Abstract Scientific results benefit from more tangible stakeholder communication. Showrooms are a tool to transform abstract scientific concepts into solution-oriented and less complex demonstrators. The basic idea of a showroom implies a smart expo and meeting place to demonstrate the latest technological developments in a comprehensive and interactive manner and to stimulate transfer of scientific results to practice. Presentation of new technologies can be an eye opener of what can already be done today. But it is just more than this as it can put discussion with interested stakeholders to a new level - allowing to think beyond this - paving the ground for innovation. This way a showroom stimulates very substantial discussion about future ideas with real involvement of industry and society. Involving the public via a showroom environment is also helpful for the diffusion of new ideas, leading to potential faster market take-up, when new solutions are put into reality. Furthermore the interaction with the public is a stimulus also for the scientist, raising a much better understanding about current and future needs. Capability is understood as a measure of the ability of an entity (organization, person, system) to achieve its objectives in relation to its overall mission professional science communication is part of the capability of, e.g., a university. Innovation capability in this sense refers to the ability of a set of regional stakeholders from academia, political authorities, public administrations and industry to innovate in synergy for economic and societal development – showrooms are an important tool to achieve this.

Due to demographic changes a lot of research in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) has been done within the last years. Many of the project systems never left the status of a research prototype nor reached real home environments. The “Länger selbstbestimmt Wohnen” (LsW) project is one step beyond the targets of typical research projects and is integrating preexisting (home automation) technologies in home environments to support the elderly residents. Requirements, selection of possible scenarios and evaluation were done in close cooperation with the residents. The integrated AAL system will remain within the flats of the residents beyond the end of the LsW project. Main points of the LsW project were the analysis of current mobile devices like tablets as human machine interfaces for AAL systems, the integration of existing home automation technologies in existing buildings, the connection between the tablet and the home automation components, and the interoperation between several flats.

Following the successful proven concept of small and specialized exhibitions (so called showrooms) run by research institutions as windows to scientific innovation, the network BONITA (a project financed by the INTERREG IV B – Baltic Sea Region) extends the physical showrooms to virtual ones. While the basic idea of the physical showroom is to have an attractive exhibition area for demonstrating cutting edge-technologies in a tangible and accessible fashion and transmitting technological knowledge between science and a region, the main idea of the virtual showroom is to have centralized access to several exhibits located in different places resulting in distributed knowledge and bridging the gap between the physical and virtual world of museums and showrooms and between the expert and the visitor. The presentation of what is now technically feasible should be just one aspect of the showroom. It should also create a connection to what is technically imaginable, whereby the visionary aspects of the technology are communicated. The combination of tangible benefits and interdisciplinary visions for the future is an exceeding interesting one. Firstly it allows specific innovations to find their way to market more quickly, since they gain a higher profile and are in the public eye. On the other hand, long-term trends can also be created interactively and discussed within different target groups.