to the University of Stuttgart's Research and Teaching in Real-World Laboratories page, a platform for research & open science. This website is the result of a project entitled "Knowledge transfer reloaded. The successful and sustainable application of Stuttgart Real-World Laboratory research results", which was initiated by the International Center for Cultural and Technological Studies (IZKT) in collaboration with the Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies (ZIRIUS) and funded by the University of Stuttgart. The purpose of this site is to pool everything known about and the knowledge produced by Real-World Laboratories, which embody a "structured collaboration between academia and the wider public aimed at the scientific exploration and treatment of sustainability issues."

The term "Real-World Laboratory" is relatively new having been coined in the early 2010s to describe an innovative research approach and is now widely established. Real-World Laboratories are also extremely popular outside of academia. Since their inception, a number of different Real-World Laboratory concepts have been developed, depending on the source of funding, the specific objectives, and the stakeholders involved. What they have in common is a focus on research experiments in the real world.

Real-World Laboratories are explicitly funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg under the "Increasing the Contribution of Science to Sustainable Development" program. The University of Stuttgart has acquired three Real-World Laboratory projects since the first call for proposals by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts (MWK) in 2015. Individual University of Stuttgart Institutes have been, and continue to be, involved in the work of other Real-World Laboratories as project partners. So, researchers and students at our university have been involved in shaping and advancing Real-World Laboratory research from the very outset whereby our focus is on the findings from these Real-World Laboratory projects.

We asked the following questions to scientists and representatives from politics, administration and civil society who were/are involved in Stuttgart Real-World Laboratories. The answers reflect their personal experiences and perspective.