The PACA Labs programme

Scheme to promote digital innovation and its uses through experiments in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of France.

The PACA Labs scheme, launched in September 2008 by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in partnership with FEDER, forms part of the second generation of the “Digital Regions” programme. PACA Labs takes the form of a request for proposals intended to support experimental projects involving digital technologies and services in the regions. An average of between 10 and 13 projects a year are supported.

The PACA Labs “vision”

With PACA Labs experiments offer a profound examination of the role of the user and the region in innovation: experimenting means co-constructing a technology, service and applications in close collaboration with the regions and users.
Accordingly, in addition to the “factual” criteria necessary for the application (project duration of less than 12 months, stakeholders located in the PACA region, etc.), PACA Labs requires that the projects:

• Are collaborative in nature: a “consortium” must be formed in which businesses and/or laboratories and/or professional masters courses and/or associations carry out experiments in a region
• Involve at least one obligatory “region” – in the EPCI sense (Public Body for Inter-Municipal Cooperation): the community of users concerned by the experiments is located in an urban area or region which should, therefore, be involved to one degree or another
• Should identify a clear chain of users concerned by the experiments and involve them as early as possible.

What kind of experiments are involved?

PACA Labs is divided into 3 parts; candidates may apply for one of the three following areas:

• Full-scale prototyping of innovative digital technologies and services in the regions in conjunction with PRIDES SCS (Secure Communication Solutions).
• Co-design uniting the regions and higher education institutions offering masters programmes – in partnership with the New Generation Internet Foundation (FING, Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération).
• An “eco-system” where an organisation is established in a delineated experimental region with the aim of setting up a large number of services, applications and innovative digital contents there to turn the region into a living laboratory of digital uses in direct relation to users.

Who is the programme designed for?

PACA Labs is mainly open to 4 types of interested parties:

• Regional authorities wanting to promote an experiment in their region.
• Businesses that need to develop their solutions in close contact with users.
• Laboratories that want to test the technologies that they have developed in the field.
• Masters programmes that want their students to work on draft models or innovative prototypes as part of their educational curriculum.

Source : VIA