Abstract
Living Labs aim to engage in user-centered design practices where users are included in their daily life environment as innovative agents. However, empirical insights in end user engagement in Living Lab practices are currently lacking. This article focuses on opening up this black box of user engagement by analyzing the involvement of a group of entrepreneurs in a Living Lab smart city pilot in Amsterdam, the Climate street. The goal of the article is to analyze how and to what extent the Climate street enabled the involved entrepreneurs to engage in bottom up innovation. Theoretically, the article explores this pilot from a Science and Technology Studies perspective, specifically its notion of the socio-technical network. The article concludes that user innovativeness was limited by the pre-configuration of the entrepreneur as lay tester rather than as an active user-innovator. Furthermore, it is suggested that the inherent tension in Living Lab practices between configuring users and actual user practices hampers user innovativeness in general. Granting users more agency and opening up Living Lab practices to daily life dynamics stimulates the transition from tester to innovator in a daily life setting and subsequently makes entrepreneurs more readily smart.
Highlights
The concept of the smart city at once stresses the importance of investments in ICT infrastructures to enhance the quality of life and competitive capabilities of cities, as well as the recognition that in order to achieve this smartness, investments in social capital are necessary
The objective of this paper is to investigate how in practice user involvement and user innovativeness is shaped in a specific Living Lab smart city pilot: the Climate street
The analysis deals with how this relationship was translated by the entrepreneurs; what kind of meaning did they attribute to the pilot, the ICTs within their daily life setting and practice? The case study approach is used to “understand the dynamics present within [the] setting” [15] p. 534 which requires an ongoing interpretation of data from multiple sources
Summary
The concept of the smart city (as defined by [13]) at once stresses the importance of investments in ICT infrastructures to enhance the quality of life and competitive capabilities of cities, as well as the recognition that in order to achieve this smartness, investments in social capital are necessary. Living Labs are characterized as “both a methodology of user-driven innovation and the organizations that primarily use it” (Site 4) They facilitate “public-private-civic partnerships” [16] that bridge the gap between development and use of ICTs by involving users, as co-producers, “on equal grounds” [2], in different ICT design stages. This type of user-centered innovation reverses traditional top down R&D processes; Living Labs aim to engage in bottom up innovation, granting much agency to users This practice is hoped to lead to unexpected insights into user needs [9], culminating in the development of more successful ICTs. Apart from including real (end) users, the living part of the laboratory points to the centrality of daily life environments. These function as “experimentation environments in which technology is given shape in real life context” [16] p. 13, thereby opening up the development process to “the uncontrollable dynamics of daily life” [11]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
