VLAIO Digital Tool
About
During this Living Lab research project, the Agency for Entrepreneurship wants to create use-cases for a digital tool -which will inform and sensitize SME’s about Innovation and Entrepreneurship- and let them match with the needs of all stakeholders. The Agency for Entrepreneurship wants to do this in cooperation with potential end users (SME’s and consultants) and with the consortium members of VIEP (UGent Tech Transfer, Wetenschappelijk en Technisch Centrum voor het Bouwbedrijf (WTCB), Centexbel, IMEC, iMinds, Innovatiecentrum, Innovatiecentrum, Innovatiecentrum, Agentschap Innoveren en Ondernemen and Benelux-Bureau Intellectuele Eigendom (BBIE)).
By involving the end users in an early stage of the development process, this allows the innovation to form real needs, habits, attitudes and contextual factors.
This Living Lab research project wants to answer these questions:
- What is the main goal of this digital application which sensitizes and informs SME’s about Innovation and Entrepreneurship?
- Who are possible customer segments and who will be the primary target public?
- What are the needs and wants of these customer segments? How can a digital tool help them?
- What can the consortium of VIEP offer today that does not already exist? What can be the USP –in relation to the services that VIEP already offers today?
In order to answer these research questions we will organize 5 Living Lab Assumption Validation workshops during the research period. Also, we will teach the service design team of the Agency for Entrepreneurship some methods they can use to focus on users during their practices by means of the Living Lab Academy. The Living Lab research project will start with a State of the Art by means of an environmental scan and expert interviews. After this exploring phase, we will organize three co-creation sessions with SME’s as end users to help create, design and discuss possible solutions. These results will be queried in a survey which should be filled out by at least 250 SME’s. To finalize this research project, we will organize a workshop in order to create a (paper) prototype of a digital solution based on all insights we gathered during the research project.
Duration
The project runs from 15/02/2016 - 31/07/2016
Staff involved
- Sara Logge
- dr. Dimitri Schuurman