Evaluating the Impact of Smart City Initiatives The Torino Living Lab Experience

Launched in January 2016 by the city of Turin, the Torino Living Lab initiative has been designed with the goal of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship and include the citizens in the Smart City innovation process. Aimed to private organizations and startups, the initiative identified the most promising Smart City technologies, systems, and applications, and gave them an opportunity to be tested in a real-life environment. This paper presents a formal methodology for impact assessment and measurement of success of the Torino Living Lab initiative. A procedure of ex-ante and ex-post measure is established upon review of research literature on Living Lab approaches. 16 performance indicators are selected and adapted to the characteristics of the initiative. Finally, some key takeaways resulting from the preliminary investigation are presented.