Designing Living Lab Governance Structures for Impact: Training & Workshop

Join us for a half-day training on designing living lab governance structures, with a special focus on the Living Lab Markers evaluation tool. Living labs offer an innovative approach to bringing diverse stakeholders together to develop and test context-specific innovations to complex challenges such as climate change. However, governing such collaborative innovation processes in dynamic, real-world, and transdisciplinary settings is not easy. Effective living lab governance requires balancing structure and flexibility, maintaining enough structure to coordinate collective action while preserving the flexibility needed to adapt as conditions, projects, and stakeholder relationships evolve. This half-day training will introduce participants to practical guidance from a recently published report, titled A Roadmap to Designing Living Lab Governance Structures, and explore how its insights can be applied to the initial design and ongoing governance of living labs and other similar collaborative, socially oriented initiatives. Participants will also receive hands-on training in using Living Lab Markers, a flexible evaluation tool for assessing and learning from living lab processes and outcomes. Through practical training and discussions, participants will leave with tools, resources, and approaches that they can apply to improve the governance and evaluation of their own collaborative initiatives. Cet événement se déroulera en anglais, mais les participants.es sont les bienvenu.es à poser leur questions en français et les diapositives seront disponibles en français. This training will feature two main activities: Designing living lab governance structures: Dr. Adriane MacDonald and the Carbon Governance Living Lab team will present key insights from their new study and report, A Roadmap to Designing Living Lab Governance Structures, with a focus on 11 key decisions that practitioners can consider when designing their living lab's governance structure. Evaluating living labs using the Living Lab Markers tool: Living lab expert and co-founder of Si Lab, David Guimont, will lead a hands-on workshop introducing participants to the Living Lab Markers tool and how they can be used to support evaluation and learning in living lab initiatives. A vegeterian lunch will be provided. Event agenda 8:30 - Doors open, refreshments available9:00 - Welcome by Dr. Adriane MacDonald9:05 - Presentation on Roadmap insights and findings9:30 - Q&A on the Roadmap insights and findings9:45 - Break10:00 - Hands-on workshop on the Living Lab Markers Tool12:30 - Lunch and networking1:30 - Event ends About the Speakers Dr. Adriane MacDonald Dr. Adriane MacDonald is an Associate Professor of Management and Canada Research Chair in Governance and Sustainability at the John Molson School of Business (JMSB). Dr. MacDonald is a multi-disciplinary researcher who focuses on understanding why business, government, and non-profit organizations partner to address sustainability issues; how partners communicate and collaborate; and how partnerships can be structured and managed to achieve tangible sustainability and corporate social responsibility outcomes. She is the principal investigator of the Carbon Governance Living Lab. David Guimont David Guimont is a partner at Si Lab and a recognized expert in the deployment of Living Labs. He supports organizations in designing co-creation processes and adopting more collaborative innovation practices. His recent work focuses on strengthening collective resilience to climate change and disasters. Between 2013 and 2024, he co-founded and co-directed the Laboratoire en Innovation Ouverte (LLio), a college centre for applied research, where he led numerous labs and people-centered design projects. A seasoned facilitator, he specializes in co-designing co-creation workshops and setting up innovation cells that foster experimentation in real-world conditions. Holding a master's degree in tourism planning and development from UQAM, he also works as an independent researcher and mentor to managers of social, territorial, and environmental impact projects. Juliette Champoux-Pellegrin Juliette is the second author on the Roadmap for Designing Living Lab Governance Structures, having spent the last year studying living lab initiatives and carbon governance within the Carbon Governance Living Lab. Her background is interdisciplinary, with eight years of experience working in social and private enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and research teams. With this experience, Juliette recently co-founded the nonprofit organization Montreal Climate Week and now serves as its executive director.