This is a CTP of initiative: Living Labs - Living Lab Eindhoven (Netherlands)
Strijp-S (CTP6) is a redeveloped industrial site close to the city centre of Eindhoven, see: http://www.strijp-s.nl/en/home. The development of a vision for the (area) development of Strijp-S (this vision was developed with and for all the development partners of the Strijp-S area) was a critical turning point for the area / district Strijp-S, but also for the development of the living lab approach in Strijp-S. It included reflection and it created an opportunity to think about what development partners want to achieve in the future and why.
Strijp-S is an important innovative district in the city of Eindhoven and the initiatives in Strijp-S also contribute to the development of the Eindhoven living lab approach.
Alwin Beernink (project manager of Park Strijp-S) explained that this critical turning point cannot be understood as an isolated moment in time, it occurred during a sequence of important events (also see related events). In 2002 Philips sold the industrial site which is located on a short distance of the city centre in the district Strijp. The area is acquired by Park Strijp Beheer – PSB (Management of Park Strijp) a public private partnership (PPP) between the municipality of Eindhoven and Volker-Wessels, a construction company. The area is being redeveloped and the development is coordinated by PSB, it is done step-by-step and at some point in the time the area turned into a vibrant district in which many smart city and living lab projects are going on at the same time. In 2015 Alwin Beernink, director of PSB experienced that it was important to create some breathing space and a moment of reflection and he decided to start a process of developing a vision for Strijp-S. This vision should assure that the area is developed in a coherent way and that it uses the potential that it has, rather than simply following the hype of the day. It should address and answer the important: why, what, how, by whom questions.
Alwin Beernink understood that it is important to think about ‘what is next?’ He illustrated this by the addressing the search for new functions on the existing, strong fibre backbone (ICT infrastructure) in Strijp-S and “now we put parking meters on this backbone, but, in a few years’ time we will not have parking meters anymore. So we were searching for other options that could be developed on it.” He further adds that you can only remain innovative if you also pause and take a step back every now and then to think about what is and could be important for the future, otherwise you remain in the heat of the moment and in the heat of the project. So: “we needed to think about what we were doing, what legitimizes us and what kind of results do we want to yield.”
Content of the vision:
The vision document starts with addressing WHY. And it states: “Strijp-S is a unique urban community, daring to determine the future, leading growth through innovation, to enhance quality of life and sustainability. The Vision for Strijp-S has emerged from within an overarching position of Strijp-S as ‘creative city’ and ‘living lab’ (Goulden, 2015, p.2)”. The Why elaborates on what Strijp-S wants to achieve. It addressed the importance of: Quality of life and Community as is illustrated by the diagrams:
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(diagram 1: quality of life, Goulden, 2015, p.2)
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(diagram 2: Community: human, natural and urban resources, Goulden, 2015, p.2)
“Quality of life consists of the relative importance or meaning attached to each particular dimension [Being, Belonging and Becoming] and the extent of the person’s enjoyment with respect to each dimension. In this way, quality of life is adapted to the lives of all humans, at any time, and from their individual perspectives (Goulden, 2015, p.3).” Additionally the WHY takes account of a transition that the Western society is in at this moment (also see contestation).
The vision then continues with WHAT and it states that “Smart Strijp-S is a creative urban living lab, acting on insights to build value driven sustainable solutions (Goulden, 2015, p.7-8).” It addresses that a living labs is among others about integrating multiple sectors and that the smart city is composed of three layers; the infrastructure layer, the liveable layer and the cloud layer. It is also critical of the smart city discourse and puts emphasis on the critical role of human and natural resources. Alwin Beernink also added that the concept ‘smart’ and ‘smart city’ are so hot it also gets used by many people for many things and there is a real risk that the concept gets eroded.
Then the vision addresses the HOW part and it states: “Strijp-S is smart people committed to creating a smarter place, inspiring, interacting, iterating, open to the challenges of innovation and change (Goulden, 2015, p.11-12).” It also introduces the concept of ‘choreographed democracy’ that is a programmatic and nuanced approach to openness and promotes the lean start-up approach (Eric Ries, 2011, the Lean Startup) as management model (ibid).
