Living Labs
= European policy initiative for Open Innovation
URL = http://openlivinglabs.typepad.com/
Description
"Living Labs are Public-Private partnerships where companies, public organizations, research centers and citizens are involved in the innovation process co-creating and validating technologies, platforms, products, services and business models in real life contexts.
Living Labs aim to bring experimentation out of laboratories too, to real life environments with the participation and co-creation of citizens. The concept of Living Labs is about Open Innovation embedded in its social environment and in the net of SMEs and professionals that give meaning to it, in contrast to innovation developed in and from the R+D laboratories of big universities and multinational companies." (http://openlivinglabs.typepad.com/)
Typology
Ramon Sanguesa:
"Open innovation has many forms and facets. Living Labs, have received a lot of attention lately. More or less, they are connected with user involvement in innovation. However, there is a whole world of possibilities under these two umbrellas and their intersection: users and labs.
The European Journal of Virtual Organizations has published a special issue on Living Labs that helps in getting a clearer perspective on Living Labs.
I found two articles specially interesting.
In the first one Asbjørn Følstad reviews current literature in order to classify the different types of Living Labs applied in ICT innovation.
In the second one, Esteve Almirall and Jonathan Wareham explore the role of Living Labs in the general process of Open Innovation. I'll go through it in a future post.
Let's go with the first one.
Følstad divides living labs into three general classes:
1. Living Labs as platforms to expose users to new applications, i.e., Living Labs as "testbeds".
2. Living Labs to experience and experiement about the consequences and unexpected uses of a new technology. For example, the Living Lab set up by Georgia Tech for R+D in ubiquitous computing.
3. Living Labs as true open innovation platforms for co-design and co-creation with users. The author cites, for example, the European Network of Open Living Labs and he stresses the fact that Living Labs are connected with a given context, which most of the time, is a geographical one. He cites as an example Arabianranta, the Helsinki Living Lab.
From my point of view, this classification seems to define a scale of "Livingness" related to the degree and type of user involvement. You would have R+D Living Labs that are closer to the linear mode of innovation with the twist that the research is being done not just on products or services but also on the relationship of the users and this services. However, my feeling is that users act more as "testers" or "guinea pigs" than co-designers in this type of Labs. This would just be the first level of Living Labs, let's call them, Level 1 Living Labs.
Then you would have "Level 2" Living Labs where the focus is more on goals and methods derived from the User Experience area.
Finally, "Level 3 Living Labs" would require are more intense involvement of users not just on the final products or services created by research labs or shown by marketing departments but truly participating in the ideation, design and actual creation of experiences, services, products and technologies.
So, we go from the concept of innovation as something related to the closed R+D department to a type of process and organization that shares some characteristics of cooperation and involvement with Open Source initiatives.
In comparison to other innovation methods, Level 3 Living Labs are the ones that embody the most distinct characteristics of the Living Lab approach. To set them up there is a host of methods and processes that have to be in place in order for the Living Lab to be successful. The paper reviews a lot of them." (http://fluxchange.typepad.com/en/2008/10/what-do-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-living-labs.html)
More Information
- See the special September 2012 issue of TIM Review, at : http://timreview.ca/issue/2012/september
- Living Labs as Open-Innovation Networks - Seppo Leminen, Mika Westerlund, Anna-Greta Nyström
- Mapping Living Labs in the Landscape of Innovation Methodologies - Esteve Almirall, Melissa Lee, Jonathan Wareham
- Designing Viable Business Models for Living Labs - Bernhard R. Katzy
- Living Labs for Cross-Border Systemic Innovation - Hans Schaffers, Petra Turkama
- Structuring User Involvement in Panel-Based Living Labs - Dimitri Schuurman, Lieven De Marez
- Living Labbing the Rotterdam Way: Co-Creation as an Enabler for Urban Innovation - Ingrid Mulder
- A Small-Firm Perspective on the Benefits of Living Labs - Veli-Pekka Niitamo, Mika Westerlund, Seppo Leminen