Date & Time
30 September 2026, 11:00 – 12:15
Room
Galapagos
Chaired by
Dimitri Schuurman
Senior Research Strategist, ENoLL
Dimitri Schuurman
Senior Research Strategist, ENoLLDimitri is a university business developer at research group imec-MICT-Ghent University where he is responsible for research on inclusive design, impact via Living Labs, and futures studies, all in the context of emerging technologies. He is a visiting professor of strategic design and innovation management at Ghent University and works part-time for the European Network of Living Labs as Senior Research Strategist. His PhD on innovation management in Living Labs developed a three-layered model that is widely used in Living Lab research and practice. Finally, Dimitri is active as an independent consultant in open innovation, user innovation and strategic innovation management.
Type of Session
Research Session
Description
Following a rigorous evaluation process, the OLLD26 evaluation committee has accepted the research papers for this year’s conference. All accepted papers engage with the conference theme, “Living Labs Impacts and Values for a Changing World,” and have been classified into five sub-tracks:
- Track 1: Living Labs for Grand Societal Challenges
- Track 2: Living Labs for Policies, Governance, Collaboration, and Innovation Ecosystems
- Track 3: Living Labs for Inclusive Soci(et)al Engagement
- Track 4: Living Labs for Business and Emerging Technology
- Track 5: Living Labs Operations, Methods, Tools, and Impact
Papers selected by the Evaluation Committee
- A Living Lab approach to needs-driven policy design and policy implementation through interconnected Double Diamond processes
- Making Living Labs value tangible beyond output metrics: A co-created indicator framework grounded in practice
- Where impact actually happens: ethnographic assessment in Living Labs
- Comparing contexts, comparing Impact: A meta-comparative case study of Living Lab impact assessment
- Reshaping Local Climate Adaptation Governance Through Living Labs
- From participation to inclusive governance: The case of a campus Living Lab at the Jagiellonian University
A Living Lab approach to needs-driven policy design and policy implementation through interconnected Double Diamond processes
Abstract:
This article explores how Living Lab principles and a Double Diamond framework support needs-driven rural digital policy design and context-sensitive policy implementation in cross-border contexts.
The study is situated in the Torne Valley, a Finnish-Swedish rural border region characterised by fragmented governance structures, long distances, and limited institutional coordination. Building on previous work on Living Lab-inspired policy co-creation, the article investigates how knowledge generated through participatory co-creation can be translated into institutional practice.
Following Design Science Research Methodology, the study develops a policy model structured around two interconnected Double Diamond processes. In the first process, Living Lab principles function as generative mechanisms that enable participatory co-creation, generating an understanding of rural needs and local contexts that is structured into needs-driven knowledge for policy design. In the second process, the Living Lab principles are reapplied within institutional contexts, generating an institutional understanding of rural needs and contexts that creates institutional learning and supports context-sensitive policy implementation.
Empirical material was collected through participatory workshops, interviews, focus groups, and collaborative Living Lab activities across four policy areas. The article contributes to Living Lab and policy implementation research by demonstrating how participatory knowledge can be translated into institutional learning through interconnected Double Diamond processes.
Dr. Johanna Lindberg
Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
Dr. Johanna Lindberg
Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, Luleå University of Technology, SwedenDr. Johanna Lindberg is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) and project leader of BraDT (Resilient Digital Transformation in Rural Communities). Her research focuses on resilient digital transformation in rural communities, with particular attention to self-organization, bottom-linked governance, and regional digital service ecosystems. Working closely with rural communities, public organisations, and civil society, she explores how digital innovation and Rural Living Lab approaches can strengthen local capacity, service provision, and engagement in digital change. She received her PhD in Information Systems in 2024 with a thesis on empowering and inclusive societal rural digital transformation. Before joining LTU, she worked for more than 20 years with regional and local development, including digitalisation, rural and environmental issues.
Making Living Labs value tangible beyond output metrics: A co-created indicator framework grounded in practice
Abstract:
Living Labs are widely used as infrastructures for real‑world experimentation and co‑creation addressing societal and sustainability challenges. However, existing evaluation approaches often rely on output-oriented metrics and struggle to capture the broader value generated through Living Lab activities, spanning operational performance, ecosystem and territorial dynamics, participant outcomes, and academic knowledge production.
This paper addresses this gap by presenting a co‑developed indicator framework designed to capture the diverse forms of value generated through Living Lab activities while remaining feasible for implementation in heterogeneous real‑world and operational contexts. The framework was co-developed through an iterative, participatory methodology combining evaluation expertise, applied research practice, and Living Lab manager co-creation, within the Swiss SWICE consortium. Grounded in an impact model, it adopts a Key Value Indicator (KVI) approach aligned with core Living Lab principles. The resulting framework comprises 20 core indicators organised across seven dimensions, capturing Living Lab operations, real‑world experimentation, ecosystem engagement, territorial embeddedness, participant‑level outcomes, and academic impact.
