Best practices, innovation and development: Experiences from five living lab innovation environments

The Living Lab concept is based on open innovation and serves as a platform for different stakeholders in the innovation system (cities, companies, universities). There is a strong emphasis on user participation. The aim of this paper is to study in depth the experiences of Living Lab innovation environment/platform by qualitative case study method to gain more understanding of the best practices they have found in their activities, areas that need improvement and innovations coming out of these Living Labs. From the 14 Living Labs existing in Finland today, five were chosen for this stud. These represent different areas of industry and have a University of Applied Sciences involved.