December 2013 Download this article as a PDF

Welcome to the December 2013 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. This month’s issue includes articles on the themes of Living Labs and Crowdsourcing, and it is my pleasure to welcome back our guest editors, Mika Westerlund, Assistant Professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business in Ottawa, Canada, and Seppo Leminen, Principal Lecturer at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at Aalto University in Finland. The articles on living labs carry on the theme of our last issue and our September 2012 issue.

In the first article, Carina Veeckman and Dimitri Schuurman from the iMinds research group in Belgium, along with Seppo Leminen and Mika Westerlund, show how the main characteristics, or building blocks, of living lab environments can impact daily operations and project outcomes. Based on their multiple case-study analysis of four living Labs in Europe, they propose a "Living Lab Triangle" framework that triangulates the characteristics of the living lab environment, the living lab approach, and the innovation outcome. Their findings imply that managers and researchers contemplating innovation in living labs need to consider the intended inputs and outcomes, and must reframe their innovation activities accordingly. Their article provides practical guidelines on how living labs should be managed on the levels of community interaction, stakeholder engagement, and methodological setup.

Next, Louna Hakkarainen and Sampsa Hyysalo from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, share key insights from an in-depth case study of a living lab collaboration to develop and refine a "smart floor" monitoring system for elderly care. Despite its ultimate success, the near-failure of the collaboration effort provided key insights into the role of the living lab environment as a catalyst for learning between users and developers. Researchers, managers, and living lab participants will benefit from the practical insights and key messages that emerged from this case study.

In the third article, Risto Rajala, Mervi Vuori, and Jukka-Pekka Hares from Aalto University in Finland, and Mika Westerlund from Carleton University in Canada, explore how technology companies can use crowdsourcing to go beyond mere idea generation to benefit from user knowledge in product and service innovation. Through their case study of a telecommunication company's crowdsourcing initiatives, the authors argue that companies need to think about user-knowledge management in a more holistic way to complement and make benefit of users’ knowledge, and they suggest four key lessons to help these companies move beyond simply crowdsourcing ideas.

In the fourth article, Suchita Nirosh Kannangara and Peter Uguccioni from the Technology Innovation Management program at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, examine risk management in crowdsourcing initiatives. By applying the concept of business ecosystem health to the crowdsourcing context, they examine the methods by which firms can maximize health by mitigating risk in crowdsourcing-based business ecosystems.

In addition to these four articles, this issue also includes a report on a recent TIM Lecture, "Technology Adoption by Design: Insights for Entrepreneurs", which was presented by Stoyan Tanev, Associate Professor in the Department of Technology and Innovation at the University of Southern Denmark.

In January, we will ring in the new year with our annual issue on the theme of Open Source Business. But, for now, we close 2013 with a look back at the most popular articles from our second year. Table 1 ranks the most popular articles published in the 12 issues between October 2012 and September 2013, based on traffic to timreview.ca over this period. This method strongly disadvantages more recently published articles, so the table also includes five trending articles that would appear in the main list if only recent traffic were considered. If you missed any of these articles when they first came out, I encourage you to add them to your reading list. Our full archive of articles back to July 2007 is available on our website.

We hope you enjoy this issue of the TIM Review and will share your comments online. Please contact us with article topics and submissions, suggestions for future themes, and any other feedback.

Chris McPhee
Editor-in-Chief

Mika Westerlund and Seppo Leminen
Guest Editors

 

Table 1. Most popular TIM Review articles published from October 2012 to September 2013*

Rank

Article

Author(s)

Issue

1

Neuromarketing: Understanding Customers' Subconscious Responses to Marketing

Suomala et al.

December 2012

2

How Can Entrepreneurs Motivate Crowdsourcing Participants?

Smith et al.

February 2013

3

Introducing “Business Source”: The Future of Corporate Open Source Licensing?

Widenius and Nyman

June 2013

4

What Technology Startups Must Get Right to Globalize Early and Rapidly

Bailetti

October 2012

5

Governance of Open Source Software Foundations: Who Holds the Power?

Prattico

December 2012

6

Key Factors Affecting a Technology Entrepreneur's Choice of Incubator or Accelerator

Isabelle

February 2013

7

An Ecosystem-Based Job-Creation Engine Fuelled by Technology Entrepreneurs

Bailetti and Bot

February 2013

8

University-SME Collaboration and Open Innovation: Intellectual-Property Management Tools and the Roles of Intermediaries

Deschamps et al.

March 2013

9

Global Mindset: An Entrepreneur's Perspective on the Born-Global Approach

Poole

October 2012

10

To Internationalize Rapidly from Inception: Crowdsource

Heidari et al.

October 2012

11

Code Forking, Governance, and Sustainability in Open Source Software

Nyman and Lindman

January 2013

12

The Seeking Solutions Approach: Solving Challenging Business Problems with Local Open Innovation

Deutsch

March 2013

13

Enabling Process Alignment for IT Entrepreneurship

Renaud and Bot

November 2012

14

Platforms, Communities, and Business Ecosystems: Lessons Learned about Technology Entrepreneurship in an Interconnected World

Muegge

February 2013

15

Green, Innovative, and Profitable: A Case Study of Managerial Capabilities at Interface Inc.

Lampikoski

November 2012

Developing an Innovation Engine to Make Canada a Global Leader in Cybersecurity

Bailetti et al.

August 2013

From Ideas to Opportunities: Exploring the Construction of Technology-Based Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Giones et al.

June 2013

Evolution of Wireless Sensor Networks for Industrial Control

Low

May 2013

Securing Canada’s Information-Technology Infrastructure: Context, Principles, and Focus Areas of Cybersecurity Research

Craigen et al.

July 2013

Rethinking Open Innovation Beyond the Innovation Funnel

Vanhaverbeke

April 2013

*The rankings are based on website traffic to timreview.ca from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013. The list also includes 5 recently published articles (denoted by ↑) that would appear in the main list if only traffic from June 1, 2013 to November 30, 2013 were considered. 

Share this article:

Cite this article:

Rate This Content: 
No votes have been cast yet. Have your say!

Keywords: crowdsourcing, living labs, Open innovation