Landscape Analysis for creating Water, Energy, and Food Nexus Driven Open Living Labs in Egy

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Business, Faculty of Commerce, Cairo University, Egypt.

2 Egyptian Center for Innovation and Technology Development, Egypt.

3 Graduate School of Management of Technology, Nile University.

Abstract

Living Labs is a relatively new concept in the Mediterranean countries that can create synergies between different Stakeholders in the water, energy, and food nexus ecosystem. This paper explores the landscape of the Egyptian WEF ecosystem in order to assess the need for WEF living labs and define the main potential areas of engagement and support. In this article, we conducted an extended analysis of the WEF ecosystem landscape using SWOT, SOR analyses. The findings underscore a flourishing Egyptian WEF ecosystem augmented by hosting the COP27 in Sharm Elsheikh in November 2022. Despite the positive aspects, such as the development of WEF high-level strategies and supporting funding programs, the availability of a solid knowledge base, and the burgeoning number of networks. There are many challenges, such as the lack of coordination and the mismatch between governmental strategies, insufficient public-private partnership, technical skills gap of human resources, and ineffective transformation of scientific outputs into innovation. The critical need for evidence-based strategy and actions affirms the necessity for establishing Egyptian WEF-Living Lab. WEF-Living Lab would help policymakers tackle WEF challenges by providing a space and methodology to bring all WEF ecosystem actors earlier in the innovation process, define a clear directionality of high-level strategies, develop innovative solutions, and test them in a real-life context before the actual implementation on a large scale. Building this living lab should follow strict principles of openness, inclusivity, participation, experimentality and scalability to ensure success.

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