Innovation Labs: Leveraging Openness for Radical Innovation?

Abstract

Abstract.A growing range of public, private and civic organisations, from Unicef through Nesta to NHS, now run units known as "innovation labs". The hopeful assumption they share is that labs, by building on openness among other features, can generate promising solutions to grand challenges of systemic nature. Despite their seeming proliferation and popularisation, the underlying innovation principles embodied by labs have, however, received scant academic attention. This is a missed opportunity, because innovation labs appear to leverage openness for radical innovation in an unusual fashion. Indeed, in this exploratory paper we draw on original interview data and online self-descriptions to illustrate that, beyond convening "uncommon partners" across organisational boundaries, labs apply the principle of openness throughout the innovation process, including the experimentation and development phases. While the emergence of labs clearly forms part of a broader trend towards openness, we show how it transcends established conceptualisations of open innovation (Chesbrough et al., 2006), open science (David, 1998) or open government (Janssen et al., 2012).

From CDIO to challenge-based learning experiences – expanding student learning as well as societal impact?

“…CBL experiences, placed in a societal context, have benefited from and driven the emergence of a new kind of learning environment, the 'social', or 'open innovation', lab. In a survey paper, Gryszkiewicz, Lykourentzou, and Toivonen (2016) define an (open) innovation lab as a 'semi-autonomous organisation that engages diverse participantson a long-term basisin open collaboration for the purpose of creating, elaborating, and prototyping radical solutions to open-ended systemic challenges'. 'Social labs' are further characterised by Hassan (2014) as social (the actors actively participate, not just as experts but as co-creators), experimental (solutions are developed and prototyped in an iterative process) and systemic (solutions should not only mitigate symptoms or parts of problems but aim to identify and address the root cause of the problems).…”

Design and management of innovation laboratories: Toward a performance assessment tool

“…Nonetheless, it is important to notice the more complex, multi‐directional and networked nature of how innovation takes place in laboratories (Gryszkiewicz, Lykourentzou, & Toivonen, ). Consequently, managers of innovation laboratories face a challenge that goes beyond just managing them.…”

Leveraging innovation spaces to foster collaborative innovation

“…The increasing interest in innovation spaces by corporations has been followed by a growing number of academic publications that address the topic. The existing academic debate focuses on how physical space can be leveraged to stimulate creativity and innovation (Gryszkiewicz, Lykourentzou, & Toivonen, ; Kristensen, ; Magadley & Birdi, ; Moultrie, ), on the knowledge dynamics within innovation spaces (Cohendet, Grandadam, Simon, & Capdevila, ), and on the establishment of social relationships among their users (Capdevila, ; Castilho & Quandt, ; Schmidt & Brinks, ). However, the role played by space in the dynamics of organizing for collaborative innovation is still relatively unexplored (Ollila & Yström, ).…”