Living Labs: a User-oriented Approach to Public- Private Innovation Networks

In recent years, „Living labs‟ have played an increasingly prevalent role in design processes targeted at user-oriented innovation. This article presents the organisational set-up and discusses the development of two new living lab concepts from the HandiVision project, hosted by two public institutions that both work with people with physical or cognitive impairments. Based on Verna Allee‟s theory on “Value Network Analysis”, we argue that the notions of „roles‟, „deliverables‟, and „value conversion‟ is useful in order to understand the inter-organisational behaviour and the innovation potentials in living labs as a platform and a milieu for developing new assistive technologies between institutions, companies and intermediate organisations. Introduction The aim of this article is to present the organisational set-up and discuss the development of two new living lab concepts hosted by two Danish public institutions. They both work with people with physical or cognitive impairments but host different groups of peoples with handicaps and also have different competencies, values and interests to put into play with companies in the development of new assistive technologies. The two living labs have been used for experiments with user-oriented innovation methods and have been further developed and branded as innovation platforms in the project HandiVision a demonstration project for the development of better assistive technologies ending January 2011. The purpose of this three-year project was to develop methods for user-oriented innovation within the assistive technology field. The project has involved a total of eight companies, nine organisations and four knowledge institutions. The common goal of the project partners was to develop more efficient assistive technology by engaging users in all phases of the innovation process – both when it comes to developing new products and services, but also when it comes to testing and improving existing products. All project partners had their time spent in the project fully financed by the Danish state and regional authorities. The article describes how the two living labs have been developed and analyses specific experimental activities that have taken place among the institutions and companies involved. The article also presents the results generated by the project in relation to third parties. In both living labs a third party has been involved in the development processes to undertake the role as an intermediate organiser and facilitator with 1 Jeppe Spure Nielsen, Alexandra Institute, Aabogade 34, 8200 Aarhus C, Denmark, phone +45 89425761, mobile +45 20966199, [email protected]. Peter Nielsen, Alexandra Institute, Aabogade 34, 8200 Aarhus C, Denmark, phone +45 89425762, mobile +45 40254689, [email protected].