A 'living laboratory' environment for exploring innovative RFID-enabled supply chain management models

The purpose of the paper is to present a ‘living laboratory’ research environment, analyse its role for exploring innovative supply chain models, and discuss the methodological approaches used in the laboratory during the front-end phases of a new product/service development process. The research approach relies on an open innovation platform characterised by ‘users as innovators’ cooperating in an open and independent research environment to envision, design, negotiate, develop, test and validate emerging supply chain models. Results indicate that the ‘living laboratory’ represents an alternative research environment, which is particularly well fitted for exploring emerging phenomena such as RFID-enabled supply chain management models as it provides appropriate support to networked innovation collaborative processes.