User‐led, citizen innovation at the interface of services

Abstract

Purpose

The paper attempts to reflect on user empowerment enabled by three contemporary approaches, namely living labs, open innovation and social computing, as innovation instruments for innovating products and services based on next generation networks (NGNs).

Design/methodology/approach

The paper takes the form of a literature review, with limited environmental scanning of web sources, industry news, etc.

Findings

User‐centric services can be a catalyst for promoting future service ecosystems over NGN. Open strategies may prove to be profitable avenues for incumbents who may consider the extension of the market from access services into value added services. The living lab perspective, used as an approach of developing NGNs, introduces the opportunity to open new markets in new regions where new products and services can be tested and deployed. Living labs can also be used to go beyond the current “launch‐and‐learn” approach in online social communities to active end‐user participation in the online communities' development process. NGNs may be particularly useful for social computing, by offering incentives to create novel services that are fully created, developed and deployed by users.

Originality/value

This paper argues that user‐led innovation could be a significant paradigm shift for innovating products and services, particularly in the specific context of NGNs. It argues that this focus is lacking today, with most of the attention on specific NGN technology and infrastructure issues.

Citation

Pascu, C. and van Lieshout, M. (2009), "User‐led, citizen innovation at the interface of services", info, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 82-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636690910996731