Social innovation in living labs: the micro-level process model of public-private partnerships

‘Shaken, but not stirred’: Sixty years of defining social innovation

“…Fairweather (1967) (Fairweather, 1967, p. 11). One decade later, Fairweather & Tornatzky (1977, p. 384) expanded the notion of 'experimental' SI in public services, proposing the generation of ESI Centers (Experimental Social Innovation Units) involving the university, private industry, government, and/or 'a location between all three' that constitute a precedent of contemporary living labs (Edwards-Schachter et al, 2012;Battisti, 2014).…”

“…The impressive growth of SI as a concept is found in a number of institutions, networks and agencies created after pioneer initiatives in the US, Canada and Europe 2 . Simultaneously SI labels an increasing diversity of maker movements and societal organizational experiments across the world involving actors from government, business and civil society (Edwards-Schachter et al, 2012;Hassan, 2013;Battisti, 2014). In the last decade, SI has been fueled by a plethora of non-profit incubators, social accelerators and hybrid platforms (Peters et al, 2004;BENISI, 2013).…”

Open social innovation in living labs

“…The first one refers to the study conducted by Edwards-Schachter, Matti & Alcántara (2012), where it is suggested that living labs are a useful tool for identifying community needs and enhancing local development support and integrating technological and social innovations into local governance policies and processes. The second is the study by Battisti (2014), which argues that the fields of organizational innovation and innovation centered on the user can build an understanding of living labs and the development of social innovations from the proposition of a process model at the micro level indicating that the interaction between organizations and users can be ensured by ambidexterity, learning, collaboration and empowerment. The third is the work of Battisti (2019) that analysed four living labs, in particular focusing on understanding the role of key people in the social innovation process.…”

Entrepreneurial actions towards the success of exponential technologies

“…Furthermore, the organization innovation body of knowledge focused on living labs (e.g. Battisti, 2014) leverages Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as the central mechanism of support for high impact creation, which are based on the exponential capacity of such technology for scaling up business growth and societal impact. Ismail et al (2014) defined this exponential characteristic as the capacity of a technology to be diffused and adopted by the final end user in an exponential way, rather than a classical diffusion model based on linearity founded by Rogers (2003).…”