UNVEILING THE DIVERSITY OF SCHOLARLY DEBATE ON LIVING LABS: A BIBLIOMETRIC APPROACH

Abstract

Living labs (LLs) are becoming an increasingly popular approach to engage in open innovation. Although applications and influence of LLs have grown rapidly over the last decade, the landscape of LL research remains largely unclear and underexplored. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a consolidated understanding of this research field and to detect the potential areas of fragmentation and isolation. Through a systematic review of the scholarly literature on LLs, this study applies bibliometric methods on a dataset of 411 journal articles. The results of this study reveal the diverse and fragmented nature of the LL field, with contributions spanning across different disciplines and application domains. Despite such fragmentation, some clusters of scholars and publications are identified as well as influential contributions. Given the nascent state of the literature, the role of special issues in shaping the evolution of the LL debate is prominent. This study provides a map to practitioners to investigate and learn from the application of LLs in diverse fields. This aspect is particularly important in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which stresses the key role of open and collaborative approaches to innovation, making the use of LLs increasingly relevant for governments, companies, public organisations and individuals.