The role of urban living labs in a smart city

In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

Stakeholder identification in the requirements engineering process

Adequate, timely and effective consultation of relevant stakeholders is of paramount importance in the requirements engineering process. However, the thorny issue of making sure that all relevant stakeholders are consulted has received less attention than other areas which depend on it, such as scenario-based requirements, involving users in development, negotiating between different viewpoints and so on. The literature suggests examples of stakeholders, and categories of stakeholder, but does not provide help in identifying stakeholders for a specific system. In this paper, we discuss current work in stakeholder identification, propose an approach to identifying relevant stakeholders for a specific system, and propose future directions for the work

Capacity development for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries: Concepts, contexts, case studies and operational challenges of a systems perspective.

There are divergent views on what capacity development might mean in relation to agricultural biotechnology. The core of this debate is whether this should involve the development of human capital and research infrastructure, or whether it should encompass a wider range of activities which also include developing the capacity to use knowledge productively. This paper uses the innovation systems concept to shed light on this discussion, arguing that it is innovation capacity rather than science and technology capacity that has to be developed. The context of deploying biotechnology in developing countries is illustrated with an over view of Uganda and Ethiopia. The then presents 6 examples of different capacity development approaches. It concludes by suggesting that policy needs to take a multidimensional approach to capacity development in line with an innovation systems perspective. But it also argues that policy needs to recognise the need to develop the capacity of diversity of innovation systems and that a key part of the capacity development task is to bring about the integration of these different systems at strategic points in time. The paper concludes with a tentative typology of the main types of agricultural innovation systems that are likely to be important in developing countries.agriculture, Ethiopia, Uganda, innovation systems, biotechnology, capacity building, innovation policy.

Reframing technical change: Livestock Fodder Scarcity Revisited as Innovation Capacity Scarcity: Part 2. A Framework for Analysis

This is the second in a series of three papers that develop a conceptual framework for a project on livestock fodder innovation. The paper begins by reviewing the evolving paradigms of agricultural research and innovation over the last 30 years or so and explains the emergence and relevance of the innovation systems concept to agricultural development. The paper then presents a framework for exploring fodder innovation capacity. This framework gives particular emphasis to the patterns of interaction needed for innovation and the policy and institutional settings needed to enable these processes. The paper concludes with some comments on the difficulties of measuring institutional change and the desirability of tracking institutional change and its relationship to welfare outcomes.Technological Change, Agricultural Technology, Livestock, Poverty Reduction, Institutional Change, Welfare Outcomes

Loosing it: Knowledge Management in Tourism Development Projects

Knowledge management and the development of the destination’s capacity of the intellectual skills needed to use tourism as an effective tool in the search for regeneration and development are central themes explored within this paper. The authors have lived and worked with the problems inherent in short term funding of special projects designed to achieve or facilitate tourism development. We have witnessed with growing sadness the results – and the lack of them – as funding cycles end and staff with experience move away. Development processes require multi-stakeholder involvement at all levels, bringing together governments, NGOs, residents, industry and professionals in a partnership that determines the amount and kind of tourism that a community wants (Sirakaya et al., 2001). Planners need to provide knowledge sharing mechanisms to residents, visitors, industry and other stakeholders in order to raise public and political awareness. We note an absence of literature relating to the capacity of communities to learn from short-term funded projects that inherently are destined to provide a strategic blueprint for destination development and in most cases regeneration through community-based tourism action.Knowledge management, sharing and embedding, community tourism

An evaluation of the Department of Health’s Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund

The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted

CRIBs (Climate Relevant Innovation-system Builders): an effective way forward for international climate technology policy

National systems of innovation (NSIs) provide the context within which all processes of technology development, transfer and uptake occur - they refer to the network of actors (e.g. firms, universities, research institutes, government departments, NGOs) within which innovation occurs, and the strength and nature of the relationships between them. Nurturing NSIs in relation to climate technologies provides a powerful new focus for international policy with potential to underpin more sustained and widespread development and transfer of climate technologies. This working paper builds on an invited presentation by one of the authors at a workshop on NSIs convened by the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It identifies policy recommendations for consideration of the TEC. The intention is both to inform possible recommendations by the TEC to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) and to highlight potential areas for future work that the TEC could undertake on this issue

Corporate political activity and location-based advantage: MNE responses to institutional transformation in Uganda’s electricity industry

We examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) employ political strategies in response to location-based, institutional transformations in new frontier African markets. Specifically, we explore the heterogeneous corporate political activities of advanced and emerging market MNEs in Uganda’s electricity industry, as they respond to and influence locational advantage using diverse political capabilities. We argue that, in institutionally fragile, new frontier markets, Dunning’s OLI paradigm is more theoretically robust and managerially relevant when combined with a political perspective. Effective MNE political strategies in these markets rely on nonmarket capabilities in political stakeholder engagement, community embeddedness, regional understanding, and responsiveness to stages of institutionalization

Competence, interest and power in participatory transport planning: framing stakeholders in the "participation cube"

Abstract This paper presents a new procedure for a simplified stakeholder analysis aimed at categorizing transport stakeholders according to their level of competence, interest, and power in decision-making in a three-dimensional space that we call "participation cube". Knowing in advance what role each stakeholder can play in the final decision and how she/he is related to the other stakeholders can be crucial for the success of any process aimed at consensus building. A preliminary stakeholder analysis is thus needed at an early stage of transport planning. A theoretical framework is here provided, built on literature, and a practical application is presented as an example to test it in a real-world case. The aim is to help policy-makers and practitioners to understand, in advance, how to deal with stakeholders in transport planning processes with the aim to foster consensus on shared decisions