scholarly journals Living Labs: From Niche to Mainstream Innovation Management

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 791
Author(s):  
Katharina Greve ◽  
Riccardo De Vita ◽  
Seppo Leminen ◽  
Mika Westerlund

Living Labs have received increasing attention over the last decade. However, despite their growing popularity and ability to positively impact organisations’ innovation performance, mainstream innovation management literature has overlooked the diverse and promising Living Labs research landscape. In an effort to move the field forward, this study analyses extant Living Labs literature in the domain of innovation management. The study identifies conceptual bases informing Living Labs research, maps the collaboration between scholars in the field, examines prevailing themes influencing the debate and reveals the influence of Living Labs research on other domains. Bibliometric methods of co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence analysis as well as bibliographic coupling are employed on two databases. Database A includes 97 focal journal articles and Database B includes all cited sources of Database A, totalling 500 documents. This study reveals the rapid growth of the scholarly literature on Living Labs in the innovation management domain, driven by a core group of authors. However, other contributions from highly visible scholars have the potential to connect Living Lab research to mainstream innovation management studies. The study also identifies the influence of Living Labs research in different application fields and potential for its further evolution.

Economics ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 445-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seppo Leminen ◽  
Mika Westerlund

Living labs provide a new, under researched form of open innovation. Although open innovation is increasingly popular in service development, extant literature lacks knowledge of different open service innovation strategies, which companies can employ. This chapter focuses on strategies that firms can take in co-creating service innovations through living labs. The authors found nine open service innovation strategies based on an analysis of 26 living labs in four countries. Understanding of strategies and their links with incremental or radical innovation outcomes aid managers to set up an efficient innovation management. Knowledge of various strategies helps companies to succeed in service development and innovation novelty assessment based on the characteristics of the living lab.


Author(s):  
Seppo Leminen ◽  
Mika Westerlund

Living labs provide a new, under researched form of open innovation. Although open innovation is increasingly popular in service development, extant literature lacks knowledge of different open service innovation strategies, which companies can employ. This chapter focuses on strategies that firms can take in co-creating service innovations through living labs. The authors found nine open service innovation strategies based on an analysis of 26 living labs in four countries. Understanding of strategies and their links with incremental or radical innovation outcomes aid managers to set up an efficient innovation management. Knowledge of various strategies helps companies to succeed in service development and innovation novelty assessment based on the characteristics of the living lab.


Author(s):  
KATHARINA GREVE ◽  
SEPPO LEMINEN ◽  
RICCARDO DE VITA ◽  
MIKA WESTERLUND

Living labs (LLs) are becoming an increasingly popular approach to engage in open innovation. Although applications and in?uence of LLs have grown rapidly over the last decade, the landscape of LL research remains largely unclear and underexplored. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a consolidated understanding of this research field and to detect the potential areas of fragmentation and isolation. Through a systematic review of the scholarly literature on LLs, this study applies bibliometric methods on a dataset of 411 journal articles. The results of this study reveal the diverse and fragmented nature of the LL field, with contributions spanning across different disciplines and application domains. Despite such fragmentation, some clusters of scholars and publications are identified as well as influential contributions. Given the nascent state of the literature, the role of special issues in shaping the evolution of the LL debate is prominent. This study provides a map to practitioners to investigate and learn from the application of LLs in diverse fields. This aspect is particularly important in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which stresses the key role of open and collaborative approaches to innovation, making the use of LLs increasingly relevant for governments, companies, public organisations and individuals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 146045822098727
Author(s):  
Federico Cuomo ◽  
Nadia Lambiase ◽  
Antonio Castagna

