Some of the most important questions around Living Labs do not have one clear answer: how do you take a successful pilot to scale? How do you measure impact without turning evaluation into a reporting exercise? And as technologies and societies change, which values should guide the way we innovate? The Panel Sessions at OLLD26 are where those questions are put on the table. Across 17 sessions, experts with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives will come together to examine complex issues from different angles while bringing the audience into the discussion.
The programme spans health, mobility, food systems, artificial intelligence, citizen science, higher education, industry, climate action, and the future of cities. But these are not simply sequences of presentations. Sessions are built around moderated debates, roundtables and guided conversations, creating space for participants to question what they hear, contribute their own experience and challenge the perspectives in the room.
Some sessions will go even further in rethinking the traditional panel format. One will use a fishbowl format, with audience members stepping into the conversation to explore how Living Lab impact in higher education can be measured. Another will turn the room into an “Issue Wrestling Arena”, where participants take a physical position on provocative statements about placemaking and regeneration, making different perspectives, and the tensions between them, visible in the room.
What connects the 17 sessions is not a single sector or challenge, but a willingness to look at the questions that remain unresolved and at what meaningful impact requires in practice. Why do promising Living Lab solutions still struggle to scale after successful local experimentation? What does it take to move urban mobility innovation beyond publicly funded demonstrations towards sustainable, investable deployment? How can monitoring and evaluation become a tool for learning and improvement rather than simply an accountability requirement? And how can innovation respond to change while preserving values such as inclusion, trust and meaningful participation? The questions change from room to room, and so do the people discussing them. Living Lab practitioners will sit alongside researchers, policymakers, industry representatives, cities, entrepreneurs and other innovation actors. They will not necessarily agree, nor are they expected to.
This is where the value of being in the room becomes tangible. Beyond the perspectives brought by the panellists, the discussion creates space to reconsider familiar challenges, test ideas against different experiences, and identify approaches that may be relevant in other contexts. The value lies not only in the conclusions reached, but in the exchange that leads to them.
Whether you work directly with Living Labs or want to understand how collaborative innovation tackles the difficult step from experimentation to lasting impact, the Panel Sessions offer a space to engage with these questions as they are being explored, rather than simply hear about their outcomes. Come with a question, an experience or a different point of view. There will be room for it.
By Arianna Marucci – Junior Project Manager