Drawing insights for building and managing living labs by using the 4E Framework and the McKinsey 7S Framework

This is a thesis of a student of AMS Institute , KTH Live-In Lab collaborates with AMS institute mostly on how to create and manage a Living Lab. The author of this thesis, Mihai Daniel Buzatu, approaches the core of living labs focusing in 2 main research questions, se bellow :

Summary

Living labs represent an approach for developing innovative products in a real-life context by involving public institutions, private actors, and users as active participants in co-creation. Living labs provide opportunities for learning, a quick iteration process based on direct input from users, and enhanced collaboration. This definition highlights four essential characteristics of any living lab. These are named Product, Real-life context, Participants, and Co-creation, respectively. Together, the four form the 4-Element (4E) Framework adopted throughout this research.

Even though living labs are becoming more and more popular, there are still aspects about them which have been understudied. The academic literature lacks in-depth analyses of living lab participants, as well as guidelines for developing and managing such endeavors. Specifically, scarce refences highlighting best practice approaches exist, for practitioners to use when building living labs or tackling specific problems – leading to a low dissemination of knowledge regarding this aspect. Therefore, as a preliminary step of this research, a pilot study was performed for investigating challenges faced by living labs, and to which of the four components of the 4-E Framework these related. Through 20 interviews, this revealed that 82% of the challenges mentioned were rooted in the Participants element. Conclusively, the need to focus on this element was confirmed.

In order to address this knowledge gap and help practitioners manage living labs more efficiently, a comparative study was performed. To this end, KTH Live-In Lab (KTH LIL) and

Marineterrein Amsterdam Living Lab (MALL) were examined. The two are living lab testbeds – they offer experimentation space for third-parties who want to develop innovation. They were analyzed in a two-step approach, which relied on interviews and document analyses. First, through a single-case analysis, followed by an identification of the similarities and differences between the two cases. The two steps are embodied by the two research questions (RQ):

RQ1: What are the characteristics of the Participants elements of KTH Live-In Lab (KTH LIL) and Marineterrein Amsterdam Living Lab (MALL)?

RQ2: What are the insights for future living labs which can be drawn upon the similarities and diff erences between the organizations of the two studied cases?

To read the full thesis please open the following link: Drawing insights for building and managing living labs by using the 4E Framework and the McKinsey 7S (pdf 7.9 MB)