Co-creation in living labs: exploring the role of user characteristics on innovation contribution

Since the 1970s, the innovative potential of users has been recognized by von Hippel and his seminal works on the Customer Active Paradigm (CAP) and Lead Users. This fostered further research into the nature of user contribution in NPD and the characteristics of innovative and innovating users. This research stream has been labeled user innovation and looks at the utility gains for end-users when involved in innovation. More recently, open innovation approaches have been looking to integrate the insights and creative potential of users through various methods and tools. One of these approaches gaining ground are the so-called Living Labs, an innovation approach relying on intensive user involvement through co-creation, using real-life settings and a multi-stakeholder approach. Although user involvement is seen as key within these Living Labs, research integrating the insights from user innovation into ways of user selection and user contribution in Living Labs is scarce. Within this paper, we will explore some of the hypotheses from user innovation regarding user characteristics in three concrete Living Lab projects and assess whether these characteristics have an impact on the outcomes and on the user contribution. The results indicate that it is necessary to take into account domain-related as well as innovation-specific characteristics, otherwise this may lead to one-dimensional user contributions. Moreover, our research suggests that Living Labs are capable to facilitate a diversity of user contributions through a mix of self-selection and purposeful sampling