The framework was designed to be transferable and replicable across diverse Living Lab settings. A first pilot application across six heterogeneous Living Labs demonstrates that these dimensions can be operationalised even within existing reporting processes. For the Living Lab community, the framework offers a concrete tool supporting monitoring, learning, cross‑site comparison, and impact communication for Quadruple Helix actor groups.
Jasmin Annaheim
Project Manager, enconcept AG
Jasmin Annaheim
Project Manager, enconcept AGJasmin Annaheim works as a Project Manager at econcept AG in Zurich. Her focus lies on climate protection and renewable energy, where she supports clients and public institutions through applied research, impact evaluation and consulting on environmental and energy transition challenges. Much of her work unfolds within political processes, where she brings together the inputs of diverse stakeholders to help shape workable solutions. In doing so, she combines technical know-how on the sustainable use of natural resources with an understanding of the legal and political levers for solving environmental problems.
Violaine Coard
Research Program Coordinator and Innovation Coach, Smart Living Lab in Fribourg
Violaine Coard
Research Program Coordinator and Innovation Coach, Smart Living Lab in FribourgViolaine Coard is Research Program Coordinator and Innovation Coach at the Smart Living Lab in Fribourg, Switzerland. Specialized in Living Lab methodologies, stakeholder engagement and impact evaluation, she supports sustainability and energy transition initiatives. Her work focuses on helping researchers and practitioners identify needs, co-design solutions, and develop collaborative projects that are both user-centered and implementable in practice. Drawing on experience across academic, cultural, commercial, and technological settings, she brings a transversal perspective to innovation and collaboration.
Where impact actually happens: ethnographic assessment in Living Labs
Abstract:
This paper demonstrates an approach to ethnographic assessment that complements existing qualitative evaluation frameworks in Urban Living Labs, using deep scaling, the embedding of innovation within everyday practices, relationships, and meanings, as its central impact indicator. Where many assessment approaches rely on facilitated co-creation activities and stakeholder self-reporting, ethnographic assessment offers a way of noticing impact where it actually happens: in the slow, mutual, and often invisible processes through which a Living Lab project becomes part of the stakeholders’ everyday practices.
Drawing on longitudinal fieldwork in an EU-funded Living Lab urban logistics project, we identify three mechanisms through which deep scaling unfolds: the ethnographers’ entry into existing networks of trust, attunement to the temporal rhythms of everyday working life, and sustained attention to the social lives of material objects. Crucially, ethnographic presence does not merely document these processes, it also actively generates momentum for stakeholder engagement by becoming part of the relational fabric it sets out to study. We propose the concept of the Living Lab ethnographic catalyst as a practical role through which this form of embedded, process-oriented assessment can be institutionalised within Living Lab projects from the outset.
Melania Mihalcea
PhD student, Halmstad University
Melania Mihalcea
PhD student, Halmstad UniversityMelania Mihalcea is a PhD student and part of the REBEL research programme at Halmstad University. She has been part of the recently completed GREEN-LOG project since 2024, conducting ethnographic research in Urban Living Labs, with an interest in the long-term engagement and integration of citizen & user perspectives within Living Labs. She is also researching future socially sustainable student housing through a design ethnographic approach that centers co-creation as a way of learning about, designing for, and reflecting upon the social experience of a living space. She has a background in literature and film, and enjoys incorporating literary perspectives within design research, and experimenting with integrating audiovisual methods in participatory design projects centered around sustainable living.
Vaike Fors
Professor Design Ethnography, Halmstad University
Vaike Fors
Professor Design Ethnography, Halmstad UniversityVaike Fors is Professor in Design Ethnography at Halmstad University, Sweden. She is an experienced international leader of Living Lab projects across sectors and disciplines, that focuses on co-creation of future liveable places based in research on how people learn to live with technology in everyday life. Recent publications include the co-authored book Design Ethnography (Routledge) and the co-edited volume the de Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures.
Comparing contexts, comparing Impact: A meta-comparative case study of Living Lab impact assessment
Abstract:
Living Labs are increasingly used as open innovation intermediaries to address complex societal challenges, yet approaches for assessing their impact remain fragmented and context-dependent.
This paper explores how Living Lab impact assessment frameworks take shape across different governance and cultural contexts through a comparative multiple-case study of Living Lab organizations in Belgium, Japan, and the European Network of Living Labs. Using qualitative cross-case analysis, the study compares contexts, conceptualizations of impact, methodological designs, and assessment functions.
Findings result in a layered model of context-sensitive impact assessment, showing how assessment frameworks emerge through interactions between governance and cultural conditions, impact assessment architectures, and the practical functions assessment serves. The study contributes to Living Lab research by shifting attention from impact measurement as a project management task toward impact assessment as a contextually embedded and functionally diverse architecture, offering a comparative basis for further methodological development in Living Lab evaluation.
