Living Labs versus Lean Startups: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Although we seem to be living in an era where founding a startup has never been easier, studies point to the high mortality rates of these organizations. This “startup hype” has also induced many practitioner-based innovation management approaches that lack empirical studies and validation. Moreover, a lot of these approaches have rather similar angles, but use different wordings. Therefore, in this article, we look into two of these “hyped” concepts: the lean startup and living labs. We review the academic studies on these topics and explore a sample of 86 entrepreneurial projects based on project characteristics and outcomes. Our main finding is that the two approaches appear to be complementary. Living labs are powerful instruments to implement the principles of the lean startup, as the real-life testing and multi-disciplinary approach of living labs seem to generate more actionable outcomes. However, living labs also require the flexibility of a startup – ideally a lean one – to actually deliver this promise. Thus, rather than picking a winner in this comparison, we argue that combining the concepts’ different strengths can bring clear benefits.

Keywords

• entrepreneurs
• impact
• Innovation management
• lean startup
• Living lab
• Open innovation
• testing
• user innovation