3 questions for Maxence Huyghe, Living Lab Project Manager - Nausicaa
Every month, our adherents answer our questions and present their activity as part of the "3 questions to." This month, Maxence Huyghe from the Living Lab of Nausicaa answers us.
What is the nature of your business?
In 2019, NAUSICAA Centre National de la Mer (National Sea Center), launched the Blue Living Lab. A Living Lab is an open innovation platform bringing together heterogeneous actors around the same project to code together new products and services. The mission of the Blue Living Lab is to bring together entrepreneurs, industrialists, consumers/users, researchers and political decision-makers to designate jointly innovative solutions inspired by the Ocean, using the Ocean's resources in a more sustainable way or allowing a better knowledge of the Ocean, and to share this knowledge. This innovative approach is part of NAUSICAA's mission for the emergence of a Blue Society: to sustainably use the Ocean and its resources to meet the present and future needs of our society.
Concretely, the main idea of the Blue Living Lab is to present and compare its idea with partners having a different vision, in particular NAUSICAA's visitors, who are also consumers and users. Experimenting one's project within the Blue Living Lab allows to get precious feedbacks from the visitors to improve the product/service and to make sure that it matches real needs. To go further, project leaders can include visitors early in the innovation process and throughout it in order to innovate jointly.
For whom are your products/services intended?
The Blue Living Lab's approach is aimed at any innovative project promoting the emergence of the Blue Society. These projects are initiatives external to NAUSICAA and can be carried out by startups, industrialists, researchers, associations, local authorities ... in short, by any citizen wishing to contribute to the Blue Society. A call for projects will be launched this summer to select the project leaders to support. The projects must present three fundamental criteria:
-The link with the Blue Society
-A high degree of innovation
-A positive impact on the environment and the territory
In what way are innovation and research important for your sector of business?
Innovation and research are an integral part of the process. The Blue Living Lab is in itself an innovative method to respond to social challenges by integrating all the people and organizations concerned. The final objective is to imagine innovative products or services by bringing together around the same issue stakeholders who would not spontaneously work together. These new collaborations bring out original and creative ideas, more difficult to generate in a traditional work organization.
The Blue Living Lab is also the only Living Lab, or innovation platform, in Europe dedicated to the Blue Society. It aims to be the benchmark in supporting innovative projects using sustainable resources from the ocean to meet the challenges of our society.