Ben Robaeyst
Researcher, imec-mict-UGent
Ben Robaeyst
Researcher, imec-mict-UGentBen Robaeyst is a researcher at imec-mict-UGent, working at the intersection of living lab research, social innovation, and futures studies. His living lab research focuses on how impact in Living Labs can be understood and assessed in ways that are sensitive to context, participation, and the complexity of innovation processes. Rather than reducing impact to predefined indicators or short-term outputs, he examines how Living Labs generate broader forms of value, including knowledge development, network formation, capacity building, societal agenda-setting, and the creation of concrete solutions.
Reshaping Local Climate Adaptation Governance Through Living Labs
Abstract:
Climate adaptation governance increasingly demands co-produced, locally embedded approaches that go beyond top-down policy instruments.
This paper examines how Living Labs can function as transformative governance spaces for climate adaptation, drawing on the PRO-CLIMATE project’s establishment of six Living Labs: Sligo (Ireland), Leipzig (Germany), Badajoz Province (Spain), Bergen (Norway), Gdansk (Poland), and Zakynthos (Greece). Using baseline assessment data, semi-structured interviews, and co-design workshops conducted across all six sites, we analyse how these LLs reshape stakeholder relationships, redefine institutional roles, and generate actionable adaptation strategies tailored to their local socio-ecological contexts.
Our findings reveal that Living Labs are more than experimental environments; when embedded within the Quadruple Helix Model and supported by co-created Pilot Operational Plans, they become adaptive governance platforms capable of bridging local knowledge, civic agency, and institutional capacity. We identify four governance dimensions that Living Labs reshape: stakeholder integration, co-design of focal action situations, capacity building, and policy alignment. Cross-site comparison surfaces common barriers: governance fragmentation, exclusion of informal actors, limited technical capacity. Shared enablers contain place-based co-creation, change agent roles, and iterative learning. We argue that the Living Lab approach represents a promising mechanism for multi-level climate adaptation governance in Europe, provided structural and institutional conditions are favourable.
Xu Liu
Postdoctoral researcher
Xu Liu
Postdoctoral researcherXu Liu’s research focuses on understanding and facilitating social transformation to increase climate resilience. Her expertise centres on climate change participatory governance, evidence-based decision making, and serious gaming as innovative engagement tools to raise public climate awareness. She explores how data, governance structures, and public engagement can be effectively connected to empower institutions and communities in co-creating climate adaptation strategies. Her academic trajectory spans from her PhD research on understanding the role of data in sustainable urban mobility transition-examining governance, policy, and travellers’ behaviours, to her current work on living labs and serious gaming as mechanisms for facilitating climate adaptative behavioural change and strengthening participatory climate governance. Together, these research works form her interdisciplinary academic profile that integrates serious gaming, climate governance, and sustainability transition to support inclusive, resilient, and actionable climate adaptation.
From participation to inclusive governance: The case of a campus Living Lab at the Jagiellonian University
Abstract:
Living Labs are presented as inclusive spaces for open innovation, co-creation and societal engagement. However, participation alone does not guarantee diversity, influence, or long-term impact.
This paper examines how inclusivity is designed, implemented and reflected upon in CaLiLab, the Campus Living Lab at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Drawing on a qualitative single case study, the article analyses CaLiLab documentation, selected pilot projects, institutional materials, and reflective observations from the Lab’s development between 2023 and 2025. The analysis focuses on several dimensions of inclusivity: organizational, epistemic, social, relational, methodological, environmental, and governance-related.
The findings show that inclusivity in a university-based living lab is not limited to involving diverse stakeholders in individual projects. Rather, it depends on institutional arrangements, facilitation practices, communication channels, methodological choices, and long-term learning mechanisms. The paper contributes to the debate on living labs for inclusive societal engagement by conceptualizing Campus Living Lab as intermediary infrastructures between academia and society. It concludes that inclusive governance requires moving beyond participation towards shared responsibility, reflexive evaluation, and sustained institutional support.
Dorota Rak
Assistant Professor, Institute of Information Studies at the Jagiellonian University
Dorota Rak
Assistant Professor, Institute of Information Studies at the Jagiellonian UniversityTeam member of Campus Living Lab and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Information Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Her research focuses on user information and digital literacy, selected areas of human information behavior, information visualization, service design, and co-creation methods. She is particularly interested in utilizing user-centered design and design thinking approaches to designing solutions that address the diverse needs of library users. She has participated in international and national research projects and is a certified facilitator of design thinking processes.
Magdalena Sawczuk
Assistant Professor, Institute of Entrepreneurship of the Jagiellonian University
Magdalena Sawczuk
Assistant Professor, Institute of Entrepreneurship of the Jagiellonian UniversityAssistant Professor, research and teaching staff member at the Institute of Entrepreneurship of the Jagiellonian University. A member of the Institute for Research on Cultural Organizations and a member of the Campus Living Lab team. Actively participates in recognized national and international conferences, organised, among others, by EIASM and ACEI. Her research interests focus on value co-creation processes, innovative activities (including crowdsourcing and crowdfunding), as well as relationship management and stakeholder experience creation, with particular emphasis on the context of museum institutions.