Then it has a WHO part: “A diverse and dynamic stakeholder community motivate to enable| to create| to experience| to experiment| to adapt| to grow (Goulden, 2015, p.17-18).” It addresses the role of social motivations and of using habits for the good as is central n the Hooked approach (Nir Eyal, 2104, Hooked) for designing products and services (ibid).
Finally it concludes by addressing what this means for the BUSINESS MODEL and it explains this as: “Focused on creating value to enhance quality of life, generating growth through opportunity, balancing relevance and scalability (Goulden, 2015, p.21-22)”. Alwin Beernink also explained that Strijp-S innovations need to be relevant and also scalable without heavy subsidy. Many projects cannot make it after the subsidy stops. It is important to develop a realistic attitude to deal with this since everybody always thinks it is hard to get things of the ground but in reality we find it even more difficult to stop projects. However, if a project is not viable it does not make sense to continue.
This critical turning point is co-produced by a number of events (for more detail, see related events) people and circumstances. The main trigger for this CTP was the decision of Alwin Beernink. He saw that there were many projects in Strijp-S, many of those with a living-lab character and those projects just followed up on each other. This created a risk of ‘doing projects without thinking strategically about Strijp-S’ and to avoid this Alwin Beernink decided to develop a vision for Strijp-S.
Alwin Beernink explained that Strijp-S could have developed the way it did, because a variety of conditions and people came together. This then also laid down the foundation for the visioning exercise (the main focus of his CTP):
Partners developing Strijp-S
Alwin Beernink is the director of Park Strijp Beheer, PSB. Which is, as explained, a public private partnership (PPP) between the municipality of Eindhoven and Volker-Wessels, a construction company. PSB develops the Strijp-S area in partnership with:
Alwin Beernink mentions that eventually there are more partners that are engaged in developing Strijp-S as an area. The development of the area is actually influenced by the presence of a large variety of partners that work in, use and live in the area. This includes smaller and younger businesses. Alwin Beernink explained that the small entrepreneurs are critical actors in innovation, but they also need to collaborate with larger organisations and that could be a formula for creating successful innovative spaces: “With, the business community, especially within the community of the larger businesses, it is very difficult to make that move towards innovation. They just want to continue making money with what they are doing, and what they have done, what they are good at. And there is nothing wrong with it. But, they should be challenged to be able to answer the new questions of tomorrow and the day after. But you see that they encounter enormous barriers. That is the great advantage of small businesses that we also have here, they are already much further into that ‘innovative mode’ and have actually developed fantastic solutions already. But you sees that they have other challenges: they do not have the distribution channel and they cannot finance the step of going to scale. So if you do mix them together you get a real breeding ground for innovation that can also go to market much faster. So that's a good ... if we assume that innovation is good for us… so if you follow our innovation model, you should be an optimist. It is about cross-fertilization of knowledge, expertise, of bringing big and small together. We now only just started to do this and it is still too early to say whether this is successful or not, but it is likely to be successful, so far it seems to be.” He further explains that is good for the area, but it is also good for the organisations themselves. He gives an example of VPRO-medialab [initiative for experimental public media] that used to be based on the media campus in Hilversum, with other (often competing and highly protective) media initiatives. Now it moved out of its regular habitat, into the different innovative ecosystem of Strijp-S and that creates the possibility to make new connections in an open environment.
High Quality infrastructure
The living lab and smart city approach could be developed in Strijp-S partly because of the quality of the (ICT) infrastructure. Alwin Beernink explained that the basic ICT infrastructure in Strijp-S (and also more generally in Eindhoven) is of very high quality and there is a continuous investment for continuous improvement of it. In the vision document it is also mentioned that this backbone is very important and it explains PSB’s commitment to: “(..) install a high quality, flexible data and communication backbone. This enabling infrastructure was designed to not only meet the requirements of Light-S [see related events, 2011 – Light-S], but to also support the ‘living-lab’ ambitions of Strijp-S. Proving a built-in test-bed flexibility the intention was to encourage and facilitate ongoing introduction of ground-breaking innovations. This backbone was also specified to enable a broader range of future urban applications than lighting alone, in anticipation of future emerging smart city opportunities (Goulden, 2015, introduction).” In short, this means that there deliberately is infrastructural overcapacity in Strijp-S and that creates room for smart city and living lab experiments.