Cities with their innovative capacity are key places to address critical climate, environmental and health challenges. Urban experimentations, such as Living Labs, can represent a starting point to reintroduce resources into the production cycle and reduce environmental impacts, embracing the paradigm of the circular economy (CE). According to recent studies, Living Labs at a city scale could generate significant environmental benefits, improvements in quality of life and positive impacts on citizens’ health.1 This paper aims at presenting the case of the Torino Living Lab on Sharing and Circular Economy (LLSC) to point out possible future scenarios of urban sustainable policies. The case study is analysed in five sections: (1) the description of the new permanent laboratory proposed by the City of Turin; (2) the past experiences of Living Labs in Turin; (3) the birth of LLSC and the involvement strategy; (4) the introduction of the eight admitted experimentations. In the light of the results collected, the last paragraph (5) came up with the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Treaths (SWOT) analysis in the LLSC. Eventually, it deals with the research question by offering a common ground for global and local policies focused on sustainability and CE.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1718
Author(s):  
Chris McPhee ◽  
Margaret Bancerz ◽  
Muriel Mambrini-Doudet ◽  
François Chrétien ◽  
Christian Huyghe ◽  
...  

In response to environmental, economic, and social challenges, the living labs approach to innovation is receiving increasing attention within the agricultural sector. In this paper, we propose a set of defining characteristics for an emerging type of living lab intended to increase the sustainability and resilience of agriculture and agri-food systems: the “agroecosystem living lab”. Drawing on first-hand knowledge of case studies of large initiatives from Canada and France and supported by eight other cases from the literature, we highlight the unique nature of agroecosystem living labs and their distinct challenges with respect to their aims, activities, participants, and context. In particular, these living labs are characterized by exceptionally high levels of scientific research; long innovation cycles with high uncertainty due to external factors; and the high number and diversity of stakeholders involved. Both procedurally and conceptually, we link to earlier efforts undertaken by researchers seeking to identify urban living labs and rural living labs as distinct, new types of living labs. By highlighting what makes agroecosystem living labs unique and their commonalities with other types of living labs, we hope to encourage their further study and help practitioners better understand their implementation and operational challenges and opportunities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7149
Author(s):  
Ingrid Moons ◽  
Kristien Daems ◽  
Lorens L. J. Van de Velde

Sustainable innovations try to resolve complex challenges related to climate change. Co-creation with diverse stakeholders in innovation networks opens opportunities to successfully develop and implement sustainable innovations. However, collaboration between heterogeneous partners poses challenges at the level of stakeholder relationship management that affect the progress of innovation development. This study’s purpose is to investigate how co-creation processes that develop sustainable and climate-neutral high-tech innovations in the greenhouse horticultural industry should be structured and how stakeholder relationship management affects the progress of innovation development. Design methodology is linked with innovation management literature. A case study observed seven innovation trajectories that developed energy saving and climate-neutral growing techniques in the greenhouse horticultural industry in Flanders (Belgium) and The Netherlands over a period of three years. In-depth interviews (n = 13) were conducted to have the partners reflect on the co-creation process. Results show that co-creation management should focus on team composition, partner alignment and transparent communication about intentions, expectations and role division throughout the process. The initial stages of a co-creation process are crucial for context mapping and creation of team cohesion and do affect the subsequent stages in the process. Besides, in sustainable high-tech contexts, co-creation facilitators are faced with the need for technical knowledge and skills.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Luisa Cantù ◽  
Daniel Schepis ◽  
Roberto Minunno ◽  
Greg Morrison

