Identifying lead users in a living lab environment

This paper emphasizes the identification process of lead users within a living lab environment. Lead users are seen as important contributors to the living lab methodology since they express needs before the general market does. Additionally they generate ideas with a high level of novelty. Living Lab researchers have focused on the added value of involving these users in their research, but research on how to identify these lead users is still lacking. Therefore this paper will focus on the identification process of lead users by means of a Living Lab case study in the world of movie theaters

Open innovation with entrepreneurial users : evidence from living lab projects

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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

Assessing user experience of context-aware interfaces in a retail store

Context-awareness is becoming an essential functionality of mobile applications. However, it remains challenging to capture the contextual experience in innovation research, since early-stage technologies have not reached maturity to be implemented in a real-life context. Moreover, users have difficulty in evaluating implicit interactions with context-aware interfaces since imagination of users is limited. Assuming that context impacts user experience, virtual reality (VR) provides an untapped potential for the domain of innovation research. The aim of this study (in progress) is to investigate the potential of user tests in virtual reality (here virtual retail store) for human-computer interaction to better match the needs of users and designers. Initially, the mock-up has been implemented in a retail store with its context-awareness being simulated using the Wizard of Oz methodology (N = 18). This approach is found to be time-consuming and not sufficient for evaluating radical context-aware innovations

Exploring entrepreneur-intermediary interactions regarding user orientation : evidence from Living-labs-as-a-service projects

Innovation intermediaries are confronted with different entrepreneurial types. Academic attention on the interactions between entrepreneurs and innovation intermediaries is limited. Four entrepreneurial types are discussed throughout this paper. These are based on the source of the entrepreneurial idea (Shah & Tripsas, 2007) and the (prime) motivation for entrepreneurial activities (Block, Sandner & Spiegel, 2015): enduser entrepreneurs, professional-user entrepreneurs, classic (opportunity-driven) entrepreneurs and forced entrepreneurs. Further, this paper proposes a conceptual entrepreneur-intermediary interaction process model, facilitating knowledge transfer, with 5 stages: alignment, learning activities, interpretation, sense-making and implementation. The process model is explored by means of a multi-dimensional case study of 8 projects with distinct entrepreneurial types. Evidence is sourced from the context of a Living-Lab-as-a-Service organization. The paper contributes to the understanding of entrepreneur-intermediary interactions in general, and interactions through Living-Labs-as-a-Service in particular

Overcoming barriers to experimentation in business-to-business living labs

Business-to-business (B2B) living lab projects have been mentioned in different areas of academic research, but the innovation management literature requires deeper analysis of their potential opportunities and challenges. Real-life experimentation is a key requirement for living labs as it enables deeper insights in the potential success of innovations. However, the literature has not provided insights on how living lab projects can implement real-life experimentation in B2B innovation projects and does not describe appropriate conditions for experimentation in these settings. In this study, we identified three main barriers preventing real-life experimentation in B2B living lab projects: the technological complexity, the need for integration, and the difficulty in identifying testers. The barriers are discussed in detailed and potential solutions are provided to help overcome these barriers and stimulate the adoption of real-life experimentation in B2B innovation projects

A structured approach to academic technology transfer : lessons learned from imec's 101 programme

In this article, we describe imec’s 101 Programme for academic technology transfer and explain how it supports researchers by following a structured process in a limited amount of time and by carefully involving different stakeholders and people with relevant skills and expertise. The programme combines insights in terms of processes and of team composition from the entrepreneurship literature and puts them into practice in an internal incubation programme that is generated from the bottom-up. Based on hands-on experiences and interviews with key stakeholders in the process, we evaluate the programme and distill lessons learned. The article highlights the importance of a structured technology transfer process in the early stages of opportunity discovery and entrepreneurial action, and it offers insights on team formation for academic spin-offs

Specification and implementation of mapping rule visualization and editing : MapVOWL and the RMLEditor

Visual tools are implemented to help users in defining how to generate Linked Data from raw data. This is possible thanks to mapping languages which enable detaching mapping rules from the implementation that executes them. However, no thorough research has been conducted so far on how to visualize such mapping rules, especially if they become large and require considering multiple heterogeneous raw data sources and transformed data values. In the past, we proposed the RMLEditor, a visual graph-based user interface, which allows users to easily create mapping rules for generating Linked Data from raw data. In this paper, we build on top of our existing work: we (i) specify a visual notation for graph visualizations used to represent mapping rules, (ii) introduce an approach for manipulating rules when large visualizations emerge, and (iii) propose an approach to uniformly visualize data fraction of raw data sources combined with an interactive interface for uniform data fraction transformations. We perform two additional comparative user studies. The first one compares the use of the visual notation to present mapping rules to the use of a mapping language directly, which reveals that the visual notation is preferred. The second one compares the use of the graph-based RMLEditor for creating mapping rules to the form-based RMLx Visual Editor, which reveals that graph-based visualizations are preferred to create mapping rules through the use of our proposed visual notation and uniform representation of heterogeneous data sources and data values. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Innovation Management in Living Lab Projects: The Innovatrix Framework

Despite living labs being described as “orchestrators” and innovation intermediaries, there is scant literature providing concrete guidelines and tools for living lab practitioners on the topic of project-related innovation management. To address this need, we propose Innovatrix, an innovation management framework built upon existing business model and innovation management tools and frameworks and iterated based on practical experience in living lab projects. In this article, we illustrate the added value of the proposed framework through three practical case studies that lead to three propositions regarding innovation management in living lab projects. First, Innovatrix helps to scope the user involvement activities, which leads to greater efficiency and faster decision making. Second, Innovatrix forces the project owner to focus on a limited number of customer segments, which increases the speed of learning as the scarce entrepreneurial resources are dedicated to a limited number of segments. Third, Innovatrix allows practitioners to capture the iterations and pivots that were made during an innovation project, which helps to link specific outcomes with certain living lab activities