Living lab approach to create an Internet of Things service

Abstract

Open innovation approaches, such as Living Labs, are promising concepts for multi-stakeholder-driven service creation. Challenges and opportunities of the approach have been discussed for several years now. The recent concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its various technologies appear to be promising possibilities to extend open innovation into other domains. Currently, experience with the creation of IoT services within open innovation environments is low. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge by introducing a Living Lab methodology for IoT service creation. The central aspect of this work is a sequence of carried out activities utilizing an IoT toolkit. Findings from first experiments with this approach identify two areas that should be considered when similar Living Labs are operated: the motivation of participants, and the role of toolkits.