The innovation laboratories support and foster the systematic development of innovations by bringing the people, environment and the methodological expertise together. Such type of structures play a major role in leveraging the existing methods and tools in the field of service innovation on one hand, and adapting the new methodological approaches to the field on the other hand. Thus, we argue that they can act as intermediaries in adapting the concept of round trip engineering to the field of service innovation. In this context, to develop the deeper understanding of the phenomenon, the innovation laboratories were thoroughly investigated through in-depth expert interviews. The interviews were intended to develop deep understanding of the structural and functional aspects of innovation laboratories in order to identify the current practices and potential of innovation labs in applying the systematic approaches to different phases of innovation life cycle. They were also aimed to identify the methodological and technological support that the innovation labs might need.

The Department of Business Information Systems at the University of Leipzig conducted a web based study on innovation laboratories worldwide. About 190 innovation laboratory websites could get identified. The innovation laboratories were evaluated and categorized according to the descriptions on the websites.

The innovation laboratories support and foster the systematic development of innovations by bringing the people, environment and the methodological expertise together. Such type of structures play a major role in leveraging the existing methods and tools in the field of service innovation on one hand, and adapting the new methodological approaches to the field on the other hand. Thus, we argue that they can act as intermediaries in adapting the concept of round trip engineering to the field of service innovation. In this context, to develop the deeper understanding of the phenomenon, the innovation laboratories were thoroughly investigated through in-depth expert interviews. The interviews were intended to develop deep understanding of the structural and functional aspects of innovation laboratories in order to identify the current practices and potential of innovation labs in applying the systematic approaches to different phases of innovation life cycle. They were also aimed to identify the methodological and technological support that the innovation labs might need.

The Department of Business Information Systems at the University of Leipzig conducted a web based study on innovation laboratories worldwide. About 190 innovation laboratory websites could get identified. The innovation laboratories were evaluated and categorized according to the descriptions on the websites.

Over the recent years, the paradigm of Innovation Laboratories (abr. InnoLabs) is gaining an increasing attention among business organizations as a potential source of assistance in the process of the development of new or the improvement of their existing products and/or services. Business organizations approach the InnoLabs in the search for assistance in dealing with the challenges of the often times complex and uncertain innovation process, and ultimately become successful in their innovation projects. Although the overall goal of the existing InnoLabs is to support the systematic, effective, and efficient innovation development, they target different innovation challenges and thereby vary in their focus and service offerings. As a consequence, all the innovation support that might be needed in the course of an innovation process remains dispersed among different InnoLabs. In this esteem, this thesis aims to centralize all the mediated support offered by the existing InnoLabs by bringing them into a collaborative network. In pursuance of this, initially, the diversity among the existing InnoLabs in terms of their structural and functional manifestations is explored by employing a triangulation of online survey and in-depth expert interviews with the InnoLab facilitators. Subsequently, based on the diversity observed herein, the incentives, approaches, and possibilities of interconnection among InnoLabs are determined. Having conceptualized the framework for inter-InnoLab collaboration, the next part of this thesis deals with facilitating such collaborations in an online space. The internet, since its inception, has drastically altered the practices of intra- and inter-organizational connectivity. Recently, one could observe a growing interest among all types of organizations towards the social networking sites (abr. SNSs) as an effective medium for reaching out to a global audience. As a result, a significant amount of business related information is already available and continuously accumulating on SNSs. However, the SNSs fall inadequate in supporting the inter-InnoLab collaboration because of the missing dedicated functionalities, isolated platform boundaries, platform dependencies, lack of support for domain-specific features, privacy concerns, and issues of data transparency. In response to this, this thesis advocates the designing of dedicated inter-organizational collaboration platforms with seamless integration of SNS data. Successively, employing a design science research approach, a dedicated, domain specific, and SNS integrated web-based collaboration platform (the InnoLab_Net) is designed for supporting inter-InnoLab collaborative activities.

Over the recent years, the paradigm of Innovation Laboratories (abr. InnoLabs) is gaining an increasing attention among business organizations as a potential source of assistance in the process of the development of new or the improvement of their existing products and/or services. Business organizations approach the InnoLabs in the search for assistance in dealing with the challenges of the often times complex and uncertain innovation process, and ultimately become successful in their innovation projects. Although the overall goal of the existing InnoLabs is to support the systematic, effective, and efficient innovation development, they target different innovation challenges and thereby vary in their focus and service offerings. As a consequence, all the innovation support that might be needed in the course of an innovation process remains dispersed among different InnoLabs. In this esteem, this thesis aims to centralize all the mediated support offered by the existing InnoLabs by bringing them into a collaborative network. In pursuance of this, initially, the diversity among the existing InnoLabs in terms of their structural and functional manifestations is explored by employing a triangulation of online survey and in-depth expert interviews with the InnoLab facilitators. Subsequently, based on the diversity observed herein, the incentives, approaches, and possibilities of interconnection among InnoLabs are determined. Having conceptualized the framework for inter-InnoLab collaboration, the next part of this thesis deals with facilitating such collaborations in an online space. The internet, since its inception, has drastically altered the practices of intra- and inter-organizational connectivity. Recently, one could observe a growing interest among all types of organizations towards the social networking sites (abr. SNSs) as an effective medium for reaching out to a global audience. As a result, a significant amount of business related information is already available and continuously accumulating on SNSs. However, the SNSs fall inadequate in supporting the inter-InnoLab collaboration because of the missing dedicated functionalities, isolated platform boundaries, platform dependencies, lack of support for domain-specific features, privacy concerns, and issues of data transparency. In response to this, this thesis advocates the designing of dedicated inter-organizational collaboration platforms with seamless integration of SNS data. Successively, employing a design science research approach, a dedicated, domain specific, and SNS integrated web-based collaboration platform (the InnoLab_Net) is designed for supporting inter-InnoLab collaborative activities.