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the role of relational governance in innovation platform development, specifically investigating the context of living labs. Design/methodology/approach Two longitudinal case studies are presented, derived from auto-ethnographic narratives, qualitative interviews and secondary documents, which cover the critical stages in the development of each living lab. Findings Empirical insights demonstrate the relevance of coordination activities based on joint planning and activities to support innovation platform development across different stages. The governance role of research actors as platform activators is also identified. Practical implications The paper offers a useful perspective for identifying collective goals between living lab actors and aligning joint activities across different stages of living lab development. Social implications The case provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between academia, industry and users to support sustainable construction innovation. Originality/value A relational governance mode is identified, going beyond top down or bottom up approaches, which contributes a new understanding of how collective goals align within a relational space.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Despoina Petsani ◽  
Sara Ahmed ◽  
Vasileia Petronikolou ◽  
Eva Kehayia ◽  
Mika Alastalo ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND VITALISE is a H2020 project that aims to harmonize Living Lab procedures and facilitate the access to European Health and Wellbeing research infrastructures. In this context, this study presents a joint research activity (JRA) that will be conducted within VITALISE, in transitional care domain, in order to test and validate the harmonized Living Lab procedures and infrastructures. The collection of data from various sources (ICT, clinical and patient reported outcome measures) demonstrated capacity to assess risk and support decision during care transitions but there is no harmonized way of combining this information. OBJECTIVE This study primarily aims to evaluate the feasibility and benefit of collecting multichannel data across Living Labs on the topic of transitional care and to harmonize the data processes and collection. Secondly, we aim to investigate the collection and use of digital biomarkers and explore initial patterns in the data that demonstrate the potential to predict transition outcomes such as readmissions and adverse events. METHODS The current research protocol presents a multi-center, prospective, observational cohort study that will consist of three phases, running consecutively in multiple sites: a co-creation phase, a testing and simulation phase and a transnational pilot phase. The co-creation phase aims to build a common understanding among different sites, investigate the differences of hospitalization discharge management among countries and the willingness of different stakeholders to use technological solutions in the transitional care process. The testing and simulation phase aims to explore ways of integrating observation of a patient’s clinical condition, patient involvement and discharge education in transitional care. The objective of the simulation phase is to evaluate the feasibility and the barriers that are faced by a healthcare professional in assessing transition readiness. The transnational pilot phase takes input from co-creation and testing and stimulation phase. The aim is to pilot the already designed activities from previous phases and collect data to conduct a first predictive analysis. RESULTS The co-creation phase will be completed by April 2022. The testing and simulation phase will begin in September 2022 and will partially overlap with the deployment of the transnational pilot phase that will start the same month. The data collection of the transnational pilots will be finalized by the end of June 2023. Data processing is expected to be completed by March 2024. The results will consist of guidelines and implementation pathway for large scale study and the analysis for identifying initial patterns in the acquired data. CONCLUSIONS The knowledge acquired though this research will lead to harmonized procedures and data collection for Living Labs that support transitions in care. In addition, this research contributes to the increase in capacity to perform Big Data analytics while accounting for each local context and across Living Labs.


Author(s):  
Grazia Concilio ◽  
Francesco Molinari

Urban Living Labs are socio-digital innovation environments in realistic city life conditions based on multi-stakeholder partnerships that effectively involve citizens in the co-creation and co-production of new or reformed public services and infrastructures. This chapter explores the growing phenomenon of Urban Living Labs and analyses the nature of related innovations in the perspective of ‘City Smartness' – a mantra for local governments worldwide which are having to address increasingly complex problems with fast diminishing financial resources. It goes on to briefly overview the urban governance models emerging in such environments and finally focuses on the challenges posed by these models as result of integration between the ‘technology push' Smart City vision and the ‘human pull' Urban Living Lab concept and approach.


Author(s):  
Jens Schumacher ◽  
Karin Feurstein ◽  
Manfred Gschweidl

The concept of “Living Labs” in general is not completely new in R&D. Available publications focused on local requirements and targeted on business specific needs. In this chapter available ICT for use in a Living Lab are assessed and an implementation roadmap on behalf of ICT is presented. Besides buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Triple Play, ICT enables fast and substantial advancements. To bring a clear view into the range of solutions the authors orient on an ICT layering-architecture and the client/server nature of today’s Web-technology. The roadmap takes into account currently applicable technologies and likely future trends. Technological maturity, social compliance, consumer acceptance and politics & marketregulation are considered in the critique. The breakdown shows that a few core technologies are not only sufficient for the skeletal structure, but also from the main bulk of a Living Lab infrastructure. Thus the technology for most of the desirable features of a Living Lab is on-hand, future functional extensions can be provided by open interfaces and a modular architecture of the system.


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