Living innovation laboratories—or living labs, for short—have joined the arsenal of research methods hoteliers are using to study new hotel concepts.
A few examples:
- Hilton Worldwide maintains a separate wing at the Hilton Garden Inn LAX, where the company invites hotel guests to stay and provide feedback on its next-generation guestrooms;
- Marriott International uses hotels to research new designs, such as a new lobby for Marriott’s Courtyard brand, which was tested at the Courtyard in Fair Oaks, Virginia;
- the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California, is testing a new booth for soundproof teleconferencing; and
- the La Quinta Hotel in Irving, Texas, experimented with different ways of laying out its breakfast foods to make it easier for guests to find what they want.
So what distinguishes a living lab from other sorts of laboratories? The primary distinction has to do with the difference between “real” and “artificial.” In living labs, customers and concepts are studied in real, live environments, whereas traditional laboratories study in artificially-constructed settings.
The Hilton Garden Inn LAX’s wing of test guestrooms is a living lab. What if instead Hilton obtained customer feedback on a model room constructed in a warehouse—an artificial lab? The two don’t compare.
Imagine yourself as the guinea pig. First, you stay overnight in a test guestroom at the Hilton Garden Inn LAX. Then, you spend time touring a model room in a warehouse. In which case do you think you would be able to provide more—and more insightful—advice?
Seeking advice
Insightful advice is what it’s all about. Living labs have become an effective instrument in a new paradigm that is variously referred to as open innovation, or co-innovation.
The co-innovation paradigm includes the practice of obtaining insightful advice from users during all phases of the innovation process, which is to say during initial research, concept development and implementation. The co-innovation paradigm also may involve suppliers and other stakeholders in the innovation process.
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| Kevin Holt |
Again, use your imagination in order to understand how a supplier and you, in turn, would benefit from a living lab. Imagine you are the supplier of some sort of furniture, fixture or equipment used in a guestroom. Do you think you would benefit more from studying guests in a “living” guestroom in a hotel or in a “dead” model room in a warehouse?
Pushing boundaries
Living labs can be far more extensive than just a guestroom or lobby. In Europe, where the concept is being applied with vigor, there are hundreds of applications, including living labs of homes, retail establishments, museums, theaters, airports, farms, fishing villages, streets, industrial districts, neighborhoods and even an entire city of 60,000 people.
The European applications of living labs suggest creative applications in our industry. Consider, for example, the idea of making living labs out of the area surrounding a hotel, such as a mixed-use development, a street, neighborhood or an entire tourist destination. One can easily imagine how boutique or lifestyle hoteliers who work to infuse their hotels with local culture would benefit from turning the surrounding neighborhood into a living lab.
Implementing the living lab concept can be as simple as defining the boundaries of the lab and using the “try something out and see what happens” method of experimentation. But if you want to get the most research return for your dollar, you’ll need to take a more sophisticated approach, one that includes:
- establishing the research question or hypothesis;
- defining the unit of analysis and method of measurement;
- designing an experiment to answer the question or prove the hypothesis;
- implementing the experiment using disciplined research methods, such as the observation and interview protocols that are used by ethnographers; and
- interpreting the results.
There are also meta issues to consider, such as recruiting users, contracting with them and getting and keeping them engaged. And with larger labs, like mixed-use projects and neighborhoods, you’ll need to consider such issues as the planning, governance and support structures that are necessary to coordinate multiple researchers. Studies indicate that where multiple researchers are involved, hotel and retail facilities stand to benefit the most by being the prime integrators of the information that is captured.
Are living labs worth the effort? Brand executives appear to think so. Perhaps it’s time you think about them, too.
Kevin Holt is the president of Co. Innovation Consulting, a lodging industry strategy and innovation consultancy. The company uses cutting-edge methods and technology to help hotels and industry organizations gain competitive advantage. Its services include hotel market studies, market segmentation studies, and design research and workshops and innovation initiatives pertaining to competitive and innovation strategy, B2B sales strategy, lodging concept design, service and customer experience design, and performance improvement. For more information, go to www.coinnovationconsulting.com. Or you can contact Kevin by calling 602-510-8080 or emailing kholt@coinnovationconsulting.com.
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