Smart society projects/ Triangulum
Projects also help to create this experimental environment, and now especially the Triangulum project, a project focusing on smart lighting that is running in, Eindhoven, Manchester and Stavanger, and that is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 (also see: http://triangulum-project.eu/). Strijp-S is prominent area that is ‘under study and development’ in the Traingulum project. The partners that play a role in this project, coming from Eindhoven are:
Development of the vision
The vision is developed by Lorna Goulden with her office Creative Innovation Works. It is developed based on research, analysis and existing knowledge and on two different workshops with a variety of actors who represent organisations form the public and private sector and from knowledge institutions:
The process of developing the vision for Strijp-S was itself not a contested activity. However, the vision aims to bundle all the energy and potentials for creating an area within the city of Eindhoven that enhances the quality of life that is inclusive and sustainable that does this by developing and applying innovative (urban) solutions. To realize this type of change is challenging: the institutional arrangements are not ready to deal with all the changes that are needed and not all actors are primarily motivated by driving the innovation agenda.
Change, transition and contestation in urban development: tensions between the need for innovation and classical institutions
In the classical institutionalised systems in Western society urban expansion was typically guided by masterplans in which expansions were drawn on a blank sheet. But since decades of changing economies, social structures and functions we see vacant and under-utilized areas in cities. This implies that inner-city area will often be redeveloped and this creates possibilities for interesting and innovative solutions. Alwin Beernink explained that “(..) in area development we have a very classical approach that is rooted in the idea that we can socially engineer our society and cities. So we have basically just developed or actually made cities. In the last century, if we needed more space in the city, we simply drew a new circle and we expanded the city, and then, we expanded even more and we expanded again. Now that time is over, and now we have to start with the transformation of existing areas within the city. Strijp-S is an example of this. It is an old factory [industrial] site where Philips started off and grew into a big organisation. But now, we have to develop it into a creative centre, which requires a completely different approach. And this approach is new and different from the traditional approach. This makes it complicated because all our systems are still designed based on the classical model.”
It is evident that for the development of Strijp-S there is a need to work with a non-classical approach and this creates tensions as Alwin Beernink addressed: “Our financing systems, our land development systems, our urban design and planning systems, so actually all (..) those systems, that luckily still function, but all those systems need to be revised or we even need to build new systems.” He further illustrated what the new innovative approach means in functional terms. He explained that area development was classically organised in mainly two layers: “you made buildings for the people and you knew in advance more or less what the target group and users would be. Even more, for offices the target group [users] would have typically signed for using the building for 20 years. In addition, you developed public spaces that, simply put, are comprised of drainage and sewage, asphalt or grass on top of it and then some trees and street lighting. Well now there is really a third layer added. We call that the ICT layer, so this is related to the smartphone, but also to sensoring smart buildings, smart cards and smart energy grids.” This new layer is very different from the two classical layers, it is much more dynamic. This layer is needed for and used to accommodate the transition that we are in: it facilitates innovation. We are in transition in many ways and in many fields, simply because we have to deal with issues as the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we need to deal with water shortage and water pollution, with the effect of heating in the city (cities as heat islands), etc. Alwin Beernink explained that the challenges that we are facing relate to how we are dealing with our natural resources and they can be addressed in cities by developing innovative and smart solution drawing on our urban resources (see diagram 2 under content). The ICT layer is considered as a critical ingredient for this, but it is not just a matter of technology. It is eventually always done by people and for people and that acknowledgement is very strong in Eindhoven.
