Living Labs

The European Network of Living Labs (https://enoll.org/) currently defines Living Labs as “open innovation ecosystems in real-life environments based on a systematic user co-creation approach that integrates research and innovation activities in communities and/or multi-stakeholder environments, placing citizens and/or end-users at the centre of the innovation process”. Living Labs facilitate interactions between stakeholders to drive innovation and address real-world challenges. As such, they are ideally geared toward innovations that are both locally embedded and potentially scalable. Within them, typically all actors of the quadruple helix – research organizations, policymakers and public actors, business and industry, as well as civil society – come together to work on complex societal challenges by collaboratively developing and testing possible solutions (see Box 24.1). Living Labs generally share the following four characteristics: (1) a transdisciplinary approach to research and knowledge creation; (2) an iterative, experimental design committed to learning and reflexivity; (3) a long-term orientation toward societal transformation and an accompanying interest in transferability or scalability; and (4) a focus on a real-life setting.