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The purpose of this research is to increase the understanding of the principles of forming different types of hubs as spaces for collaborative R&D and innovation. This article offers valuable new knowledge regarding the establishment of hubs as part of the local innovation ecosystem. The paper will, through a qualitative multiple case study, shed light on the research issue of the establishment of hubs through an analysis of empirical data collected from three different types of hubs: a research hub, knowledge hub, and innovation hub. As a result, we introduce new building blocks of hubs to support managers and practitioners in forming collaborative hub structures.

While innovation contests and intermediaries are widely used in large companies to source knowledge from the outside, it is not clear how contests could be utilized to break the barriers that SMEs face in pursuing Open Innovation. In this paper, we shed light on the topic by analysing ten innovation contests that have been successfully run in three European countries with the specific aim to create innovation opportunities between SMEs and higher education institutions, research centres, other companies, or end users. The analysis resulted in the identification of common elements that played a crucial role in these innovation contests, but were overlooked in previous research. Moreover, we collected early evidence supporting the case for innovation contests as tools to support Open Innovation policies for SMEs. On that basis, we propose a new framework that can be used by innovation intermediaries to design innovation contests specifically aiming at supporting Open Innovation in SMEs.

Rising healthcare costs and vast business opportunities in health markets have resulted in a great demand to enhance innovation creation. However, innovation development in healthcare is challenging because of the fragmented and complicated context. Potential means to tackle the challenges include utilising the concepts of open innovation and co-creation, which require organisations to develop new roles and relationships with multiple stakeholders. This paper analyses a 12-month co-creation project where a new collaboration model for healthcare innovations was developed by a hospital, research partners, and companies. We demonstrate how organisations experiment with collaborative innovation in the healthcare context, and what was learned from this experimentation. The study utilises an action research approach and a case study strategy. The co-creation model applied can produce innovations that meet the end-users’ needs, but successful implementation requires careful planning, creating separate development paths for idea-type and more mature solutions, and the commitment of project participants.

Through this study, we seek to understand the impact of the use of the living lab approach on product and business development in an eHealth accelerator. In the case accelerator, 20 startups developed innovative products atop the European FIWARE Future Internet technology platform. The novel design element of the case accelerator was the use of the living lab approach that was included for the purpose of engaging end users in the development and testing of new product prototypes. Our main result is that the living lab approach provided added value to participating companies and resulted in changes in their product development and marketing strategies. Overall, the case accelerator and the use of the living lab approach had a significant impact on the development, growth, and market success of the companies. Based on the results of the case accelerator, we propose the generic accelerator model presented by Pauwels and co-authors in 2016 to be extended with a new design element, the living lab approach.

Online user communities and social networks are both used for user involvement in innovation process. Even though both of them have active participants as key driving force for innovation, they are still not the same. Therefore, this study investigated citizens’ motivations to participate in an online user community, and compared how these motivations differ from motivations to participate in social networks. We conducted a UX study with 51 participants in total. The findings revealed that the role of moderator is a crucial for active participation and keeping up users’ motivation. In addition, our findings suggest that an online living lab community shares common characters with other social networks, but it cannot be replaced by social media. The differences between online living lab and social network community are related to user motivations, and the needs of the customers and researchers for living lab activities. In this paper, we present a process of Oulu Urban Living Lab with user involvement supported by the PATIO online user community. Also requirements, system architecture and a new version of PATIO are described. Even though an amount of participants in our living lab study is relatively small, we want to share these insights for professionals of industry and academy.

This paper introduces an augmented reality application, AR PATIO, which was developed for an existing user involvement tool that is a part of a living lab. Augmented reality contents can be projected on-site to visualize change in a comprehensible and visual way. The aim of our application is to provide new methods for involving citizens in the innovation, co-creation, and evaluation of services and products in a living lab context. Our solution gives users the possibility to express their reactions by leaving location-based comments and feedback when using augmented reality. AR PATIO was evaluated as a part of a bigger user-experience study in which virtual reality and mobile clients were also tested. However, in this paper, we focus on the results from an AR use case. According to our UX study with 14 participants, AR PATIO created a positive experience. It was regarded as empowering, playful, innovative, and useful.

Involving citizens in the development activities of a company or public sector is getting more and more important to be able to design e.g. services, products, and city plans that people like and want to use. To be able to develop online user communities that support company or public sector user research needs, it is important to focus on customer perceptions of online user communities. This paper addresses customer perceptions of crowdsourcing and citizen participation through an online user community. Empirical data was collected in two phases: through a pre-study containing interviews and an online survey with 52 participants in total and a follow-up interview for seven selected informants after using an online user community for citizen involvement in the development activity. Several real-life citizen involvement activities conducted through the case online user community are presented in the paper. Findings show that the online user involvement platform PATIO's customers have experienced it as an easy, fast, and cost-effective way to involve citizens in different development activities. Findings also suggest that an online user involvement platform and user community allows collecting rich feedback because of an easy access to target end-users. The results of the study contribute to the scientific discussion on crowdsourcing, citizen participation and living labs, and the development of efficient online tools in this context.

This paper investigates the use of various user-driven methods in the development of public services. As an example, the paper presents a case where citizens and employees were brought together to identify development needs for remote-enabled public services. User-driven methods provided by a local Living Lab were used to solve the encountered challenges. The outcome of this study indicates that use of multiple methods ensures comprehensive and reliable results as well as deep insight of service usage, thereby resulting in usable, useful and desirable public service.