Facilitating user driven innovation trough a Living Lab

User driven innovation is gaining popularity among companies and policy makers (Nesta 2008, Wise E & Högenhaven 2008). User driven innovation is a concept introduced by Eric von Hippel in the 1980's. According to von Hippel (2005), user driven innovation explores the user-experts, such as surgeons who develop their own instruments. The user develops a product but freely reveals it to some other stakeholder, who then takes care of the commercialization. These users are often interest-driven instead of being entrepreneurship-driven; they do not necessarily look for economic benefits. User driven innovation can also be defined as a process of tapping into user knowledge (Wise & Högenhaven 2008). Traditionally, companies and other organizations have approached users in order to improve their innovation activities, but similarly, users can also be the driving force of innovation. How can these innovative users be supported so that their ideas actually become innovations? This paper discusses user driven innovation and describes a case of user based innovation closely connected to the Lahti Living Lab. The paper focuses on the early phases of the innovation process.