Title: Living Lab: an open and citizen-centric approach for innovation

Authors: Birgitta Bergvall-Kareborn, Anna Stahlbrost

Addresses: Social Informatics, Lulea University of Technology, SE-97187 Lulea, Sweden. ' Social Informatics, Lulea University of Technology, SE-97187 Lulea, Sweden

Abstract: In this paper, we focus on a new research area, Living Lab that introduces new ways of managing innovation processes. A Living Lab can be viewed as both an innovation milieu and an innovation approach and the aim of this paper is to clarify these two perspectives, as well as to illustrate how they can enrich each other. This is done by presenting one Living Lab milieu, Botnia Living Lab and its key components; and one Living Lab approach, FormIT and its key principles. The presentation is done on two levels, one general level and one case specific level. The case focuses on involving citizens in the design of an e-service aimed to increase their influence in a municipality and its development. Through this, we learnt that the key components of a Living Lab constitutes important structures that enhance the process and as such the principles.

Keywords: living labs; citizen-centric; FormIT; services design; innovation management; openness; realism; user empowerment; e-services; online services; electronic services; citizen involvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIRD.2009.022727

International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development, 2009 Vol.1 No.4, pp.356 - 370

Published online: 25 Jan 2009 *

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