A living lab at PROMIS

With the goal of fostering entrepreneurship among Quebec immigrants, PROMIS — in collaboration with the Institut de recherche sur l’intégration professionnelle des immigrants (IRIPI) — is developing a living lab.This experimental framework gives participants the chance to co-create innovative solutions for contemporary issues.

Recruitment is now open: visit our Living Lab page to learn more.

Why a living lab?

PROMIS is constantly expanding its services to ensure that newcomers will find everything they need under one roof. Most recently, our team built a new program to support immigrants in their entrepreneurial endeavours. In addition to receiving structured support throughout the preliminary stages of their projects, participants will be referred to specialized economic development resources to help make their dreams a reality.

To ensure we are offering a program that is fully adapted to the reality of being a newcomer, and to foster a culture of innovation within the organization, PROMIS wants to co-develop this initiative with participants’ input.

And so, we chose a “Living Lab” approach for several reasons:

• It gives participants the opportunity to contribute to open innovation and, as a result, to promote high-quality research about immigrant entrepreneurs;
• It allows the organization to adopt an active stance towards innovation so it can face contemporary challenges differently;
• It makes it possible to conceptualize and test new services in collaboration with users;
• It helps develop new modus operandi and experiment with innovation. 

“Internally, we already have a laboratory that focuses on continuous innovation. The Living Lab is a natural progression of the culture of innovation that we have at PROMIS,” explains Delfino Campanile, director at PROMIS. “We believe that the Living Lab certification will allow us to better frame our participative approach and, consequently, will allow us to move to another level of continuous innovation in our services.”

The collaboration

The adoption of a Living Lab approach to foster entrepreneurship among Quebec immigrants will be done in collaboration with the Institute for Research on the Integration of Immigrants (IRIPI). IRIPI’s mandate is to use innovation as a way to better meet organizations’ needs regarding the occupational integration of immigrants.

This collaboration is unprecedented among community-based organizations that support newcomers. As a catalyst for change, PROMIS wants to inspire other organizations to take the leap towards open innovation and other co-development methods.

The Living Lab is the perfect pathway to collaborative research that will put users front and centre as we develop our services. As a result, PROMIS will be able to accommodate a larger client base and maximize its impact on the community.