Living Labs, Spaces for Open Innovation and Technology Transfer. An Alternative to the Solution of Social Problems in Paraguay

Abstract

Living Labs model concentrate its effort to support actors, providing a neutral space in which stakeholders could know and co-develop innovations in real-world contexts and proposes five basic principles for the operations of the aforementioned living labs: courage, openness, realism, influence and sustainability. The objective of this paper is to propose and test a Living Lab and project management model from the actual stakeholders, following the perspective of the Stakeholder Theory and the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). This perspective places the Research - Action model on the basis of the SSM model as an appropriate vehicle for the openness towards worldviews, problems and conflicts solving by the organizations, especially when it involves the formulation of possible cultural changes (structural, process, attitudinal) and "actions for improvement" are established. Therefore, we present the case of the Development Center for Scientific Research which brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers and the project "Participatory approach with ethnic focus for Community Development of the Maskoy Diez Leguas ethnicity in the Central Chaco of Paraguay".