06 June 2014
The Tech4Dev 2014 Conference, which is the third International Conference on Technologies for Development takes place in Lausanne from 04 – 06 June, organised by the UNESCO Chair in Technologies for Development hosted by CODEV.
It is focused on determining what is essential: Is it Invention and Development of appropriate technologies, creation of value chains, local capacity building or a combination of several factors.
The conference themes are: What are the needs for essential technologies, What are successful processes to develop and deploy essential technologies, How can we evaluate the impact of technologies and how does impact measurement drive innovation?
Paul Cunningham shared experiences in relation to “Living Labs in a Developing Country Context” during Session 3C on Friday 06 June.
This session entitled – “Implementing Living Labs Concepts to Strengthen the Innovation Ecosystem for Social Innovation in Rural Areas and Cities” is chaired by Dr. Hans Schaffers, Centre of Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR), Aalto University, Finland. It is focused on making the concept of “living lab” effective for accelerating sustainable urban and rural development in developing countries. Related questions are: What are the limits and opportunities and practical implementation approaches of the concept. How will the concept be useful for development and exploitation of new technologies for sustainable development, and how can entrepreneurship and development be boosted along social innovation and empowerment. How can the newer platform technologies and mobile applications be applied to accelerate sustainable development?
Other presentations include: "Open Innovation for Development", Patrizia Hongisto, Middle East University, Beirut, Lebanon; "Beyond ‘Technology for Development’ and ‘Sustainability’ towards Systemic and Holistic Rural Innovation: Success Factors from the Southern African Experience over 20 years", Johann (Rensie) van Rensburg, CSIR, South Africa; "Participatory Language Technologies as Core Systems for Sustainable Development Activities", Martin Benjamin, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; "The Use of ICT for Social Inclusion and Participative Planning. A Case Study of “South-North” Technology Transfer", Francesca De Filippi, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; "Creating Linkages, Meeting Innovation Needs for Sustainability of Post-harvest Systems: Insights from Nigeria", Michael W. Musa, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria and "Facilitating Adoption of an Open Innovation Approach to Rural Sanitation in Bangladesh by the Private Sector through Enhanced Market Linkages within a “Living Lab Business Model”, Conor Riggs, iDE-Bangladesh.
There was a high level of interest in Paul’s presentation and the research being undertaken with the IST-Africa Initiative.