Contestation in partnerships, values
How can you make sure that people follow you along this path sustainable and smart development in Strijp-S? How to make sure they are not stuck in their every-day routines and their world view that focuses on yesterday and today and not on tomorrow and beyond? That is where there is some contestation within the partnerships as well. Alwin Beerinink also emphasized that such tensions are normal in transitions, since transitions shake up the value system. This is also a larger thing, the transition we are in goes beyond Strijp-S, but it is visible in Strijp-S as well. It is even explicitly addressed in the vision document: in a prominent quote under the section ‘Why’ of the Strijp-S vision: “Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself; its’ worldview (paradigm), its basic values, its social and political structurs, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world”. (Drucker, Peter. F. (1994), Post-capitalist Society, HarperCollins Publishers, in Goulden, p.5)”
Alwin Beernink expressed a related concern that is that being innovative should actually be some kind of internalised value, rather than a mode of working: “It should not become some kind of trick to constantly renew and innovate, but it should become internalised in the attitude. And that is not easy. In an area development initiative like this we are not only ‘Park Strijp Beheer’, but we have many partners. Some of them are more change oriented than others (..). There are also many companies here of which some have a very strong and rather simple commercial motivation, while others are much more focused on innovation as a core value. So not all the partners in the partnership are like-minded. (..) We are constantly searching for ways to move beyond the pure or main focus on individual gains. This is searching for ways in which we can accelerate in developing the area and on how we can make a good coalition, how we can deal with conflicting interests.” Also here the change factor applies since before developments were not done in this type of partnerships as Alwing Beerinik illustrated clearly: “It requires different attitude than before, when two shareholders determined what would happen. Now you need to observe much more, you need to be conscious about your environment and you should be able to mobilise the right partners.”
This critical turning point can be understood as a form of anticipation within the larger innovative development trajectory of Strijp-S as an area and also of the living lab methodology within. Alwin Beernink explained: “Before you know, you continue with your little projects and things might then just develop somehow.” He also mentioned that there is more potential and that he anticipates on this by developing a vision and facilitating crossovers between users of the area representing different sectors, organisations or (professional) fields of expertise: “The beauty of Strijp-S is that it is relatively small, on the one hand, but that there also is the critical mass for many interventions on the other hand: 6,000 people every work here every day and there are more and more people using the area; there is an increasing number of people who are living in the area and also the number of visitors is increasing. So it is really a little town, it is also really a centre with a high-level of urbanity in the region, next to the old inner city area, so it is really something. On the other hand, it is still very small and very multidisciplinary, we suddenly have an ecosystem here, we have mobility problems, we have energy problems or issues is better than problems (..) So you can really experiment with crossovers in a way that you could not if you would do at the level of a region or at least of a city. In that case you would run into all kinds of limitations from the classic systems [see contestation]. You then remain in your silo or you keep on thinking within your sector. One of the things we discovered is that precisely in those crossovers you can find opportunities for upscaling and that is also precisely where you can find the surprises. Suddenly things emerge that were not planned upfront and then yes, the coincidence gets the opportunity, and things then do indeed coincide.”
Alwin Beernink further explains that it are indeed coincidences or chance events that are very important in the living lab approach. But that this does not mean that everything just happens. You need to anticipate on it, by creating the right conditions. Creating those conditions is however better done in practice than in theory as he explained: “It does not happen out of the blue [facilitating crossovers]. You should invest in it and you do that exactly by combining things that are not obvious. This sounds very easy, but to do this, you should actually be in a ‘doing-oriented-mode’, theoretically you will not manage.”
An example on how the ‘doing-oriented-mode’ helped to anticipate on better streamlining the future development of Strijp-S and the living lab approach finds its origin in learning from mistakes. Alwin Beernink explained that they learned it ‘the hard way’ that the establishment of interdisciplinary teams is an important condition for facilitating cross-overs. They found out by doing it wrong at first, revising their approach, and then doing it right afterwards: “Problems are then [if you want to learn how to create conditions for crossovers in the ‘doing-oriented-mode] most useful, you learn more from things that go wrong than you do from smooth processes (..) Within our mobility ambitions we started off in a rather traditional supply-oriented approach. We assumed that there would be a demand for shared vehicles because everyone is nowadays part of the sharing economy. So we thought that we ourselves could just organize all sorts of things in order to generate a certain supply, assuming that the demand would follow. We had no expertise in this field. It required many resources; both money and energy to buy a fleet of vehicles, and especially to make it operational. Well, then we had them all ready for use, and then it appears that no one wants to make use of it. So, guess what was the problem here? Well, we learned from it you have to set up a consortium of parties who do have knowledge and expertise in this field. And those are completely different partners than we were used to work with, it were not the most obvious partners in area development. (..) You then look for partners that are interested to use a living lab, like Strijp-S to also further develop their own innovative capacity. While they will earn money in other projects. You then need to build a more long term relationship that (..) and a form of collaborations that goes beyond the contractor client relationship.”
