Innovation: A question of Fit – The Living Labs approach Esteve Almirall, Jonathan Wareham ESADE Business School Av. Predalbes 60-62 08034 Barcelona (Spain) {esteve.almirall,jonathan.wareham}@esade.edu ABSTRACT In the recent years Living Labs have manage to draw a significant amount of attention to both their methodologies and organizations. Because of that, a significant amount of effort has been diverted to its understanding. However, very little in assessing its contribution and comparing it to existing methodologies. This work aims to cover that gap by summarizing the most common European Living Labs methodologies and positioning them in the user-contributed innovation methodology landscape. And by doing that, assess its merits and appropriateness together with policy implications. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.1 [Information Systems]: Models and Principles. General Terms Management, Economics, Experimentation, Human Factors. Keywords Living Labs, Living Labs Methodologies, Innovation, Open Innovation 1. INTRODUCTION When in December 25, 2006 Time magazine [1] select the user as the person of the year for its front page it was doing nothing more than publicly acknowledging the increasing importance of user involvement and participation in generating contents and ultimately in innovation. Even if users are the final recipients of the innovation process, their participation in the process itself has been precluded by the inability to reach and use the technologies needed to innovate. However, during the past decades and specially since the emergence of the personal computer technology has suffered a process of democratization [2] that translated into two streams: access and the virtualization capacities of information technologies [3]. This process of democratization together with the connectivity and coordination capacities of the Internet [4] have been driving and fueling the raise of user involvement. However, even if we narrow our focus to innovation, we can witness how this democratization process led to a multiple and diverse practices that will certainly benefit of structures that could facilitate understanding. In the case of user involvement in innovation, its level of contribution is the obvious classification dimension. Applying this criteria, we can differentiate users as creators, such as in the case of lead users [5] or Open Source; co-creators in practices such as Design Thinking [6], participatory or user-centered design or simply being treated as passive subjects whose insights are captured and introduced in the innovation process, such as in the case of applied ethnography, usability, human interaction or market validation exercises. Living Labs trials and organizations are situated in this fertile middle ground of considering users as co-partners in the process of innovation and actively involving them in materializing their own needs, aspirations and wishes in their real-life context. This research aims to examine some of the leading methodologies in the Living Labs community trying to find out through its comparison where are their strengths situated, what spaces of inquiry are they addressing that by capturing the imagination and insights of users could foster innovation. Thus, in our study we address the following research questions, 1. Where can Living Labs methodologies be situated in comparison with other innovation practices? 2. What is the new contribution of Living Labs methodologies that differentiate them from the existing ones? 3. Where are Living Labs methodologies more appropriate in terms of the innovation problem being addressed? The understanding of these questions is highly relevant, not only for the agents directly involved in innovation, such as companies or researchers, that must select methodologies to address innovation problems, but also to policy makers because of the Open nature of Living Labs, their capacity in developing the Information Society and the importance of the public sector in their development. The paper is organized as follows. First we briefly review the concept of Living Labs and present the research methodology. Second we describe four leading methodologies coming from CDT (Luleä, Sweden), IBBT iLabo (Belgium), CKIR (Finland) and i2Cat (Barcelona, Spain). Third, we map Living Labs methodologies against others that also seek user involvement/contribution and analyze their unique contribution. Finally we discuss where and when their use could be more appropriate and policy implications. 2. What are Living Labs? Living Labs are commonly characterized as both a methodology that stresses user involvement in innovation projects and the organizations that focus on its use. Living Labs are driven by two main ideas: a) involving users as co-creators on equal grounds with the rest of participants and b) experimentation in real world settings. Living Labs therefore provide structure and governance to user participation in the innovation process [7]. There is nothing that prevents the use of Living Labs methodologies in private companies or closed settings. In fact, Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). Mobile Living Labs 09, September 15, 2009, Bonn, Germany. Mobile Living Labs 09 http://mll09.novay.nl 3