Innovation Capacities and Living Labs in Europe: A Competency-Based Approach Derived from a Systematic Literature Review

The aim of this chapter is to clarify what competences are needed for individuals to innovate within European living labs. Living labs are user-centric and open-innovation approaches that aim at enhancing the acceptability of new products and services. In Europe, the concept has been adopted in particular as a way of reinforcing citizens’ well-being by involving them in the early phases of living lab projects. Moreover, living labs are also seen as a way to improve the innovation capabilities of organisations. However, to date, research focusing on innovation capabilities at an individual level is scarce. Hence, in this chapter, we first present the concepts of co-creation and open innovation, and the living lab, before showing the link between organisation and individual capability. We then conduct a systematic literature review using the Web of Science and Scopus databases to understand the components of individual innovation capabilities in the context of European living lab approaches. We extracted 11 publications that we analysed to obtain a classification of categories of individual innovation competences. The study reveals some differences from broader previous studies on individual innovation capability, namely the importance of social competences and that of meta-competences such as adaptability, as well as the essential role of facilitators. This review is a first step towards evaluations of living labs. It could serve as a checklist for practitioners as well as for researchers. Moreover, it offers a better understanding of the importance of co-creation to enhance Europe’s innovation capacity.