Open Labs and Innovation Management: The Dynamics of Communities and Ecosystems

This book examines returns on experience and managerial practices to generate deeper collaboration, intensify co-creation, support start-ups and established companies to explore, develop, and accelerate their projects thanks to open labs (living labs, fab labs, coworking spaces, "third spaces", etc.). Open labs are the beatbox to create a rhythm in ecosystems and make all stakeholders move forward, faster, together. This book proposes a framework to understand how open labs, innovation hubs, and collaborative spaces contribute to ecosystems.

The book looks beyond the short-term effects of open labs and identifies four main dimensions: communities, physical spaces, events, and portfolios of services offered to private businesses, entrepreneurs, and start-ups, established companies, or public institutions. Drawing on extensive field research lasting over five years, with more than 40 cases and more than 200 interviews plus direct observation within different environments, this edited book investigates how managers run these labs, and how "users" or "clients" evolve when benefitting from their services. All chapters analyse how an actual management impacts the dynamics of communities, how it shapes the co-evolution between open labs and their ecosystems, and how the management of the physical space impacts the mission of the lab and its role in the ecosystem.

Open Labs and Innovation Research is written for scholars and researchers in the fields of innovation studies and management science. This book can also inform teaching, public policymaking, and professional practice.

Valérie Mérindol is Professor at the Paris School of Business. She teaches the management of creativity and innovation and also knowledge management.

David W. Versailles is Professor at the Paris School of Business, lecturing in strategic management, innovation studies, and business modelling. David is also founding partner and CEO in ISK Consulting SA (Luxembourg), and a visiting professor at Luxembourg School of Business.

Together, Valérie and David co-head the PSB New Practices for Innovation and Creativity (newPIC) chair, which specialises in the investigation of the micro-foundations of innovation and creativity.