A set of key principles to assess the impact of Living Labs

Among companies there is an ongoing shift from a product-based economy to a service economy, especially among companies who delivers digital services. The service sector is growing rapidly, which puts pressure on companies to keep up with their competitors. This is an often demanding process, especially for SMEs who do not have the resources to continuously develop their business. To support these SMEs innovation processes, a concept called the Living Lab is starting to grow around Europe. These Living Labs strive to support companies innovation processes by offering a neutral arena where different stakeholders can meet and co-develop innovations. However, the effects of Living Labs operations are to some extent unexplored and under-theorized. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: to propose a set of principles for conducting Living Lab research in an innovation context and to assess the impact of the Living Lab approach on the innovation process and its stakeholders by means of the proposed principles. This study shows that the Living Lab approach offers values in many different ways for several stakeholders.Validerad; 2013; 20121207 (ysko