Private stakeholders and open innovation in Québec: what are the perspectives for Living Labs? Dominic Lapointe a and David Guimont b a
Professor in the Urban & Tourism Studies Department at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) b Teacher and researcher at the Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup
Abstract This paper will explore the role of private stakeholders in the living lab ecosystem and the relationship of private stakeholders to open innovation practices. There is an extensive litterature on private stakeholders and open innovation but seldom mention is made on the specific question of how private stakeholders integrate open innovation in the context of a living lab. Through a qualitative analysis of the litterature a portrait of the representations of private stakeholders in researches on living lab will be drawn. Secondly, an analysis of the relationship to open innovation for businesses that participated in an in-situ open innovation event will be made. Then, we will identify a typology of the businesses in relation to open innovation. Finally, we will discuss the observations that arise from the combination of our results on private stakeholders in open innovation with the representations of private stakeholders in researches on LLs. Keywords Living Lab, Open Innovation, In-Situ, Adoption, Private companies 1 Introduction and problematics: The private sector in the open innovation ecosystem a Living Lab is Nowadays, innovation is a major concept when it comes to development. Whether in businesses or communities, innovation is presented as the way to follow to improve products, the supply of services, profitability, and even improve the quality of life. Long restricted to the field of technological, economic and entrepreneurial development, innovation has been spreading to the social and community fields for about ten years. Among others, this has been achieved through the partnership approach proposed by Living Labs (LLs). This approach aims to have private businesses, public organizations and citizens cooperate in open innovation (OI) processes. LLs are open innovation ecosystems, "physical regions or virtual realities in which stakeholders form public-private-people partnerships (4Ps)" (Leminen, Westerlund, & Nyström, 2012; 7). Private stakeholders are part of this ecosystem. For ten years, LLs have been spreading and have generated a good deal of interest as a
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