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.