Prospect ProLab
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Lunds universitet - LU Open |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 151 798 |
| Project duration | October 2015 - June 2016 |
| Status | Completed |
Purpose and goal
The goal of Pro Lab Prospect was to create a fertile ecosystem for the makerspace ProLab, initiated by LU Open, Lund University´s central project development unit. The goal was to strengthen its network, increase its innovative impact, and collaboration on the thematic areas of the lab represents. The purpose was to: Strengthened relationships with other hacker spaces. Strengthening links with innovation actors. Stimulate and broaden the people attending the lab Secure that the innovation culture of the makers movement gets to be integrated at the university. academic culture at LU.
Expected results and effects
Pro Lab exceeded expectations. 6,000 visits to four months. Several focus groups were formed : 3D printing, electronics, programming, virtual reality, rocket building etc. We reached students from different faculties but also several researchers, innovators and representatives of companies, other lab and the public sector. But in 2016 the new management of LU´s decided that projects no longer should no be operated centrally, but should be transfered to the faculties but no University faculty wanted to take over the responsibility of Pro Lab so it had to close in June 2016.
Planned approach and implementation
It is a misery when new processes are so vulnerable to a change of leadership, a lab may therefore best best rest on a variety of different stakeholders, and not depend on a single stakeholders ideological swings. However, there was a very strong interest in Pro Lab coming from the public sector, a number of companies, several international players and representatives from the innovation system of Skåne. We also saw that our model to build commitment and self-organization was very successful, which explains the large number of visits we achieved during the short period of Pro Lab.