PurposeThe paper attempts to reflect on user empowerment enabled by three contemporary approaches, namely living labs, open innovation and social computing, as innovation instruments for innovating products and services based on next generation networks (NGNs).Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes the form of a literature review, with limited environmental scanning of web sources, industry news, etc.FindingsUser‐centric services can be a catalyst for promoting future service ecosystems over NGN. Open strategies may prove to be profitable avenues for incumbents who may consider the extension of the market from access services into value added services. The living lab perspective, used as an approach of developing NGNs, introduces the opportunity to open new markets in new regions where new products and services can be tested and deployed. Living labs can also be used to go beyond the current “launch‐and‐learn” approach in online social communities to active end‐user participation in the online communities' development process. NGNs may be particularly useful for social computing, by offering incentives to create novel services that are fully created, developed and deployed by users.Originality/valueThis paper argues that user‐led innovation could be a significant paradigm shift for innovating products and services, particularly in the specific context of NGNs. It argues that this focus is lacking today, with most of the attention on specific NGN technology and infrastructure issues.

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HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Privacy has long been perceived as a hindrance to innovation. It has been considered to raise costs for data governance without providing real benefits. However, the attitude of various stakeholders towards the relationship between privacy and innovation has started to change. Privacy is increasingly embraced as an enabler of innovation, given that consumer trust is central for realising businesses with data-driven products and services. In addition to building trust by demonstrating accountability in the processing of personal data, companies are increasingly using tools to protect privacy, for example in the context of data storage and archiving. More and more companies are realising that they can benefit from a proactive approach to data protection. A growing number of tools for privacy protection, and the emergence of products and services that are inherently privacy friendly indicate that the market is about to change. In this paper, we first outline what "privacy as enabler of innovation" means and then present evidence for this position. Key challenges that need to be overcome on the way towards successful privacy markets include the lack of profitability of privacyfriendly offerings, conflicts with new and existing business models, low value attached to privacy by individuals, latent cultural specificities, skill gaps and regulatory loopholes.