Sammendrag
Living labs have gained increased attention in research and practice as both a practical and
theoretical innovation phenomenon that emphasizes co-creation, real-life settings, and
user/customer involvement. More recently, living labs have also emerged as a specific approach
to open innovation processes in the context of publics across the EU. Nevertheless, it is still not
clear how the understanding of living labs can be translated and organized into new sectorial
settings, what type of public sector innovation challenges it addresses, and what role citizens and
users have. The aim of this article is therefore to explore and analyze how living labs are applied
as processes for public sector innovation. Based on a mixed method approach of 21 European
living lab cases, the analysis reveals a pattern of three different processes for living lab
organizational and actor roles: living labs organized as cross-sectorial collaboration, living labs
emerging within the public sector as main initiator and beneficiary, and living labs developed by
civil society actors. The findings are presented as three scenarios for implementing living labs,
which also acts as a background for the article’s final discussion about the potentials and pitfalls
of living labs in public sector contexts.
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