Real-life experiments and business model innovation process: lessons from the Living Lab literature

If research has established experiments as an essential part of the BMI process, the literature has not elaborated on which alternative approaches exist to implement them, and how these may differ regarding their impact on the whole BMI process. One essential and underdeveloped aspect of experimentation is the testing environment, which is supposed to reproduce real-world constraints and opportunities while not undertaking the cost and risk of full-scale implementation. For this reason, this article investigates how disposing of a highly realistic environment, in the case of real-life experiments, affects the BMI process. This research addresses this question through a systematic review of the living lab literature, which contains many examples of real-life experiments. Our analysis suggests that experimenting in a real-life environment has wide consequences in the articulation of the multiple stages of the BMI process. It also suggests seeing experimentation, not only as a mean to engage with the environment to generate learning and reduce uncertainty, but as a mean to “enact” the environment by generating opportunities through action. Our findings point out the importance of methods to enhance stakeholder contribution in the exploration phase to complement testing and experiments in the BMI process.