Understanding Living Labs: A Framework for Evaluating Sustainable Innovation

Living Labs have become key instruments for fostering sustainable and user-driven innovation, yet their conceptual ambiguity and fragmented evaluation practices limit their effectiveness. This paper synthesises academic and policy literature to develop a comprehensive qualitative framework for assessing Living Labs across nine dimensions: governance, user engagement, methods, infrastructure, outputs, scalability, sustainability, equity, and learning. The framework integrates a temporal perspective to capture short-, medium-, and long-term impacts. Exploring the INNOFEIT Energy Living Lab in Skopje, North Macedonia, through the lens of this framework demonstrates how a university-based Living Lab can function as both an experimental ecosystem and a policy instrument supporting the digital and green transitions. The findings reveal strong methodological and infrastructural maturity but highlight the need for deeper co-creation, broader stakeholder inclusion, and longitudinal evaluation. The proposed framework offers a practical tool for improving comparability, reflexivity, and institutional learning across diverse Living Lab contexts, ultimately strengthening their role in sustainable innovation governance.