How can city labs enhance the citizens’ motivation in different types of innovation activities?

The concept of living lab still remains open to different interpretations. Even if the general accepted goal is to focus on user driven innovation, there is a large diversity of innovation approaches in different living labs. To face the challenge of engaging participants, the different types of innovation activities have to be analyzed. The contribution of this article consists on building on the types of innovation mechanisms in living lab networks (Leminen 2013; Leminen et al. 2012)? by relating each type to a different theoretical innovation logic (methods for creativity; social innovation; open innovation; user innovation). Following a literature review of each logic, the article argues that each of them is related to a different type of localized space of collective innovation (Fab Labs, co-creation spaces, coworking spaces and hackerspaces) and its corresponding participants’ motivation. By understanding the different participation logics that are characteristic of different spaces, the article provides some insights for living lab practitioners about how to engage participants in the different innovation approaches in living labs.