Linking living lab characteristics and their outcomes : towards a conceptual framework

Despite almost a decade of living lab activity all over Europe, there still is a lack of empirical research into the practical implementation and the related outcomes of living labs. Therefore, this article proposes a framework to create a better understanding of the characteristics and outcomes of living labs. We investigate three living labs in Belgium and one in Finland to learn how the different building blocks of living lab environments contribute to the outputs of innovation projects launched within the lab. The findings imply that managers and researchers contemplating innovation in living labs need to consider the intended inputs and outcomes, and reframe their innovation activities accordingly. We formulate practical guidelines on how living labs should be managed on the levels of community interaction, stakeholder engagement, and methodological setup to succeed in implementing living lab projects and to create user-centred innovations. That way, living lab practitioners can work towards a more sustainable way of setting up living labs that can run innovation projects over a longer period of time. - See more at: http://timreview.ca/article/748#sthash.3xkJGgX9.dpu

Categorizing the Growth Strategies of Small Firms

This study investigates the link between a small firm’s investment in R&D and its growth strategy. A firm’s growth strategy refers to the means by which the organization plans to achieve its objective to grow in volume and turnover. We categorize firm growth strategies into eight distinctive clusters: opportunity explorers, radical innovators, business developers, business expanders, profit makers, business rebuilders, stagnators, and downsizers. We argue that understanding a firm’s growth orientation provides a way to assess the returns of its R&D investments, because an organization’s intangible growth strategies and tangible inputs are connected

Business Models: A New Perspective on Knowledge-Intensive Services in the Software Industry

Firms' specialization to core competencies as a response to intensive competition in technology and knowledge-intensive industries, such as software industry, emphasize network-intensive business behavior and the importance of utilizing resources beyond company boundaries. In recent years, outsourcing of services, including knowledge-intensive services (KIS), have attracted increasing attention in the research literature. However, KIS have not been sufficiently analyzed in connection with different types of business models. Taking theories of interorganizational exchange, including industrial network approach and the transaction cost theory as our basis, we analyze key knowledge-intensive services in four different types of business models of software companies. In our empirical analysis, we identify that the role and type of KIS vary systematically by business model-types

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)

Editorial: Living Labs

Welcome to the November issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. This month’s theme is Living Labs, and it is my pleasure to welcome our guest editors, Seppo Leminen, Principal Lecturer at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at Aalto University in Finland, and Mika Westerlund, Assistant Professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business in Ottawa, Canada. In this issue, our guest editors revisit the theme we covered in our popular September 2012 issue on Living Labs

Designing Business Models for the Internet of Things

This article investigates challenges pertaining to business model design in the emerging context of the Internet of Things (IOT). The evolution of business perspectives to the IOT is driven by two underlying trends: i) the change of focus from viewing the IOT primarily as a technology platform to viewing it as a business ecosystem; and ii) the shift from focusing on the business model of a firm to designing ecosystem business models. An ecosystem busi- ness model is a business model composed of value pillars anchored in ecosystems and fo- cuses on both the firm's method of creating and capturing value as well as any part of the ecosystem's method of creating and capturing value. The article highlights three major chal- lenges of designing ecosystem business models for the IOT, including the diversity of ob- jects, the immaturity of innovation, and the unstructured ecosystems. Diversity refers to the difficulty of designing business models for the IOT due to a multitude of different types of connected objects combined with only modest standardization of interfaces. Immaturity suggests that quintessential IOT technologies and innovations are not yet products and ser- vices but a "mess that runs deep". The unstructured ecosystems mean that it is too early to tell who the participants will be and which roles they will have in the evolving ecosystems. The study argues that managers can overcome these challenges by using a business model design tool that takes into account the ecosystemic nature of the IOT. The study concludes by proposing the grounds for a new design tool for ecosystem business models and suggest- ing that "value design" might be a more appropriate term when talking about business models in ecosystems

A Small-Firm Perspective on the Benefits of Living Labs

Decreasing energy consumption is a global priority and the energy market is in constant change. The search for energy-saving innovations provides an opportunity to initiate a user-centered approach using the living labs model. This article describes how Process Vision, a small-yet-leading Northern European provider of energy IT systems, applied the livings labs approach to develop novel energy-efficiency management solutions. We discuss the company’s participation in the APOLLON consortium, a cross-border living labs initiative on energy efficiency. More specifically, we describe the Finland-based company’s experiences of a pilot project launched in the living lab and report on the perceived managerial challenges of applying the living labs approach from the perspective of a small fir

Servitization in a Security Business: Changing the Logic of Value Creation

How can a firm change its value-creation logic from providing technology to selling technology-based services? This is a question many security companies face today when trying to apply a solutions-based business model in response to recent macro- and microeconomic trends. The fact that customers increasingly demand security as a service, rather than technical equipment, challenges the basis of a security firm's value provision and alters the logic of its operation. In this article, we investigate a technology- and product-oriented security business that is now rapidly transforming into a service business. We use data from a case study to propose a 4C model (conceptualization, calculation, communication, and co-creation of value) that can help security providers to objectify their service offerings and succeed in the servitization of their security businesses

Does Entrepreneurial Marketing Underrate Competition?

This study aims to investigate the relationship between marketing needs and actions in entrepreneurial marketing. So doing, it explores how the entrepreneur’s interpretation of the needs that arise from the changes and opportunities in the business environment affects their actions in entrepreneurial marketing. We establish and test a set of hypotheses over a sample of 3,097 entrepreneur-led small firms from Finland. The results show that entrepreneurial perception of environmental pressure in terms of partners, customers, and competitors is linked to the marketing practices of small firms in terms of developing business relations, publicity, and offerings. That is, actions in entrepreneurial marketing depend on the entrepreneur’s ability to interpret needs based on the signals in the business environment. However, the study confirms that entrepreneurs pay less attention to competition, which affects their marketing actions, and it suggests that both research and practice of entrepreneurial marketing should pay more regard to competition