Abstract
Living Labs have been introduced in the field of ICT as an environment for involving users in research and development processes, in order to utilize the co-creative potential of users. Even though Living Labs are suitable for involving users as co-creators, no Living Labs have been described in the literature as environments for the development of new services for online communities, in spite of the tremendous growth we have witnessed in the area of online communities during the past few years. The present paper argues for adopting the Living Lab approach as a way to meet current service development challenges in the field of online communities. The argument is based on a presentation of the state-of-the-art of Living Labs, a reflection on existing needs for research and development environments in the area of online community service development, and a set of requirements for a Living Lab for online community service development. The main contribution of the paper is to introduce the idea that the Living Lab approach may be used for purposes of online community service development and innovation. The author also hopes that the paper may be seen as a contribution to the ongoing discussion on what Living Labs should be.
