Living labs as a driver for change in regional television

Traditional television production and distribution organizations are increasingly being challenged by a rapidly changing technological environment. These evolutions force the television industry to leave their comfort zone. This context in mind, regional television broadcasters often lack the resources, knowledge and organizational flexibility to cope with this external pressure. In this paper, we discuss the use of Living Labs as ‘innovation intermediaries’ and ‘change facilitators’ that foster and enable user-centric innovation development processes, both inside and outside the organization. This phenomenon is approached from both an open innovation and a user innovation point of view. This paper considers Living Labs as open innovation ecosystems, enabling organizations to reach out and collaborate with their (potential) audience and other external actors, but also as an open ‘battle arena’ for the organization itself. The Living Lab process governs different expectations and enables conflicting opinions to come together and to steadily grow towards a mutual solution. Moreover, the innovation development process in the Living Lab seems to have innovation spill-over effects on the organizational level, catalyzing a broader organizational change

Connecting with citizen journalists: an exploratory Living lab study on motivations for using mobile reporting applications

In the context of user generated content in the newsroom, mobile reporting applications are seen as a facilitator of citizen journalism, bringing news items from the user to the newsroom and vice versa. In this paper, we describe a Living Lab project aimed at developing a mobile reporting application for a regional television broadcaster that struggles reaching a young audience. Data were collected through an online survey (n:500), one focus group (n:9), a field trial (n:35) and in-depth interviews (n:10). Besides user motivations for using mobile reporting applications, we provide three user profiles and give insights in citizen journalism projects. A mobile reporting application could provide a solution for regional news stations to reach more youngsters, however, reasonable efforts should be taken to make such a project succeed

Living Labs as a navigation system for innovative business models in the music industry

Media industries and other rapidly evolving, complex, uncertain markets have a hard time to survive if they do not optimize or radically change their business models. This paper analyses the potential of involving all relevant stakeholders of the value network in the development of a business model by means of a panel based multi-method Living Lab approach. Using an in-depth case study analysis, a critical analysis of both the potential value and the weaknesses of such an approach are being assessed. Although some difficulties exist, opening this innovation process and involving external actors in a structural way has the potential to increase the value creation and sustainability of the business model. This paper also stresses the importance of multidisciplinary research on multi-stakeholder involvement in business model innovation

The city as an experimental environment: the identification, selection and activation of distributed knowledge in regional innovation ecosystems

During the past decade, Open Innovation (OI) literature has extended its scope from an economical context to the context of societal value creation. This also entailed the notion of (local) distributed knowledge as a driver for innovation, and the importance of multi-stakeholder collaborations in NPD-processes to develop new urban ICT systems for complex urban issues. Hence, several studies have discussed stakeholder ecosystem architectures for such collaborations. However, little is known on how to identify and select stakeholders for collaborative environments embedded in the urban context. Based upon the development and implementation of an open-ended collaboration ecosystem for urban innovation, this paper studies the contextualized interactions between knowledge actors in the ecosystem and processes of attraction, identification, selection and activation. These insights converge in the development of a ‘stakeholder acupuncture framework’, which structures mechanisms and practises within dynamic collaboration ecosystems and defines key boundary conditions for such open-ended ecosystems

The role of urban living labs in a smart city

In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

Managing innovation uncertainties : a user-oriented knowledge typology

New product development processes are subject to uncertainties. These uncertainties can and should be managed to prevent innovations from failing. Uncertainties or knowledge deficits are addressed by deploying the right approaches, or learning activities to stimulate relevant inflows of knowledge. A typology of user-oriented knowledge types is key to overcome the reluctance of organizations towards multi-actor involvement and user-oriented learning activities. Here, we present a user-oriented knowledge typology departing from the end-user, embedded in a two-states framework (current state opposing future state). We discuss three iterations of the framework, including an expert review and real-world application as part of a workshop with intermediary organizations. When implemented, the framework enabled participants to identify and select learning activities enriching their innovation project. We want to underline our vision to transcend the gut-feeling and experience-driven allocation of learning activities, but instead strive towards optimal activity-selection based on the knowledge deficit at hand

Drivers for end-users' collaboration in participatory innovation development and living lab processes

Design for users often uses user-centered methods and methodologies. However, this requires an active participation of these users. In this article we explore the motivation and drivers for users to collaborate in innovation processes within a Living Lab environment and approach. We do this by means of data gathered during the course of four years of Living Lab-activity by iMinds-iLab.o on three levels: macro-level (general panel activity), meso-level (activity and motivation within a Living Lab), and micro-level (activity and motivation in a Living Lab-project)

The television struggle : an assessment of over-the-top television evolutions in a cable dominant market

Traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content. With a helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of ever more screens in our lives and increasingly faster network technologies, a wide variety of alternative screens and sources of television content are trying to conquer a piece of the audiences' viewing time. This evolution calls for new kinds of services and has the potential to change the current television market. This paper assesses the evolution of over-the-top television services in Flanders, a cable dominant market in which several OTT TV services emerged during the past two years. By presenting an analysis of the market and the results of a large scale end-user survey (n: 1,269) we provide insights on the future of OTT TV and its impact on the current television ecosystem. In the Flemish market, both traditional broadcasters, the channels themselves and new market entrants are launching OTT TV services. These market evolutions are being related to user expectations and usage patterns in order to assess the challenges for future television. This also allows to make assumptions on future scenarios regarding so-called "cord- cutting" behaviour. Because of the high adoption of triple play bundles and fierce competition between the two dominant television distributors, a large scale video cord-cutting scenario is highly unlikely for the Flemish television market. Although OTT TV might gain importance, it will be hard for 'OTT TV-only' services to replace the traditional television distributors