Open innovation systems for value creation and knowledge exchange: Results from the Flemish

LeYLab

Dimitri Schuurman

@DimiSchuurman

Living Labs theoretical positioning

Living Labs as open innovation ecosystems

Living Lab infrastructure

Material infrastructure Immaterial infrastructure

- Physical networks - End-users

- User devices - Stakeholders

- Research equipment - Environment

Adapted from Leminen & Westerlund, 2012

Open Innovation Processes

• Exploitation: Purposive outflows of knowledge to leverage existing technological capabilities outside the boundaries of the organization

• Exploration: Purposive inflows to capture and benefit from external sources of knowledge to enhance current technological developments

• Retention: the storage, maintenance and reuse of knowledge over time

Case study: LeYLab Living Lab

LeYlab infrastructure

Material infrastructure Immaterial infrastructure

- Fibre network - 98 households & 17 local non-private connections

- Modems, tablets & miniPCs - 12 consortium partners & 3 external utilizers

- Logging infrastructure - Local area in the city of Kortrijk

Case study: 6 Living Lab-cases

Internal cases

•Fibre roll-out: successful (user data, domestication research, exploitation possibilities), but time-consuming

•eHealth case: no match with infrastructure nor panel

•AV-database case: somewhat successful, delay hindred ‘post’-stage

Case study: 6 Living Lab-cases

External cases

•Cloudfriends: perfect match with panel & infrastructure, technology exploitation, no post-phase (yet)

•WeePeeTV: good match with local character and research socialized panel members, assessment beyond panel, currently finishing project

•Poppidups: use of local ecosystem (school), assessment and roll-out beyond panel, iteratively finetuned market-ready product

Open Innovation Processes

• Exploitation: providers looking to exploit their fibre technology (moderate success) Cloudfriends was able to license its technology (success outside LL) provider wanted to sell solution to public organization (no success)

• Exploration: utilizers get user feedback & lessons from technical integration (success) providers get usage data (success) & look for ‘killer app’ (no success) enabler is looking for new solutions for policy goals (moderate success)

• Retention: presentations and publications by researchers, providers & enablers (success) predictive model extracted from user loggings (success)

iteratively finetuned Living Lab methodology (success)

Lessons learned

•Living Labs are open innovation networks involving different actors with different goals and motives

•A thematical focus fosters knowledge transfers and goal allignment between stakeholders with different roles

•Infrastructure by itself is not enough to attract utilizers

•Kickstart Living Lab with ‘internal’ cases

•Infrastructure and local embeddedness facilitate community-building

•‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ or limits to open innovation

Dimitri.Schuurman@iMinds.be

@DimiSchuurman

Senior Researcher iMinds - MICT

Schuurman et al. (2013). Living Labs as innovation systems fostering open and user innovation: lessons learned from the LeYLab Living Lab. TIM Review

November, special issue on Living Labs, forthcoming.

Schuurman et al. (2013). Living Labs as open innovation systems for knowledge exchange: solutions for  sustainable innovation development. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research (IJBIR),

forthcoming.