BAŞAKŞEHİR LIVING LAB

Who are we?

Turkey’s first Living Lab opened its doors to public in 2013. Başakşehir Living Lab is an innovation and technology center in which products and services in the field of IT and design can be co-developed with stakeholders and tested with real users in real life environment. Its main focus areas are information – communication technologies and design.

Living Lab is a co-creation and application environment where products or services are developed together with their users.

Services Provided to Our Stakeholders by Başakşehir Living Lab (BLL)

* Entrepreneurs

  • Incubation center support
  • Electronics lab
  • 3D printer lab
  • Meeting rooms
  • Social areas
  • Consultancy and mentoring support
  • Entrepreneurship & Business Management trainings
  • Marketing support – Online and offline (Social media platforms, e-newsletters, exhibitions, fairs, etc. taking part in organizations
  • Design support through Istanbul Design Factory (IDF) – one of our strategic partners.
  • Displaying products and services in the User Experience Area
  • Introduction of startups to the enterprenuership and business via organising entrepreneurship days
  • Testing of products and services with real-users by providing real-life test environments
  • Marketing support through BLL, Municipality and Enoll newsletters as well as our digital & social platforms

* Municipalities

  • Providing real-user environments in project development and pilot studies
  • Presenting the projects to citizens and organizations in the municipal eco-system as value added services
  • Acts as a ‘’collection hub’’ for  innovative projects which can be useful for municipalities.
  • Representing the Municipality as the Project Coordinator in funded projects

* ENoLL (European Network of Living Labs)

  • Sharing projects developed through ENoLL with the overseas eco-system
  • Opportunity to participate in events organized by ENoLL
  • Opportunity to access international support programs, such as EU projects.

*Educational institutions

  • Trainings
  • Organizing events (Hackathons, seminars, etc.)
  • Joint Project development

* Citizens

  • Development environment for startups and enterprenuers
  • An environment where they can see new technologies and products
  • Education & Training supports
  • Increasing the technology awareness of citizens

*Industry

  • Application or test environment of innovative products
  • Design support
  • Free education on Information Technologies, entrepreneurship, design and business management
  • Joint events and collaborations

* Non-Governmental Organizations

  • Joint events and collaborations
  • Joint Project

 

Our Entrepreneurial Projects (EP)

* Over 100 projects and over 15 commercialized projects

* 32 Current Startup projects in 2020

Our Trainings

* Free trainings on mechatronics, information technologies, entrepreneurship, business and design for entrepreneurs and all citizens over the age of 10

* 518 trainings for more than 10,000 citizens as of 2020

Our Regular Events

* Hackathons; BLL organizes Hackathons twice a year in order to obtain value-added results with the participation of the relevant people in order to produce ideas and projects on the specified issues and challenges. BLL also provides hackathon environment for external institutions.

* Entrepreneurship Days;

Entrepreneurship days are open to all enterprenuers and innovative projects within Turkey. By pitching their projects to Professional managers, industrialists, mentors, investors and other players of the entrepreneurship ecosystem they are provided with the opportunity to develop their networks in order to take part in the market. BLL has been organizing these days twice a year since 2015.

* Regional Living Lab Summit;

With this yearly summit the aim is to facilitate the developments of innovation ecosystems and Living Labs in Turkey and the near geography. Our Target audience are Municipalities, public and government authorities, academies and institutions that want the development of entrepreneurship and innovation sector in their countries. The first summit was held with the support of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in 2018 with participation from Turkey, MENA and the Balkans.

 

*Innovation Competition;

Başakşehir Innovation Competition, which has been organized once a year since 2014, aims to encourage innovative ideas and projects from educational institutions. The competition is conducted in the categories of secondary school, high school, university students and teachers. The projects are evaluated by valuable experts of the innovation and education eco-system.

 

FOREIGN SUPPORT PROGRAMS

EUROPEAN UNION

HORIZON 2020

Call Topic: Smart And Sustainable Cities

Project Name: UNaLab – Urban Nature Labs

* Başakşehir Municipality and Başakşehir Living Lab is one of the 4 Follower Cities (supporting cities) among the 28 consortium partners involved in the Unalab H2020 project. The purpose of the Unalab project is to develop innovative nature based solutions and monitoring tools to improve resilience of cities to climate change effects and water scarcity.

Call Topic: Foundations For Tomorrow’s Industry

Project Name: Metabuilding Labs

* Başakşehir Municipality and Başakşehir Living Lab became a project partner in the consortium of 40 partners in the “Metabuilding Labs Project” prepared and accepted for the call opened with the title “Foundations of Tomorrow’s Industry” under the European Union HORIZON2020 Support Program.

The purpose of the Metabuilding Labs project is to contribute to the development of efficient, healthy and creative exterior building cladding materials that are resistant to nature conditions and to apply and monitor the results in real pilot environments in order to establish building cladding material standards.

 

ERASMUS +

Başakşehir Municipality and Başakşehir Living Lab became a consortium partner in the “Coding Camp Project” prepared and accepted for the call opened with the title “Increasing the Learning Mobility of Individuals” under the ERASMUS + support program in 2016.

30 students from Romania and Turkey participated in the camp with the aim to develop team work and enterprenuership skills, where design workshops, hackathon and demo day was organized.

* For more details: