The EPIC platform will combine the industrial strength of IBM's 'Smart City' vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of leading European Living Labs' such as Apollon partners IBBT Brussels, ISSY-Media and Manchester to ensure development of a European 'innovation ecosystem' that provides an extensive range of opportunities for sustainable, user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses. EPIC will significantly accelerate the uptake of these new services across Europe by combining the world-leading business expertise of Deloitte Consulting with the practical, first-hand knowledge of ENoLL to create and disseminate a robust roadmap that helps cities upscale from the Living Lab environment to real-life urban deployment. Ultimately, EPIC will combine i) user-driven open innovation, ii) connected smart cities and iii) web-based services in the following manner:1.Partner Living Labs will engage citizens in the innovation process to help drive the creation of services that citizens, businesses and city visitors want and are potentially willing to pay for2.Partner cities will work to plug user-driven web-based services into the open platform so that newcomers can easily connect to the platform and use them3.Partner consultants and subject matter experts will use pilot findings to create a business-oriented, public-private partnership roadmap