The human touch: the innovation energy of a Living Lab

Recently, colleague Roderick Martens wrote an article about the energy of innovation: "It is intrinsically high and different because it is new and hopeful and created in a pressure cooker." It got me thinking.

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This year I celebrate my ten-year relationship with MakerLab and MakerStreet. Ten years busy with innovation: in projects, on the commercial side and as managing partner. The energy in this field of work, beautifully described by Roderick, apparently fascinates me so much that it makes the years fly by as if they were hours. What a stroke of luck.

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The place where I experience that energy is during our Living Labs. There, based on human interaction, the seeds of impactful innovation are planted. It's a special, very human experience that feels very different from, say, implementation success.

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Implementation energy

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With innovation energy, many stakeholders, including within my team, often think first of the moment when the impact of an innovation project becomes visible to "the world. At the moment, the whole of the Dutch public transport sector is getting to know OVPay. A project on which we were able to collaborate for years. The result is that every time we now board a bus or train and we see the OVpay expressions, we 'feel it inside'.

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We experience the same when passing through baggage control at Schiphol Airport or when we think back to the informal caregivers and care consultants we met at Zilveren Kruis Zorgkantoor. They made us realize that an intake interview should be about people again, instead of administration.

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This "implementation energy" is fueled by the realization of often lasting change and is therefore comparable to pride. Beautiful and very valuable. Yet I prefer something else.

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Living Labs

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For that "something different," we have to dig a layer deeper. To the moment when the seed for that successful change was planted. That is, the moment, often quite early in the project, when on a small scale a sense of connection emerged. It is that special energy that we got, when we noticed that we started to understand what was going on, and what were the directions, where the answers to the innovation question could be found.

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Within our field, Living Labs play a crucial role in this. In our view, these real-life experiments provide the most human, and therefore sincere form of innovation. Because they take place on the shop floor, in the real world. In a Living Lab, we are experimenting and validating in the classroom, in the hospital ward, in the train station or on the street. It forces us to really see and learn from people and all their characteristics.

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Personally, I think, for example, of the tension we observed at Schiphol Airport with a father trying to keep his offspring under control as he unloaded his just-not-well-packed liquids at baggage screening. Was it irritation at his children's behavior? Shame toward other travelers who were bothered by it? Both? The conversation after the check gave context and helped to think out initial solutions.

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I also think of the COPD patient at OLVG Hospital, whom we helped log into the self-measurement app after a consultation. The anxiety we noticed when she doubted the answer to a seemingly innocuous question when logging in. "If I don't get this right, what will that mean for my treatment later?".

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A student at the Hague Montessori Lyceum also flashes by. When assigned a mentor, she reacted with a shrug. Why was that? Two questions later, we knew that in the pupil's eyes it was "not a match," and why she felt that way. The seed for a solution direction had been planted.

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Human contact

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All of the above moments, revolve around contact. That combination of human interaction and the insight that came from the simultaneously observed behavior. That one comment, someone's posture or facial expression, it could be anything. But it is often the first successful step of an innovation process that still has many yards to go.

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It is these small moments of insight that release just the right energy within an innovation project. Moments that we sometimes experienced in between. From the moment I personally experienced this for the first time ten years ago until yesterday; it is this energy that I find addictive. On to more so.

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