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Within the ALL-Ready project, ENoLL hosted on 12th April 2023, the second online training of the “Understanding Living Lab Concepts and Co-creation” course. The Module 2 focused on the Management of Living Labs and provided the members of the ALL-Ready Pilot Network with an overview of Living Labs’ innovation management process, panel management, pilot management process & mapping canvas, and impact assessment methodology. &nbsp

This paper describes how an urban commons is established on the Amsterdam market square Plein ’40-’45, to explain how an experimental learning environment can be a living lab for improving collaborative governance arrangements. We detail how this improvement is facilitated by an experimental learning environment that engages stakeholders in a process where practical solutions are developed and systemic obstacles are addressed and redesigned simultaneously. Our study is guided by the research question: How can an experimental learning environment develop practical solutions as a means to address systemic obstacles and improve collaborative governance arrangements?

Many cities are facing challenges in finding an equilibrium in the use of urban consumption spaces. Urban consumption spaces comprise different sociospatial relationships, bringing together work, consumption, recreation and habitation in a delimited area within the city. This mixed character is a potential source of creative urban quality, but this quality is not always realized, leading to on the one hand 'overheating' in some urban consumption spaces faced with excessive, imbalanced usage, and on the other ‘undercooling’, with declining visitors and vacant lots. We focus on Amsterdam as our living lab, in our aim to develop a new perspective toward reinstating the sociospatial relationships between local community stakeholders and to restore the equilibrium of Amsterdam city center as an urban consumption space. In doing so, we address the research question How do residents, entrepreneurs and visitors perceive ‘hospitality’ in their lived-in experience of Amsterdam as urban consumption space, and how does this contribute to community connectedness?

Involving individual users in the process of information systems development is a key dimension of open innovation. Living Labs are socio-technical systems that facilitate information systems development by integrating technical, social and organizational structures and focusing on individuals, tasks, technologies and the interactions between different stakeholders. Testing digital innovations in real-life use context is one of the key components of Living Labs. The users’ motivations to participate in Living Lab field tests at the beginning of the project are usually higher than once the field tests are underway. However, there is a dearth of research on other issues related to participants’ drop-out in Living Lab field tests. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the consequences of drop-out in Living Lab field tests and providing recommendations that would facilitate prolonged user engagement. The paper also discusses some ethical considerations regarding involvement of participants within Living Lab field tests. In doing so, we interviewed fourteen Living Lab experts in two Living Labs in Sweden and Belgium. Based on these interviews, we propose a first set of consequences, recommendations and ethical considerations to take into account when setting up Living Lab field tests. Keywords: User UNaLab User Engagement for Large Scale Pilots in the Internet of Things, U4IoT

Studies on living labs show that the users’ motivation to participate in a field test is higher at the beginning of the project than during the rest of the test, and that users tend to dropout before completing the assigned tasks. However, the literature still lacks theories describing the phenomenon of drop-out within the area of living lab field tests. As the first step of developing a theoretical discourse, the aim of this study is to present an empirically derived taxonomy for the various influential factors on drop-out behavior and to provide a definition for drop-out in living lab field tests. To achieve this goal, we first extracted factors influencing drop-out in the field test by conducting a short literature review on the topic, and then triangulated the factors across 14 semi-structured interviews with experts in living lab field tests. Our findings show that identified reasons for drop-out can be grouped in three categories: innovation-related, research-related and participant-related. Each category in turn, consists of three subcategories with a total of 45 items for drop-out in living lab field tests. In this study, we also explore different types of drop-out and propose a definition for drop-out in living lab field tests. iDAG

Innovation intermediaries are confronted with different entrepreneurial types. Academic attention on the interactions between entrepreneurs and innovation intermediaries is limited. Four entrepreneurial types are discussed throughout this paper. These are based on the source of the entrepreneurial idea (Shah & Tripsas, 2007) and the (prime) motivation for entrepreneurial activities (Block, Sandner & Spiegel, 2015): enduser entrepreneurs, professional-user entrepreneurs, classic (opportunity-driven) entrepreneurs and forced entrepreneurs. Further, this paper proposes a conceptual entrepreneur-intermediary interaction process model, facilitating knowledge transfer, with 5 stages: alignment, learning activities, interpretation, sense-making and implementation. The process model is explored by means of a multi-dimensional case study of 8 projects with distinct entrepreneurial types. Evidence is sourced from the context of a Living-Lab-as-a-Service organization. The paper contributes to the understanding of entrepreneur-intermediary interactions in general, and interactions through Living-Labs-as-a-Service in particular.

Living lab research consists of gathering user feedback on innovations implemented in a real-life context (Eriksson et al., 2005). This can be facilitated by means of a panel-based approach (Schuurman et al., 2012). Since this panel is vital for living lab research, it is important to know whether all panel members are satisfied with the operation of the living lab itself. An interesting way to capture and act upon the delights and frustrations of a panel can be by adopting an action research approach. Within a participatory action research process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers" (Reason and Bradbury, 2008). Action research contrasts with many research methods, which emphasize disinterested researchers and reproducibility of findings. Amongst others, Ståhlbröst (2008) already used action research as a methodology within a living lab environment aiming to involve users early and throughout the whole development process, and to design new IT systems from the basis of these users’ needs. But how can this research approach be a framework to get to know your participants’ thoughts on the operation of your living lab? How can action research help to involve as much panel members as possible and to encourage people to share their opinion? Does active research actually result in more practical solutions for a detected problem? In order to capture and solve frustrations of the iMinds Living Lab panel members, a researcher was actively involved in a selection of living lab projects and panel members themselves were inserted in the reflection phase of an action design research from which the obtained knowledge resulted in the co-creation of an iMinds Living Labs website for panel members.