The Technology Innovation Management Review has just published their November issue with the theme on Living Labs. The guest editors of this issue are both from ENoLL community: Seppo Leminen from the Laurea University of Applied Sciences (ENoLL Effective Member), and Mika Westerlund, from Carleton University (1125@ Carleton Living Lab joined ENoLL community this year at the 4th ENoLL Summer School).

Among the five selected acticles, four are written by ENoLL Effective Members:

The first article and third article are written by Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland, these two articles discuss various living labs concepts by taking a network perspective and a regional development perspective. More details see as below.

The fourth article is by Dimitri Schuurman, Lieven De Marez and Pieter Ballon from Iminds, who give discussion on the role of open innovation processes in living labs.

The fifth article is by Anna Ståhlbröst from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, who provides a service perspective on innovation in living labs. 

Want an overview of the issue? See below the words from the Guest Editors.

“This issue of TIM Review provides five theoretically and practically oriented articles for managers and innovation developers as well as researchers and other parties of interest. The selected articles address living lab activities taking place today in different European countries and introduce a variety of perspectives, frameworks, and categorizations of the living lab phenomenon. In particular, the articles put forward five different perspectives on living labs: network, design, regional development, open innovation, and service. We encourage readers to perceive the provided views as globally beneficial ways of involving users in innovation rather than as the “European school” of living lab thinking.

The first article is by Seppo Leminen, who takes a network perspective and introduces a framework of innovation mechanisms in living labs. The framework builds on different coordination and participation approaches in living lab networks and provides evidence on their prevalence through cases from four countries. The article concludes by delivering opportunities for practitioners to enhance innovation in living labs and calls for more research on the longitudinal examination of living lab networks.

The second article is by Paula Femeniás and Pernilla Hagbert from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. They explore sustainable living in terms of reduced energy and resource use. The article assumes a design perspective and describes a first step towards a strategy for using living labs as a means to foster innovation and develop new concepts of sustainable living from an architectural point of view. The authors introduce Habitation Lab, a form of design studio for radical experimentation between different stakeholders in the context of architecture.

In the third article, Soile Juujärvi and Kaija Pesso, from Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland, take a regional development perspective and examine the characteristics and success factors of urban living labs based on a case study in Finland. City centres and neighbourhoods have increasingly been serving as regional living labs. This article takes the perspective of a regional innovation system in exploring the needs of urban residents. The authors reveal various actor roles and conclude that urban living labs require a long-term perspective to succeed.

In the fourth article, Dimitri Schuurman, Lieven De Marez, and Pieter Ballon, from the iMinds Media & ICT research group in Belgium, adopt the open innovation perspective to analyze knowledge spill-overs between actors in living labs. The article is based on case studies from a living lab in Belgium. It makes a significant contribution to the discussion on the role of three open innovation processes in living labs: exploration, exploitation, and retention. Finally, a concrete set of guidelines is proposed to foster innovation in living labs.

The fifth article is by Anna Ståhlbröst from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, who provides a service perspective on innovation in living labs. Her research is grounded by interviews with micro-enterprises that have utilized living lab services to ideate, create, and test innovations. The author highlights the benefits of living lab services and collaboration for small firms that lack resources. The study puts forward that using a living lab as a service can generate three types of value: improved innovations, the role the living lab can play, and the support the living lab offers.”

You can read more about the whole issue from here.