Investigating User Typologies and Their Relevance within a Living Lab-Research Approach for ICT-Innovation

Our contemporary ICT-environment is characterized by an innovation spiral, resulting in a lot of innovations as well as failures. Attempts to cope with the inherent uncertainty and increasing complexity in the field of ICT-innovation have influenced the rise of new, user-driven and open innovation-approaches. We contend that the Living Lab-approach can be seen as a systemic, methodological instrument incorporating a number of crucial insights linked to advances in the innovation management and user research-literature, especially the increased importance of the user. Currently however, the literature dealing with the 'user' as key stakeholder in the innovation process is still rather fragmented. The main contribution of this paper is that it provides a review of a selection of user typologies that might play an important role for ICT-innovation. Moreover, the relevance of these typologies within a Living Lab-research approach and the implications of the similarities and differences between them are discussed.