Springwise brought this Workspring Living Lab to my attention earlier this week. Based in Chicago, this commercially available meeting space will double as a lab to test new products from office furniture manufacturer Steelcase.
As Herman Miller made apparent with their ground-breaking Aeron ergonomic chair back in the early 90’s, there is much more to an office chair than keeping your bum off of the floor, as my bum will gladly testify.
So What?
Wikipedia defines a Living Lab as a “….new research paradigm integrating both a user centred multidisciplinary research approach and a user community driven innovation based on real life experiments.”
Living Labs first arose in the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) space and are particularly strong in Europe where the EU is promoting via several initiatives and a map of them is avalable at OpenLivingLabs.
In essence they are a half-way house for innovations that are ready to escape the laboratory but are not yet sufficiently developed to survive in the real world. A Living Lab is a place where innovations can be monitored and evaluated in a realistic but controilled environment whilst being used by end users. The observaions and feedback generated can then be used to adpat and further develop the innovaion as well as maybe better positioning the innovaion in the marketplace.
Living Labs are another step in the evolution of innovation as it migrates from a closed and R&D dominated focus to a more open and connected paradigm more closely focused on satisfying real needs and attuned to real users from day one. They are another way to engage users and customers earlier in the innovation process and this is very important for the increasingly complex products and services that require a high level of user acceptance in order to succeed, such as mobile data services.
Maybe office furniture does not immediately fall into this category and this Steelcase initiative is more about marketing than innovation (or innovation in marketing?) but either way we are going to see more of these "middle-space" or "bridging" initiatives both within and outside of ICT.
As Herman Miller made apparent with their ground-breaking Aeron ergonomic chair back in the early 90’s, there is much more to an office chair than keeping your bum off of the floor, as my bum will gladly testify.
So What?
Wikipedia defines a Living Lab as a “….new research paradigm integrating both a user centred multidisciplinary research approach and a user community driven innovation based on real life experiments.”
Living Labs first arose in the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) space and are particularly strong in Europe where the EU is promoting via several initiatives and a map of them is avalable at OpenLivingLabs.
In essence they are a half-way house for innovations that are ready to escape the laboratory but are not yet sufficiently developed to survive in the real world. A Living Lab is a place where innovations can be monitored and evaluated in a realistic but controilled environment whilst being used by end users. The observaions and feedback generated can then be used to adpat and further develop the innovaion as well as maybe better positioning the innovaion in the marketplace.
Living Labs are another step in the evolution of innovation as it migrates from a closed and R&D dominated focus to a more open and connected paradigm more closely focused on satisfying real needs and attuned to real users from day one. They are another way to engage users and customers earlier in the innovation process and this is very important for the increasingly complex products and services that require a high level of user acceptance in order to succeed, such as mobile data services.
Maybe office furniture does not immediately fall into this category and this Steelcase initiative is more about marketing than innovation (or innovation in marketing?) but either way we are going to see more of these "middle-space" or "bridging" initiatives both within and outside of ICT.
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1 comment:
For a deeper look at Steelcase's Workplace of the Future see this post from schneider at http://www.schneiderism.com/thoughts-on-value-effectiveness-and-getting-to-the-workplace-of-the-future/
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