Towards a Living Labs research agenda

Abstract

This paper proposes a research agenda for Living Labs as after 20 years of Living Lab-practice, theory building is not up to par with the steady growth and expansion of practice in terms of topics, sectors and sheer number of practitioners and initiatives. By means of a literature review, a workshop with the Living Lab research community (N=60) and a self-assessment of Living Labs on key topics (N=70) we were able to identify the following main action points to be tackled by future Living Lab research: 1. Linking the different levels of Living Labs to existing theories and literature streams; 2. Approaches to increase impact, value creation & scaling of Living Labs; 3. Harmonization & differentiation of Living Labs; 4. Long(er)-term user & stakeholder involvement; 5. Inclusive involvement. Especially in terms of impact, there is a big demand from practitioners’ perspective which could be addressed by first emphasizing the harmonisation process of the different Living Labs elements and terminology and subsequently theorising and conceptualising the current diversity in terms of themes and topics.