Dynamics in a Innovation Boundary Context: Exploring an Living Lab Process from a Community of Practice Perspective

This paper is based on a living lab process, which is an open, user-centric, innovation approach, where several actors from industry, user groups and academia are involved. The research question is: How can a boundary context, such as a living lab process, be understood and facilitated from a community of practice perspective? We aim to describe and analyze the dynamics in an innovation boundary context based on a living lab process. An an action-oriented research approach was applied and the empirical results are from The Find Project (TFP), with the aim of customizing an ICT product based on the needs of a user group. The findings are analyzed from a community of practice perspective where the three different communities i) researchers from Halmstad Living Lab (HLL), ii) ICT developers (ICTD), and iii) next of kin’s to demented elderly persons (NOKD) represented the unit of analysis. The analysis indicates several boundary situations that played a vital role for the innovation process. The contribution of our research to innovation theory is a process model describing the dynamics in an innovation boundary context with regard to boundary objects-in-use as well as brokering. The process highlights two different levels of brokering: i) inner-level brokering; and ii) outer-level brokering.