Higher Education Institutions can play a crucial role in tackling today’s complex societal challenges through their innovation capacity. This capacity could be further unleashed by leveraging their vast knowledge base and opportunities for experimentation, collaboration, and co-creation on campus sites. In this regard, Living Labs represent a promising approach to solving complex social problems and are already being used in many Higher Education Institutions worldwide. However, there remains a need for a comprehensive understanding of their implications and implementation requirements, particularly when Higher Education Institutions aim to structurally harness their sustainable transformation potential beyond single initiatives. As such, there is a growing demand for concepts and tools that allow Higher Education Institutions to move from facilitating individual living lab initiatives to a more comprehensive approach. Responding to this demand, this chapter aims to support Higher Education Institutions in establishing the Campus as a Living Lab. Drawing on insights from an international Community of Practice, existing literature, and case studies, we offer a conceptualization of the “Campus as a Living Lab,” distinct from the traditional approach of individual living lab initiatives. The Campus as a Living Lab is a comprehensive, connected, and firmly embedded approach, striving to create synergies, knowledge exchange, and cross-fertilization. The whole campus and the organization are understood as a living lab, providing fertile ground for sustainable experimentation and innovation. We clarify the development stages of implementing this approach and introduce a practical tool for launching the Campus as a Living Lab, adaptable to diverse contexts. This chapter encourages Higher Education Institutions to transition from hosting stand-alone living labs and experiments to an integrated approach, enabling them to utilize their unique position to make significant contributions to sustainable transformation processes.

Universities, due to their sizeable estates and populations of staff and students, as well as their connections with, and impact within, their local and wider communities, have significant environmental, social and economic impacts. There is a strong movement for universities to become leaders in driving society towards a more sustainable future, through improving the sustainability of the built environment and the universities’ practices and operations, and through their educational, research and wider community engagement missions. Around the globe the concept of ‘Living Labs’ has emerged as an instrument to integrate these different aspects to deliver sustainability improvements, through engaging multiple stakeholders in all of these areas, and through the co-creation of projects to improve the sustainability of the campus environment and operations, and to link these to the education, research, and wider community missions of the institution. This chapter describes a living, shared framework and methodology, the ‘Campus as Living Lab’ learning system, created through global participatory workshops and Living Lab literature, aimed at supporting universities and their Sustainability (Coordinating) Offices in the development and monitoring of Living Lab projects. The framework includes seven categories of supportive data collection and three levels of details to meet different requirements of potential users. The Living Lab framework presented in this chapter, aims to create value and help universities maximise the benefit of Living Lab projects within an institution, support monitoring, reflection and learning from projects, and facilitate communication with stakeholders, and the sharing of practices and learning between peers across the globe. As a living shared, framework and learning system, the framework will adapt and develop over time and within different contexts. To provide feedback and fast (practical) learning from users, the system will be further developed to facilitate transparent peer reviewing.