Are the Users Driving, and How Open is Open? Experiences from Living Lab and User Driven Innovation projects

This article reflects on the experiences of three projects in Helsinki, Finland, that aimed to develop organic connections between technology development and local communities of people. Based on the experiences, we argue that although Living Labs present a commendable ideal of “co-creation and user driven open innovation with communities”, the way they are typically set up and designed (focused on supporting enterprises, with very restricted access to the eventual user innovations) makes it hard to realize this ideal. We argue that to turn the ideal into a realisable proposition, developments in three directions should take place: 1) a distinction should be made between “user involvement” and “user driven innovation”, 2) efforts in research and facilitation should be directed more ambitiously from simply realizing the former towards supporting the emergence of the latter, and 3) new terminology and more explicit discussion and policies regarding the “openness” of Living Labs should be put in place. The article concludes with recommendations for future Living Lab activities.