Co-creation in living labs: exploring the role of user characteristics on innovation contribution

Since the 1970s, the innovative potential of users has been explored by von Hippel and his 'customer active paradigm'. This fostered further research on the nature of user contributions in NPD processes, and the development of different strategies to manage user involvement. One such approach is the living lab approach. Although user involvement is a central characteristic of living labs, the integration of user innovation insights and strategies for user selection and managing user contributions in living labs is scarce. This paper adds to this discussion by assessing the relationship between user characteristics and user contributions for three living lab projects. The results suggest a new way of managing user interactions in a living lab, in which both domain-related and innovation-specific characteristics are taken into account. Moreover, this research argues that living labs can facilitate a diversity of user contributions through a mix of self-selection and purposeful sampling.