Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Marketing Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indmarman Change processes in open innovation networks – Exploring living labs Seppo Leminen a,b,c, ⁎ , Anna-Greta Nyström d , Mika Westerlund e a Pellervo Economic Research, Eerikinkatu 28, 00101 Helsinki, Finland b Department of Marketing, School of Business, Aalto University, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland c Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, 305 Saint Patrick's Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada d School of Business & Economics, Åbo Akademi University, Vänrikinkatu 3B, 20500 Turku, Finland e Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, 305 Saint Patrick's Building, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Change processes Network booster Business network Living labs Open innovation networks ABSTRACT Examining change in business networks can illuminate how time, temporality and process unfold and engage diferent stakeholders in open innovation. Living labs are increasingly popular open innovation networks that provide a fruitful area in which to study change processes and their infuencing factors in network dynamics. We adopt a longitudinal process perspective to analyze eight living labs focused on urban development in a Northern European city. Our analysis reveals six pertinent processes: (i) expansion, (ii) reinforcement, (iii) focusing, (iv) unifcation, (v) termination, and (vi) recurrence. These processes refect change in networks characterized by diverse actors, the coexistence of individual and shared motives, a high degree of openness, and user involve- ment. The identifed change processes are a result of living labs disclosing their needs, data, and operations to their stakeholders. We propose a theoretical concept, which we describe as “network boosters”, to illustrate the factors that foster change processes. Scholars and practitioners of innovation management can learn from these fndings that understanding change in open innovation networks may help to depict and predict short- and long- term relationships, and it may assist them in managing innovation in open environments. 1. Introduction Business networks and how they change over time are important areas in need of more scholarly attention (cf. Bizzi & Langley, 2012; Halinen & Törnroos, 2005; Lowe & Rod, 2018). In particular, there is a scarcity of studies focused on understanding the complexities of net- works and their inherent changes, which would augment our body of knowledge of business networks and their management. The major challenges in this respect include mapping the processes of change and development, as well as conceptualizing and theorizing the meaning of change. Business networks are typically perceived either as open sys- tems of business and social relationships or as closed systems of frms and their inter-organizational relationships (Valkokari, 2015). A broader focus on networks allows researchers to analyze the frm in a setting where relationships with other stakeholders, activities, and re- sources afect the events taking place in a certain environment. How- ever, such interdependencies are difcult to capture from an empirical perspective. Previous studies discussing change in networks by scholars re- presenting the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group (IMP) ad- dress diferent types of change, and they vary in terms of the content (Aastrup, 2000; Fonfara, Ratajczak-Mrozeka, & Leszczyński, 2018). For example, Lundgren's (1992) continuous and discontinuous changes are based on the distinction between change taking place in existing ac- tivities and established structures. Conversely, Håkansson and Snehota (1995) and Håkansson and Henders (1995) base their distinctions on the idea that change in business networks often follows a certain pat- tern, path, or logic. Gradual or evolutionary change follows a certain pattern while radical or revolutionary change is a fundamental reor- ientation or path-breaking change. Freytag and Ritter (2005) point out that change on one level of a network introduces change at another level, and stabilizing one level of a network may spark change at an- other level. Indeed, change per se is an important and multifaceted concept when studying business networks (Aaboen, Dubois, & Lind, 2012; Bizzi & Langley, 2012). Van de Ven and Poole (1995) note that the theoretical mechanisms of change need to be understood. That said, there are numerous scarcely researched topics related to change, e.g., the meaning of embeddedness in the business context and how it is linked to change; what patterns constitute processes; how the process unfolds over time; and whether or not it is possible to predict the processes of change in business networks. Therefore, prior research on change processes in the business network context has struggled to yield https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.01.013 Received 25 January 2017; Received in revised form 16 November 2018; Accepted 16 January 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at Pellervo Economic Research, Eerikinkatu 28, 00101 Helsinki, Finland E-mail addresses: seppo.leminen@ptt.f (S. Leminen), anna-greta.nystrom@abo.f (A.-G. Nyström), mika.westerlund@carleton.ca (M. Westerlund). Industrial Marketing Management xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0019-8501/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Leminen, S., Industrial Marketing Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.01.013