Innovation in the Public Sector: Exploring the Characteristics and Potential of Living Labs and Innovation Labs

Living Labs and innovation labs share a lot of common traits and characteristics and are both linked to the public sector, but appear in separated literature streams. Both concepts can be regarded as coping mechanisms to deal with contemporary changes in the innovation landscape and within society as a whole. Both also build further on past initiatives and practices, but both concepts are also struggling to find their own clear identity and raison d’etre. As they are largely practice-driven, the theoretical underpinnings and foundations are mostly established ‘post hoc’, making sense of current practice, rather than carefully researching and planning the further development. Starting from a review of the current issues and challenges with innovation in the public sector, we look for links between both concepts by analyzing the current definitions, the predecessors and the state-of-the-art in terms of empirical research into both concepts. Based on these findings, we summarize a set of similarities and differences between both concepts and propose a model towards more collaboration, mutual exchange and integration of practices between innovation labs, that can be regarded as initiators of innovation, and Living Labs, that can be regarded as executors of innovation. By doing this, this paper adds to the conceptual development of both concepts and proposes a roadmap for the further integration of both theory and practice of Living Labs and innovation labs.