Abstract
This study explores user innovation in living labs that build on the co-creation of value with users in real-life environments. It focuses on the link between the role mechanisms of user innovators and the innovation outcome. The study introduces a framework based on four types of creative consumers to analyze user roles in 26 living labs in Finland, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. It contributes to the literature on user innovation by revealing how the role mechanisms affect innovation in living labs. Although users adopt given roles, resulting in incremental innovation, proactive user innovators foster the birth of radical innovation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 6-20 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Journal of Engineering and Technology Management - JET-M |
| Volume | 37 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2015 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
The authors gratefully appreciate the three anonymous blind reviewers and the guest editors for their valuable comments, suggestions, and guidelines to improve this article. Special thanks are extended to all of the interviewees, who kindly shared their knowledge and experience about living labs. The authors express their gratitude to Tekes, The Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation , for funding data collection as a part of TEKES financed projects UDOI and Finlab.
Keywords
- Creative consumer
- Living lab
- Radical innovation
- Role theory
- User innovation