Living Labs

Bloopers: Living Labs Report - Part 1: Generations

Living Labs are evolving over time, geography and in response to the challenges and opportunities for collective action. This post introduces Three Generations of evolution.

Sam Rye

01 Dec 2025 — 5 min read

Photo by Naoki Suzuki

This is Part 1 in a series of posts after the publishing of 'Advancing University Living Labs: relational infrastructure for transformative impact', with some outtakes which didn't make the final report, but I still want to share.

Context

What are Living Labs? Simply put, they're platforms for change; bringing together people from across government, business, civil society, academia and more, to co-create ways to address the challenges of our time.

Find out more:

Living Lab origins, developments, and future perspectives

This booklet provides a comprehensive introduction to the origins, evolution, and future outlook of the Living Lab movement. It has been created to guide readers through the development of Living Labs over the years and highlight the path ahead. While earlier publications, such as the “ENoLL & Its Community” booklet from 2014, covered certain aspects of Living Labs, this publication is the first to focus solely on the full trajectory of the movement—from its roots to the dynamic, expanding ecosystem it represents today. In recent years, the ENoLL Members Catalogue has focused on showcasing the community aspect of Living Labs, but there has been no single, consolidated publication devoted to exploring the historical background and future ambitions of this ever- growing movement. Over the past decade, both Living Lab research and practice have thrived. Certain foundational principles have converged, creating a shared framework for the movement, while other aspects, such as specific application domains, have diversified, demonstrating the adaptability of Living Labs to a wide range of challenges and contexts. As deeply rooted entities within their respective environments, LivingLabs are inherently shaped by their unique surroundings and networks of stakeholders. This connection makes them responsive to change and, in many instances, powerful drivers of positive transformation. By fostering more sustainable and desirable futures, Living Labs play an active role in shaping the course of innovation, amplifying their impact and societal relevance. This booklet is envisioned as a living document, evolving in step with the Living Lab movement. Developed from existing research, documentation, and practical experiences, it provides a reflection on the history and policies that have supported Living Labs, a snapshot of the current landscape, and a forward-looking perspective on emerging opportunities and challenges. Regular updates and contributions are planned to ensure that this publication remains relevant and aligned with the latest advancements in the Living Lab community. As part of ENoLL’s communication materials, this booklet is intended for a broad audience. It aims to be a valuable resource for professionals, institutions, and individuals with an interest in open and user-centred innovation, innovation management, policy development, and social and territorial innovation. Whether the reader is a researcher, policy-maker, business leader, or simply someone with a passion for innovative solutions, this booklet is designed to inform, inspire, and offer guidance on the transformative impact of Living Labs.

Zenodo

ENoLL 2025 Living Lab origins developments and future perspectives

Booklet - Living Lab origins, developments and future perspectives

ENoLL 2025 Living Lab origins developments and future perspectives.pdf

2 MB

Shift in Focus

One of the key shifts we made along the way with the report, was moving from a broader view of Living Labs as a field of practice, to a specific focus on University Living Labs, as an institutional infrastructure which orchestrates and integrates activity from across the large decentralised cluster of organisations we call a university.

This shift made sense, but it left me with various ideas and frames which no longer fit the mould.

The Outtakes

The Generations of Living Labs

For transparency, the following wasn't developed from rigorous research analysis - it was reflection and sensemaking across some of the gradual shifts I saw when I looked back at the characteristics of older living labs, a transition and evolution in Europe, and what I was seeing as contemporary approaches.

Originally I was focused on three main generations, with the sense that a fourth generation was emerging. I hope to write a little more about that generation in a future post in the series.

The following table aims to lay out some of the detail of the general characteristics I was seeing in each generation. These aren't meant to be hard and fast, and of course many labs may be a blend of elements across generations as they advanced practice, structures and more was possible.

The table below spans beyond the page limit (working on a better way to show this), so you might need to scroll left to right to uncover the detail in each generation.

*Lab Generation*	1st Generation	2nd Generation	3rd Generation
Guiding approach	Place	Process	Platform
Typical activity focus	Technical, infrastructure or data focus and people's interactions in place. Example: introducing new sustainable building technologies and energy use patterns in a specific building.	Development and adoption of new solutions across a precinct or region. Example: developing new services and literacy programs with town residents to shift energy demand.	Supporting multi-year change initiatives at multiple levels of the system. Example: addressing energy transitions in a region (or in multiple regions) through policy, infrastructure, institutional change, new services and products and community adoption.
Direction & decision making	Owned and governed by a single organisation or close partnership	Stewarded by a single organisation, direction enriched with consultation / participation from stakeholder groups	Co-governance approach, directing the lab activities from across quadruple helix with the ‘power of no’ for all parties
Funding model	Single funding type (e.g. project grant)	Dual finance, such as leveraged funding (e.g. philanthropic and research funding)	Blended finance (such as systemic investing approach), with varied business models potentially including revenue generation from solutions or service offerings.
Longevity	Run and done - closed after a period, such as 2 years	Longer runs (~4-10 years) with some forward flow on for ecosystem (e.g. agenda carried by another organisation)	Platform for systemic change work with enduring and evolving agenda, with enduring support and high levels of embeddedness and/or stability to catalyse change processes over time.
Innovation approach	Innovation management - e.g. funnel of ideas, tested with users, to result in a better product or service	Open innovation / innovation networks	Open collaborative innovation ecosystem, societal transition arenas, intermediary for mission approaches or challenge-led innovation
Evaluation approach	Retrospective evaluation of: 1) Solution outputs based on narrow parameters (e.g. end user usage, satisfaction etc)	Retrospective evaluation of: 1) Process effectiveness 2) Solution outputs/outcomes	Open and ongoing evaluation (such as through reflexive monitoring and evaluation) of multiple aspects: 1) Process effectiveness - refining, improving and documenting lab processes in real time. 2) Process outcomes - assessing outcomes generated by the lab process. 3) Initiative/Solution outcomes - assessing 6 capitals (or other framework) generated by the initiatives/solutions generated within the lab. 4) Transformative outcomes - assessing the contribution and attribution of outcomes and impacts of the lab in the broader ecosystem (such as second order impacts)
Primary sectors involved as partners	Business. Universities and research institutions.	Government. Civil Society. Universities and research institutions. Business.	Transition Networks & Catalysts. Government. Civil Society. Universities and research institutions. Business.