Living labs: From niche to mainstream innovation management

Greve, K, De Vita, R, Leminen, S ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2918-0020 and Westerlund, M (2021) Living labs: From niche to mainstream innovation management. Sustainability, 13 (2). pp. 1-24.

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Abstract

Living Labs have received increasing attention over the last decade. However, despite their growing popularity and ability to positively impact organisations’ innovation performance, mainstream innovation management literature has overlooked the diverse and promising Living Labs research landscape. In an effort to move the field forward, this study analyses extant Living Labs literature in the domain of innovation management. The study identifies conceptual bases informing Living Labs research, maps the collaboration between scholars in the field, examines prevailing themes influencing the debate and reveals the influence of Living Labs research on other domains. Bibliometric methods of co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence analysis as well as bibliographic coupling are employed on two databases. Database A includes 97 focal journal articles and Database B includes all cited sources of Database A, totalling 500 documents. This study reveals the rapid growth of the scholarly literature on Living Labs in the innovation management domain, driven by a core group of authors. However, other contributions from highly visible scholars have the potential to connect Living Lab research to mainstream innovation management studies. The study also identifies the influence of Living Labs research in different application fields and potential for its further evolution.