Analysing stakeholder engagement: stakeholder involvement in urban living labs and the main processes needed to establish a living laboratory

Despite the vast research on urban experimental platforms called living laboratories, little is known about how living lab ecosystems engage with stakeholders, or what level of stakeholder engagement works best in such open innovations. My PhD research explores these knowledge gaps with a specific aim to investigate how living labs identify and involve stakeholders. In fulfilling the aim of this research, I answer the following three research questions: (i) How are stakeholders identified and involved during the design, implementation and evaluation phases of the analyzed living labs? (ii) What are the main stakeholder motivations for participating in urban living lab developments? (iii) What are the key roles, and associated characteristics, needed for effective stakeholdering within living labs? My research focuses on stakeholder engagement from different perspectives including citizen, business and policy angles and draws on insights from co-creative urban innovation and science and technology studies. In order to investigate the complex nature of interactions, this research adopts a qualitative method-based strategy. Accordingly, the data items consist of case-study analysis, semi-structured interviews and two major workshops. This thesis adopts thematic data analysis in which different perspectives on participant analysis are integrated with the aim of creating a more detailed insight into stakeholder engagement processes. As a potential value, the thesis offers empirical, theoretical, and practice and policy-related contributions and defines concepts for the living lab literature. Among theoretical contributions, the research identifies stakeholder involvement as a structure and also highlights the importance of collaboration in living labs. Furthermore, this research offers a multi-level stakeholder analysis framework to be utilized for co-creative developments in city transitions. To conclude, the framework offered in this thesis is to be adopted in the planning, implementing, and monitoring of open innovations, with the aim of aiding the development of future living labs and/or (re)forming existing living labs with the intention of (i) reaching common goals and (ii) enhancing the interactive nature of stakeholder actions within living labs. This thesis further solidifies the argument that living labs have the power to (re)shape urban environments and are also able to actively involve public-private-people sectors through harmonized collaboration.