The Innovation Power of Living Labs to Enable Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

Living labs are becoming increasingly popular as suitable arrangements for cocreation and innovation by bringing multiple stakeholders together to work on (solving) complex societal challenges. University campuses are ideal places for living labs, and many universities use such arrangements for various experiments in relation to sustainable future initiatives. Despite the popularity of the living lab concept, much remains unclear about their ways of operation and their potential to innovate. This study aims to show some of the current challenges of on-campus living labs involved with experiments concerning the energy transition. A total of six different living labs were examined based on semistructured interviews with different stakeholders ranging from researchers to operational staff members. Our results show several internal and external challenges, such as the living lab set-up and multiple operational challenges concerning administration, coordination and governance. More external challenges include the overall embeddedness of living labs within the more traditional organizational structure of the university and the tensions between academic and operational processes. Despite these challenges, we conclude that a university campus is still a fruitful place for living labs to cocreate and innovate. By creating awareness and understanding of the challenges living labs face, future initiatives may be facilitated better so that campus living labs are able to unlock their potential to innovate and contribute to societal challenges sooner rather than later.