Living labs for Impact assessment of public sector innovation ecosystems?

In their efforts to address key societal challenges, public sector organizations have been orchestrating the emergence of innovation ecosystems. However, evidence about their real outcomes and impact mechanisms remains scarce. Current impact assessment processes struggle on two fronts: they require scientific rigor to establish evidence and causality, yet must remain adaptive to contextual specificities of public sector action. We aim to reconcile contextual embeddedness with methodological rigor for an impact assessment capable of identifying created value and guiding the intended contributions of public innovation in their territories. As a first step, this research in progress asks: How do conceptual definitions of outcomes and impact in innovation ecosystems align with what is actually documented in empirical literature? We conducted two literature reviews: first, a narrative literature synthesis clarifying key concepts; second, an exploratory systematic literature review identifying empirically reported outcomes and impacts. Comparing both reveals a significant gap between what is assessed, how it is assessed, and to whom the insights are addressed, leading to a lack of conceptual clarity, under-documentation, and poor impact attribution. These findings point toward Living Labs as a promising methodological response, as their iterative, multi-stakeholder, context-sensitive, and practitioner-oriented characteristics directly address the identified issues.