B
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C
Building networks and building the experiment
After an experiment got in step A a‘ Go!’ and an initial vision has been drafted, step B moves into the challenge of building up a network surrounding the experiment. This can be done by, for instance, by publishing the vision document, writing out a tender or by actively engaging with promising actors. The scope of partners is broad and inclusive: the living lab should serve as a platform for cooperation between public actors, universities, civil society actors, NGOs and private companies. This inclusion of a wide set of actors ensures rich perspectives on a good setup and to work further upon. The enrolment of more actors is an on-going process of expanding the resource base and injecting new ideas and innovative approaches to the already settled expectations and visions.
Once a thorough and defined actor network has formed around the experiment, questions such as“ who contributes with what?” can be addressed and contracting can be started. This includes also explicating a refined set of goals, setting up a monitoring and evaluation scheme, planning how to expand the experiment, and making connections to other experiments. Once the framework is set, the exciting process of building the experiment can start. This entails many obstacles; but instead of seeing them as blockades, they could be turned 180 ° and seen as possibilities for engaging in the city with innovative experiments.
Collecting learning processes
While building and running the experiment, many loops of feedback are generated in parallel. To gather these, draw relevant learnings from them, and where necessary, adjust the experiment accordingly, is often one of the hardest steps of all. And sometimes failing delivers even better learning goals, when diagnosing accurately and in time what is going wrong. A monitoring and evaluation scheme, which ensures that goals are reached and the experiment is developing on its various dimensions, is therefore a‘ must’ and should be designed very carefully. It will help all stakeholders to develop a good understanding of how the experiment performs best.
Here, the advantages of drawing on a rich network of actors play out strong; e. g. partners from universities can perform an important part of the evaluation and use it to create new knowledge. Learning won’ t stop at insights about the experiment itself. The notion of‘ collecting’ refers also to the monitoring system of the living laboratory( phase 6 and 7 in part one) and ensuring thereby learnings about the mobility system, and the users within, on a higher level.
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