UNVEILING THE DIVERSITY OF SCHOLARLY DEBATE ON LIVING LABS: A BIBLIOMETRIC APPROACH

Katharina Greve, Seppo Leminen, Riccardo de Vita () and Mika Westerlund ()
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Katharina Greve: University of Cambridge, The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1TN, UK¶University of Greenwich, Park Row, SE10 9LS, UK
Seppo Leminen: #x2020;University of South-Eastern Norway, Post Office Box 235, 3603 Kongsberg, Norway‡Aalto University School of Business, Department of Marketing, P.O. Box 21230, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland§Carleton University, Sprott School of Business, 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1S 5B6, Canada
Riccardo de Vita: #xB6;University of Greenwich, Park Row, SE10 9LS, UK
Mika Westerlund: #xA7;Carleton University, Sprott School of Business, 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1S 5B6, Canada

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2020, vol. 24, issue 08, 1-25

Abstract: Living labs (LLs) are becoming an increasingly popular approach to engage in open innovation. Although applications and influence of LLs have grown rapidly over the last decade, the landscape of LL research remains largely unclear and underexplored. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a consolidated understanding of this research field and to detect the potential areas of fragmentation and isolation. Through a systematic review of the scholarly literature on LLs, this study applies bibliometric methods on a dataset of 411 journal articles. The results of this study reveal the diverse and fragmented nature of the LL field, with contributions spanning across different disciplines and application domains. Despite such fragmentation, some clusters of scholars and publications are identified as well as influential contributions. Given the nascent state of the literature, the role of special issues in shaping the evolution of the LL debate is prominent. This study provides a map to practitioners to investigate and learn from the application of LLs in diverse fields. This aspect is particularly important in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which stresses the key role of open and collaborative approaches to innovation, making the use of LLs increasingly relevant for governments, companies, public organisations and individuals.

Keywords: Living lab; innovation; bibliometric analysis; bibliometric methods; co-citation analysis; innovation management; literature review; network analysis; open innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1142/S1363919620400034

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