leadership and Technology