Living Labs – real-world experiments to support open service innovation

In today’s competitive and dynamic market it is of vital importance for organizations to innovate their processes, products and services to survive. One emerging concept that assists these demands is the open service innovation approach that strives to open up organisational borders to support a continuous outflow and inflow of innovations. In this paper the aim is two-folded, firstly we aim to explore how a Living Lab approach with real-world tests can contribute in open innovation processes and secondly we aim to identify important aspects an organisation aiming to implement the concept needs to grapple with. In our study users tested and experimented with energy meters and energy visualisation tools in their home for 6 months with the aim to further develop the innovation. We have found that by applying real-world experimentation users contributed to the innovation in four different dimensions. We also found that an open innovation approach requires an organisation that is communicative which entails strategies and structures to support that role.Godkänd; 2011; 20111028 (ysko