Scaling Living Labs in Egypt through the Quintuple Helix: future policy options from a Fuzzy Delphi study

This study explores how Egypt’s Living Labs can transition from isolated, fragmented pilot projects to a scalable and institutionally integrated system within the Egyptian innovation ecosystem. While current research often focuses on developing and studying the various types of living labs already integrated into the innovation ecosystems of many countries, this paper examines the issues of scaling up within the Egyptian innovation ecosystem. It adopts a Quintuple Helix framework that conceptualizes government, industry, academia, civil society, and the natural environment as interdependent actors shaping sustainable development. The research follows a three-phase design: (i) a structured literature review to generate an initial set of 40 policy options; (ii) translation of these options into a Delphi questionnaire, refined through expert review; and (iii) evaluation using the Fuzzy Delphi Method with a purposive panel of 20 experts representing the five helix domains. Policy options were retained only when they satisfied all predefined criteria (d ≤ 0.2, expert consensus ≥ 75%, and defuzzification score A ≥ 0.5). The results show a high level of agreement overall. In total, 34 of the 40 proposed policy options were retained, corresponding to an overall validation rate of 85.0%. The strongest alignment appeared in Academia/Research and Civil Society/NGOs, where all 8 of 8 options were retained (100.0%). In Government/Public Sector, Industry/Business, and Environment/Sustainability, 6 of 8 options were retained in each domain (75.0%). Taken together, the findings indicate that scaling Living Labs in Egypt depends on a coherent policy setup one that emphasizes clear governance arrangements, reliable public funding, shared evaluation standards, institutional learning, routes to commercialization, broad and inclusive participation, and stronger integration of environmental priorities. Overall, the study offers an empirically supported, policy-focused model to help embed Living Labs more firmly within Egypt’s innovation system and support their long-term growth.