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Living Labs (LLs) are complex multi-stakeholder environments that enable real-life testing and experimentation of products, services, and systems. Despite increasing attention by practitioners as well as policymakers, and growing scholarly interest in the field, the literature exploring congruency between organisational objectives and outcomes when utilising LLs is still scarce. To fill this gap, a qualitative case study is employed to gain an in-depth understanding of objectives and project outcomes of organisations utilising LLs. The LLJOSEPHS® was chosen as this study’s empirical context, in which 14 different projects were analysed. In-depth interviews revealed eight categories of measurable project outcomes: market acceptance, price acceptability, exposure, product testing, market intelligence, legitimisation, method testing, and networking. This study not only highlights what companies have achieved in comparison to their original project objectives, but also identifies additional unplanned outcomes that they accomplished. The findings offer important project-level insights into the potential and limitations of LLs. The results form a basis upon which to develop a better understanding of how innovation performance can be nurtured in LLs. Insights from the study may also help firms and facilitators by providing a deeper understanding of LLs at an individual project-level, and by articulating potential objectives and outcomes associated with organisations’ involvement in LLs.

No abstract available. For access please contact author rd4084o@gre.ac.uk

Companies increasingly reach outside their own organizational boundaries to engage with customers to jointly de-velop new products and services (Brunswicker and Chesbrough, 2018). Companies turn towards customers for inspira-tion to develop innovative products and services that better align with customers’ expectations (Gutu, Manuwa and Mbuya, 2018). Indeed, across all industries, firms agree that involving users in the innovation process – to learn from them and work with them – is vital (Westerlund and Leminen, 2011). By allowing customers to become idea generators and co-creators, it is possible to comprehend their latent or unvoiced needs (Kristensson, Matthing and Johansson, 2008). One prominent approach to foster co-creation with customers, that is becoming increasingly popular, are open laboratories (Fritzsche, 2018). These laboratories are closely related to the notion of open innovation, which purposively makes use of knowledge flows across organizational boundaries (Chesbrough, 2003), and user innovation, which turns the focus to the people who engage in the innovation process (von Hippel, 2009). Indeed, companies increasingly inte-grate their customers in the innovation process by means of open laboratories. For example, companies such as the German software company SAP, establish their own open labs and leverage the power of customer co-creation. In 2007, SAP set-up their own Co-Innovation Lab (COIL) with the mission to provide partners a structured and guided global approach to producing innovative solutions that have a shorter time to market, with reduced risk (Innovation Leader, 2016). Instead, Lego, German Telekom, and other businesses, establish interactive spaces in their store settings to achieve customers engagement in the exploration of new products and services (Roth et al., 2015). While there are significant differences across a range of open laboratories such as FabLabs, TechShops, and Living Labs (Fritzsche, 2018), they can be defined by the physical environment in which peoplecan create, validate or test products, services or processes through the direct or indirect engagement with an organization. Some open laboratories involve facilitators and therefore can be seen as intermediaries (Almirall and Wareham, 2008) supporting the innovation process between companies and co-creators. The expression ‘co-creator’ is used when referring to co-creation with customers and users (Leminen, Nyström and Westerlund, 2015). By offering an environment that closely resembles the context of the prod-uct or service in real-life, open labs can provide as authentic a use situation as possible. Often these labs offer a more reliable market evaluation than test markets and empower users to contribute to the innovation processes (Salter and White, 2013). While companies increasingly utilize open laboratories for innovation purposes (Leminen and Westerlund, 2016), the different types of project objectives, outcomes and the unique benefits associated with such labs have not been extensively discussed thus far. This chapter presents examples of four co-creation projects that have been conduct-ed in an open lab called JOSEPHS® and exemplifies the benefits of such an open approach to innovation.

Recent industry trends and technological advancements call for a change in the way organisations and industries operates. Progressively, activities in the past carried out by separate units are performed by a network of organisations of different nature, which need to collaborate to exchange information and resources to meet the fast-changing needs of users and customers. While this move from production to co-production models offers new opportunities, as tapping on diverse and richer resource pools, it raises new challenges. Establishing and managing interorganisational relationships requires resources and efforts, knowledge and awareness of potential partners and an approach open to adaptation, learning and change. Also due to these challenges a number of network managers emerged in recent years in different settings. The objective of such network managers is to facilitate collaboration, encouraging network members to engage with different stakeholders, promoting a sense of trust and overcoming the barriers to collaboration, such as the differences in organisational cultures and the competition for often limited resources. All these changes are taking place in the healthcare industry as well, where new players, often from the voluntary sector, now cover a fundamental role in identifying and addressing the needs of users. Integrating the skills and competences of voluntary and faith based organisations and non-traditional actors in the system with more established ones offers unique opportunities, but also specific challenges to be addressed. All these issues are explored in this report with specific focus on the healthcare ecosystem of Wandsworth, an area where for many years, also thanks to a very active network manager, a number of different players collaborate to improve the provision of healthcare services. Using a multi-method approach, integrating qualitative interviews, multiple-choice questionnaires and network analysis and visualisations, the study detects an extremely lively local collaboration network. At the same time, however, some vulnerabilities in the network are identified, mainly in relation to the role of some essential key-players, the perceived limited availability of resources and the difficulties in integrating very diverse organisational cultures and institutional practices. Findings from the study are used to put forward 11 recommendations to promote, manage and monitor the local collaboration network.

In a world with increased speed of business where companies are confronted with a dynamic environment, innovation plays a significant and decisive role for a company’s competitiveness. However, innovation is a difficult process that involves risks that new products, services and technologies fail in gaining commercial success. Tidd et al. (2005) state that the opportunity of enhancing competitiveness also requires the management to have a contrasting set of knowledge and skills in comparison to what is required for an everyday business administration. Yet, even the innovation leader Germany and its strong Mittelstand face competence barriers to innovation. To efficiently innovate, these barriers have to be identified and overcome. This paper acknowledges the importance of innovation as a survival and growth imperative and investigates competence barriers to innovation and the consequences these barriers might result in. The competence barriers are explored in a sample of 45 German SMEs. The data was gathered through structured online questionnaires and analysed on the basis of regressions. Findings of the research identify that the most significant barriers are associated with management barriers which hinders companies to be innovative. Thus, these firms experience constraints to expand the business and encounter missed opportunities on financial returns. The results derived through this study highlight shortages of qualified personnel and in particular those lacking skills in innovation management as major competence barrier to innovation.