| dc.description.abstract | Living lab is a research concept that was created by William J. Mitchel at MIT in the year 2003 (Mitchel, 2003); it was based on how the city dwellers would be actively involved in the urban planning and design. It is a user centered, open innovation ecosystem, operates in a territory in this case it can be region based, national or global. In Kenya we have 25 living labs; most of these labs are funded by the donors, however, there has been a high rate of failure, thereby expected outcomes are not fully realized. The aim of this research was to assess the sustainability of Living Labs in Kenya hence propose a model that can be generalized to other living labs in developing countries.
This research was based on a survey design. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires from innovators, users and staff. The questionnaires and interview guides were created based on the Four Capital Method of Sustainable Development Evaluation Framework. The research was limited to Nairobi region. The findings were: Some innovators are not familiar with the living labs, the living labs are innovative and prepared to survive in future, some labs have strategic plans on how to pursue future environment and have developed ways of choosing right people to incubate, type of skills required and inability to get enough funding from the host organizations and limited knowledge on the supervision level of the operations. The study concludes by emphasizing on the of user involvement during innovation process.
The study finally recommends the living labs to expand their capacities to accommodate more people to ensure more innovations are supported at a time; the senior managers in charge of the living labs increase the level of supervision at every level to ensure that the labs are effective in their incubation efforts and institutionalize support of the host organization to the labs to ensure continued growth and expansion. | en_US |