The vision that is developed for Strijp-S in 2015 aims to further built on the anticipation that you need to develop conditions for crossovers and coincidences, or chance events within a living lab. It acknowledges that this can only be achieved if you are willing to work in partnerships that go beyond collaborating in traditional ways (contractor vs client) with the usual suspects (which mainly are the traditional area development partners for the development of the Strijp-S site).
Stronger focus on engaging the city of Eindhoven in the process of change that Strijp-S is going through now. Alwin Beernink believes that the city of Eindhoven needs a variety of living labs, like but not the same as Strijp-S. This variety of living labs should built a track-record and create critical mass for change in the fields of: a) working in a multi-sectoral way, focused on creating crossovers and b) dealing with the risk that are part of any future and innovation oriented approach and allow experimentation at different and across various scale levels. This is further specified:
So in order to create more impact it is important that Eindhoven really links the various living lab initiatives together. Additionally there is time needed to consolidate innovative expertise and to make sure that certain knowledge lands. Projects like Triangulum (see co-production and related events) are important for this. However, the Triangulum project also exemplifies the challenges of the living lab approach: the EU Horizon 2020 funding stream requires a clearly defined framing of knowledge and a clearly structured and measurable project planning. This is conflicting with the nature of the living lab approach. Alwin Beernink explained how the challenges materialize: “it requires to reinvent yourself. Participating in projects like Triangulum also has a disadvantage. They are fully in the spirit of a project planning approach. You define everything upfront, you do this by moment X and you acquire that by moment Y. Then you consolidate this in a Grant agreement. But, woow… if you let go of the Grant agreement you are in trouble. So you are almost obliged to stick to the knowledge that you had in 2013, 2014 until 2020. While the technology, that entire world, goes 3-4 times faster than any business came can keep up with.” A main underlying reason for the challenges that Alwing Beernink sees is the political dimension of policy making and funding: “if you have a good business case the consumer will follow, the resident will follow, the user will follow (..) and then, eventually, politics will follow. Politics are always at the end and that actually slows down the process.” He also adds that it is rather easy to observe this, but hard to change it and he does not have the solutions for it.
Concluding Alwin Beernink sees that there is a continuous process of change going in which forms of cooperation are critical. In terms of cooperation there is a shift: “from the classical PP with 2 shareholders that we knew in area development we now shift to a multiple helix organisation. This includes bigger and smaller consortia, new partnerships. (..) We search for ways on how to make sure that entrepreneurs, residents and users of the area can be put in charge of its development. It always sounds nice ‘we do it for the user, the citizen’, but doing it requires investment and energy. It also requires an innovation of our democracy, it now mainly works well in events (..). We are searching, and improving.” Looking back at the development of the Strijp-S vision it also gets clear again how important it is to realize that any process of change takes time and requires investment of time. Alwin Beernink would have liked to spend more time on the creation of the vision and to create more opportunities and develop more ways of engaging a variety of actors in the process, and go beyond the usual suspects. But paradoxically it is not only investing time to make new things, it is also being patient in time to make sure you remain on the right path: “it happens to you partly, you simply develop in a certain way and you're innovating, but, we notice now that this can also hold you back. We are ahead of the crowd, a leader in our innovations, but you should not always be in the front position. Occasionally you should make a hold, and allow for other troops to come alongside. But naturally I am a little impatient and then I think that we are being delayed. But delay is sometimes also so good and even necessary. If you really get detached from the rest, there is a high risk that you take a wrong turn and that you get lost and the consequences are then immense. So yes, taking some more time, and some more care and precision is useful.”
References
Lorna Goulden, 2015, Smart Strijp-S, Vision, version 3.0 June 2015
Triangulum project: http://triangulum-project.eu/
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