ENoLL News
The effectiveness of involving users in digital innovation: Measuring the impact of living labs
Recently published paper by imec-SMIT, imec-MICT and IDEA consult researchers shows economic effects of Living Labs. For the evaluation of Flemish Living Labs, which took place during the summer of 2015, researchers collaborated with an independent evaluator firm, that was selected through a tender procedure. The role of the evaluators was to carry out an independent assessment of the effectsofthelivinglabsprogramme. The organisation which was evaluated was a non-profit research institute, with a dedicated living lab unit involving up to 20 project and programme managers, panel managers and application prototypers working on the operational aspects of living labs, and a similar amount of user and business researchers involved in living lab-related research projects.
Highlights
- • Living labs are deployed widely but their pragmatic nature hinders impact evaluation.
- • Impact evaluation can be made applicable to ‘fuzzy’ innovation tools such as living labs.
- • This impact evaluation indicates their contribution to significant economic effects for participants.
- • A number of methodological recommendations are made for follow-up evaluations.
- 2023