A fourfold typology of living labs: An empirical investigation amongst the ENoLL community

Living Labs can be seen as a means to structure user involvement in innovation processes. However, in this rather young research domain, there is no consensus yet regarding supporting theories and frameworks. This has resulted in a wide variety of projects and approaches being called `Living Labs', which leaves a clear conceptualization and definition a task in progress. Within this research paper we propose a fourfold categorization of Living Labs based on a literature review and validated by an empirical investigation of the characteristics of 64 ICT Living Labs from the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). The four types are Living Labs for collaboration and knowledge support activities, original `American' Living Labs, Living Labs as extension to testbeds and Living Labs that support context research and co-creation with users.