Analyzing Living Labs as part of the complete innovation development process

Living labs which provide research and development environments for innovative eCustoms solutions for cross-border trade have recently received a lot of attention and have provided rich grounds for research (Tan et al., 2006, Kartseva et al, 2006; Liu et al., 2006; Baida et al., 2008; Baida et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2007; Razmerita & Bjorn-Anderson, 2007; Frößler et al.2007; Rukanova et al., 2007). Two studies (Frößler et al., 2007 and Rukanova et al., 2007) on Living Labs are particularly relevant from the point of view of innovation development and adoption. While these earlier studies zoom in on specific aspects of the innovation processes related to the Living Labs (i.e. management or adoption), they do not provide a holistic understanding of the innovation process that takes place and how a specific phase forms part of the whole process. The goal of this paper is to bring such holistic understanding of the innovation processes that take place in the context of Living Labs. To do so, we make use of the innovation-development processes of Rogers (1995) and we apply them to analyze the setting of Living Labs. In our analysis, we further extend the processes of Rogers to capture specific aspects of Living Labs. With this paper, we contribute to the existing research on Living Labs by providing a thorough understanding of the processes through which Living Labs develop as platforms for innovation development through business/government collaboration. The findings can also be of use for practitioners in setting-up and managing Living Labs