In 1988, a small group of researchers in Vienna set out to do something that felt, at the time, almost counterintuitive. They wanted to put social innovation at the centre of the innovation conversation, not as an afterthought, not as a footnote to technology, but as the very lens through which all innovation should be understood. Most people had not yet heard the term. Policymakers had not yet adopted it. And yet, Josef Hochgerner registered what would become the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) on exactly that premise: that any innovation worth pursuing must answer for its impact on people and society.
By 1990, ZSI was operational. Today, it is Austria’s largest applied social science research institute, with 65 researchers working across three departments and a track record in Horizon Europe that places it in the top 15 of all Austrian organisations. More importantly for the Living Lab community, ZSI has recently joined ENoLL as an Innovation Partner, bringing with it decades of expertise in co-design, co-creation, and the kind of patient, process-centred thinking that Living Labs are built on.
ZSI has been present in European research programmes since the Fifth Framework Programme, and currently runs an active portfolio of Horizon Europe projects. That track record is not incidental. “We are top 15 in Austria of all organisations having Horizon projects,” says Elisabeth Unterfrauner, ZSI’s Scientific Director and CEO. “We are the biggest social scientific research organisation in Austria. And if you consider the organisation size, we are number one.”
The work spans a deliberately wide thematic range. ZSI has contributed to projects in bioeconomy, circular economy, energy transition, the New European Bauhaus, and beyond. Gorazd Weiss, Head of the Research Policies and Development Department, describes this span as a feature, not a limitation. “We are not thematic experts. We are experts on the process.” The social scientific lens, drawing from sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, political science, and spatial planning, travels across disciplines and sectors, adding the human dimension wherever it is needed.
That human dimension also shapes how ZSI runs itself. Department heads and the Scientific Director are elected by their colleagues, serving three-year terms. “It’s not top-down,” says Gorazd. “We are living co-design and co-creation as an institution.”
For Elisabeth and Gorazd, the answer is less about infrastructure and more about process. “It’s a combination of concrete methods of co-creation and co-design,” says Elisabeth. “In contrast to a co-design workshop that’s a one-off, the Living Lab is a process with a clear shared goal.” Gorazd adds the dimension of continuity. “A Living Lab is something continuous. And agile enough to evolve when different problems, different environments, different needs arise in the community.”
In practice, that means bringing together people who would not normally be in the same room and creating the conditions for something genuinely new to emerge. Gorazd describes a moment that captures it well. “You see people who have never spoken with insurance companies, with policy regulators, with agencies. Then you put them together and you see, in coffee breaks, how they start to talk and exchange phone numbers. But they all live in the same small town.” Elisabeth calls this breaking down the ivory tower of traditional research. “When you do multi-actor approaches, you bring in different perspectives. That’s where cross-fertilisation starts.”
It is, in other words, less about the lab and more about the living.
For ZSI, participatory research has never been a trend to follow. It has always been the starting point. From the very beginning, the organisation was built around the idea that the people most affected by a problem are also the people best placed to help solve it. Co-design, co-creation, multi-actor approaches, design thinking are not tools ZSI reaches for occasionally. They are how ZSI thinks.
So when the Living Lab concept began gaining traction in European research and policy circles, it did not feel new to Elisabeth or Gorazd. It felt like a name finally being given to something they had been doing for years. “We did basically the same things without having the specific term,” says Elisabeth.
That recognition goes both ways. For ZSI, the Living Lab approach is not simply a useful method. It is a natural extension of a deeper conviction: that innovation discourse focuses too much on technology and competitiveness, and not enough on people. “If we talk about development, it’s all about innovation, it’s all about competitiveness, very much focused on technology,” says Elisabeth. “But what at the end is competitiveness, if it doesn’t have value for society?” Living Labs, in that light, are not just a methodology. They are an answer to that question.
ZSI is project-based, which means the long-term trace of its work is not always easy to measure. Nevertheless, some projects stand out for their tangible and lasting results.
One example Elisabeth returns to is the Careables project, which brought together makers and people with disabilities in local makerspaces. Using digital fabrication tools and low-cost prototyping, participants developed personalised assistive technology tailored to specific individual needs, the kind that commercial markets rarely address. The designs were then shared on open platforms such as Thingiverse, extending their reach to a worldwide community of makers and users. “Addressing an issue, finding a solution for this person and with a worldwide impact,” she says.
Gorazd points to Liverur project, a Horizon 2020 project focused on Living Labs in rural areas, which concluded in 2020. Several of the Living Labs established through that project continue to operate today. A further project he highlights is the RRI Tools initiative, which ZSI co-led, developing a publicly accessible toolbox on Responsible Research and Innovation. The tools, covering themes from ethics and public engagement to gender and open science, remain widely used. “It was a flagship project contributing to different levels of policy and participation.”
Perhaps more quietly significant is the European Union Science Diplomacy Alliance, a spin-off from a ZSI-coordinated s4d4c project that concluded in 2021. The Alliance continues to operate as an independent network, demonstrating the kind of sustained impact that formal project metrics rarely capture. “Sometimes we have long-lasting cooperations to promote topics further,” says Elisabeth. “It’s an exploitation of the project which ended, and it’s running very well.”
The path to joining ENoLL came through years of parallel movement. ZSI had known about the network for some time, but the concrete conversation began more recently, sparked in part through Gorazd’s encounter with ENoLL Director Martina Desole at a OpenLivingLab Days 2025 in Andorra. From there, discussions within ZSI’s executive board followed. What made the Innovation Partner model particularly compelling was the potential for genuine collaboration rather than simply membership.
“Living Labs, in our understanding, are an operationalisation of social innovation,” says Elisabeth. “It’s a method to bring in different stakeholder groups and have a more holistic perspective on tangible issues. So, it’s very much in line with what we stand for.”
Gorazd sees the collaboration as mutually constructive. ZSI brings deep expertise in co-design and co-creation methodologies, policy co-design, social impact assessment, train-the-trainers capacity building, and proposal development support, all areas that ENoLL’s Member Living Labs frequently need. In return, ENoLL offers ZSI a structured network for dissemination, matchmaking for Horizon projects, and a community of practice for methodological exchange. “I think in the next two years we could develop a very good cooperation,” he says.
For both Elisabeth and Gorazd, the partnership is ultimately built on shared purpose. The ENoLL Knowledge Hub, the Working Groups, and the OpenLivingLab Days are all touchpoints they are looking forward to engaging with.
As Elisabeth puts it simply: “It’s joint forces. Living Labs and social innovation go hand in hand.”
That, in essence, is what ZSI brings to ENoLL: not a template, but a process. Not answers, but the discipline to ask better questions together.
The interview has been taken by Andrada Barață, Head of Communications at ENoLL with Elisabeth Unterfrauner and Gorazd Weiss from Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI).
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