Virtual Settings for Co-Creation in a Living Lab

Abstract

The gap between what consumers want and what is actually developed has lead to a shift within parts of the ICT industry towards a co-creative innovation process. In response to this, the Living Lab emerged as a setting where all relevant stakeholders collaborate together throughout the whole innovation process to co-create and validate IT-products, the user is perceived as one of the Labs most important assets. However, it is still debated how to best include the user in the innovation process. Virtual settings supported by distributed tools have been suggested as a promising option to provide flexibility for both the developers and users. This study is performed to investigate how a virtual setting compares to a traditional setting when using methods for idea and concept generation in a co-creative innovation process. In order to enable this comparison, observations is carried out at Halmstad Living Lab in both virtual and traditional settings. A literature study is also carried out to acquire a deeper understanding regarding the area of co-creative innovation processes and user involvement. This master thesis concludes based on the observations that both the traditional and virtual setting has a lot to offer to a co-creational innovation process. Thus, it is suggested that the virtual setting should be considered as a complement to the traditional. If utilized in that manner, the virtual setting has the potential to both empower the user’s involvement while also strengthening the Living Labs innovation capabilities.