A typology of creative consumers in living labs

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.