Understanding the underlying factors of living lab business model

Abstract

Living lab is an open innovation approach highlighting active user involvement, multi-stakeholder collaboration while conducing testing and development activities in real-life settings across the different innovation process stages. Partially sequential mixed method approach was applied to evaluate more in-depth what kind of business models living labs are following as well as identifying the underlying factors influencing the business model selections. The sample group consisted 15 health and wellbeing living lab organizations from eight different countries. Findings indicate that all sample group organizations were about to change their business model strategy in near future, thus indicating that the living lab business models are not yet stabilized. The following four different change strategies were identified: "Fine tuning", "Minor adjustment", "Rescoping" and "Frog leaping". Factors influencing business model selections and change strategies are discussed.