Design and Management of Innovation Laboratories: Toward a Performance Assessment Tool

There is a strong emergence of new spaces to foster innovation all over the world (Fablabs, Living Labs and Design Factories, among others). Past experiences have shown these types of projects involving “innovation laboratories” are at risk of not succeeding in their goals. Although several studies have tackled the problem of design, development and sustainability of innovation laboratories, there is still a gap in understanding how the capabilities and performance of these environments are affected by the strategic intentions at the early stages of design and functioning. Throughout this work, eight frameworks from the literature that analyze innovation laboratories are identified and compared. Then, based on both literature and the authors experience, an updated framework is proposed as the basis for a guidance tool for researchers and practitioners aiming to assess or to adapt an existing project. As part of the operationalization process of the framework, a maturity grid-based assessment tool is proposed to evaluate the maturity degree of an innovation laboratory. Afterwards, to evaluate the viability and to integrate the perception of innovation laboratory managers, an exploratory study with answers from fifteen laboratories from five different countries is performed. Insights and implications for emerging and already existent projects of innovation laboratories are then discussed. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd