Set up Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Living Lab Project

What are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and why are they important?

You might already have an idea of how to measure whether your project or Living Lab is progressing well, based on the value proposition you’ve identified. However, it’s essential to think carefully about both what you measure and how you measure it. Grounding your indicators in a clear theory of change—that is, your understanding of how and why specific actions will lead to meaningful outcomes—can help ensure your evaluation is aligned with your goals and values. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the specific metrics that help you determine whether a meaningful change has occurred through your Living Lab, and whether it reflects the impact you originally envisioned.

KPIs are different from outputs. While outputs summarise what has happened in numbers (such as the number of participants in a programme), KPIs help you understand and assess impact. They can be measured over the short, medium, or long term, depending on your goals. There are objective indicators, which represent facts (e.g., number of website visits), and subjective indicators, which capture opinions or perceptions (e.g., whether participants felt more engaged). A good KPI strategy balances both types, ensuring a holistic understanding of change.

One key challenge when setting KPIs is avoiding the temptation to measure what is easy rather than what is meaningful. The most useful KPIs provide clear proof of impact, allowing you to make informed decisions and improve your initiatives effectively.

Assessing the impact of your project is an important part of the Living Lab methodology. Feedback from the RECHARGE Living Labs indicated that developing KPIs early on helped provide them with structure for their lab. Creating and measuring KPIs will help you to demonstrate the impact of your project and whether you managed to achieve your value proposition. KPIs are quantifiable measurements that capture desired results and outputs. Defining these together with stakeholders can help them agree on priorities. This should be a group exercise.

To get a complete picture, it is important to define these KPIs at the start of your project and assess them over time. You need time to understand the change you are generating through your actions.

How to do this:

Break down your value proposition into specific objectives that can be measured - e.g. number and gender of stakeholders involved in your actions, number of events, use of institutional resources, etc. Need inspiration? Have a look at the Europeana standardised question bank. The question bank helps you ask questions about participant satisfaction of your audience, and takes into account themes around legacy, utility, learning and community. From the RECHARGE perspective, we encourage you to try to think especially across social, economic, organisational, and environmental areas of impact.

The 4 recommended areas of impact

• Social - analyses the changes the Living Labs have on the involved communities, their motivation, well-being, social cohesion and sense of belonging, etc. How many and who are your volunteers? Why are they involved? How does the involvement change their everyday lives?

• Economic - examines the effect of the Living Lab process and activities on the economic side of things for the involved stakeholders. It usually measures changes in business revenue, business profits, personal wages, and perhaps even the creation of jobs through your project.

• Organisational – examines potential internal changes within the organisations involved in the Living Labs. This includes shifts in organisational strategy, the creation of new workflows or roles to support the Living Labs process, and adaptations in internal structures. It also assesses changes in governance and organisational transformation, such as the emergence of new decision-making spaces, collaborative structures, or participatory processes that reflect the influence of the Living Labs approach.

• Environmental - accounts for the environmental values of actions performed under the Living Labs and understands their impact on the environment, whether it's recycling, repairing, or reusing resources, participating in circular economies, reducing your energy or water usage, or even raising awareness about the environmental changes where you are.