FACILITATING SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE TRANSLATION IN INNOVATION NETWORKS

In this paper we present a two year long interpretative case study based on a Living Lab project. The case study is used to in retrospect investigate cognitive and social translation in a doubly distributed innovation network. By identifying and empirically exemplify how translations occurred, we present insights of how to support cognitive and social translations in these kind of networks. Using the concepts from Yoo et al. (2009) we explore the research question: how can cognitive and social translation be supported in Living Labs? Based on the findings we conclude that Living Labs can support heterogeneous set of actors and knowledge resources by supporting cognitive translation with techniques such as scenarios, mock-ups and prototypes. By working with an iterative process the involved actors can be supported to materialize prior and new knowledge which can be translated between different communities of actors. By setting up and providing a common ground a trading zone can be established supporting the social translations within the network by offering a space where negotiation of interests and alignment of perspectives can be facilitated

Editorial : living labs and user innovation (December 2015)

Welcome to the January 2016 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review – the second of two issues on the theme of Living Labs and User Innovation. It is my pleasure welcome back our guest editors for December and January: Seppo Leminen (Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Aalto University, Finland), Dimitri Schuurman (iMinds and Ghent University, Belgium), Mika Westerlund (Carleton University, Canada), and Eelko Huizingh (University of Groningen, Netherlands)

Open innovation processes in living lab innovation systems: insights from the LeYLab

Living labs have emerged on the crossroads of the open innovation and user innovation frameworks. As open innovation systems, living labs consist of various actors with each playing their specific role. Within this article, we will take an open innovation perspective by analyzing the knowledge spill-overs between living lab actors through three in-depth innovation case studies taking place within the LeYLab living lab in Kortrijk, Belgium. The results illustrate how living labs foster the three open innovation processes of exploration, exploitation, and retention. From our analysis, we conclude that living labs are particularly useful for exploration and, to a lesser extent, exploitation. In terms of retention, living labs seem to hold a large potential; however, the success and the nature of the innovation processes depend on the sustainability of living labs, the number of innovation cases, and the alignment of these cases with the living lab infrastructure. Based on these findings, a concrete set of guidelines is proposed for innovating in living labs and for setting up a living lab constellation. - See more at: http://timreview.ca/article/743#sthash.1DkRkCxW.dpu

A fourfold typology of living labs: an empirical investigation amongst the ENoLL community

Living Labs can be seen as a means to structure user involvement in innovation processes. However, in this rather young research domain, there is no consensus yet regarding supporting theories and frameworks. This has resulted in a wide variety of projects and approaches being called ‘Living Labs’, which leaves a clear conceptualization and definition a task in progress. Within this research paper we propose a fourfold categorization of Living Labs based on a literature review and validated by an empirical investigation of the characteristics of 64 ICT Living Labs from the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). The four types are Living Labs for collaboration and knowledge support activities, original ‘American’ Living Labs, Living Labs as extension to testbeds and Living Labs that support context research and co-creation with users

Open Innovations and Living Labs: Promises or Challenges to Regional Renewal

The paper brings to the foreground modes and strategies of organising purposeful action that may be conductive to local and regional actors’ successful coping in the more and more competitive environment. The paper is pragmatist by its approach in a sense that it emphasises preconditions and possibilities for making ideas work. However, to do this is a difficult task. In the maze of multifaceted information flows and revolutionary technologies for reaching them enterprises and public actors need to find and construct better structured information that really helps them to operate. The paper introduces two sets of case activities that build on open innovation and living lab approaches in their attempts to make the boundaries between organisations and their environment more permeable. Its findings support the structuralist idea that spatial attributes matter more than as a mere venue, platform, or even container of social action. The venues studied in the paper are unique: one of the oldest still remaining factory buildings in the innermost core of the city of Tampere and a re-used loghouse in a peri-urban landscape outside the city. They both serve now as true exploratory spaces with no functional or institutional lock-ins stemming from them to bond their present-day users

Taking real-life seriously : an approach to decomposing context beyond 'environment' in living labs

The maturity of Living Labs has grown and several researchers have tried to create a uniform definition of what Living Labs are by emphasizing the multi-method and real-life, contextual approach. Although researchers thus recognize the importance of context in Living Labs, they do not provide insights into how context can be taken into account. The real-life context predominantly focuses on the in-situ use of a product during field trials where users are observed in their everyday life. The contribution of this paper will be twofold. By means of a case study we will show how context can be evaluated in the front end of design, so Living Lab researchers are no longer dependent on the readiness level of a product, and we will show how field trials can be evaluated in a more structured way to cover all components of context. By using a framework to evaluate the impact of context on product use, Living Lab researchers can improve the overall effectiveness of data gathering and analysis methods in a Living Lab project