Innofest offers eight festivals in Northern Netherlands as living labs for innovation. A festival is a temporary mini-company. As in real life, there are challenges in areas such as energy and waste. Festival visitors also behave in a way similar to in the real world: they move, eat and sleep. The difference with the real world is that there is a fence around the festival site. This makes festivals a perfect testing environment to work together on prototypes and experimental techniques. And if an idea works at a festival, it can also work in the real world. This makes festivals an attractive place for entrepreneurs, SMEs, start-ups, knowledge institutions and creatives to try out their innovations before they are brought to market. The participating festivals open their festival site as a living laboratory. Start-ups, companies, entrepreneurs and students come together at the festivals to test (socially responsible) prototypes and to devise solutions for the challenges that festivals and entrepreneurs from the region are facing.The consortium that realises the ERDF project Innofest consists of a good representation of North Dutch SME platforms, startups hubs and all knowledge institutions of the North. The Innofest Foundation represents the festivals and takes the lead in coordinating connections between the different Innofest stakeholders. The knowledge institutions within the consortium (Rijk Universiteit Groningen; Noorderpoort college; Stenden University of Applied Sciences; NHL Hogeschool and the Hanseatic University of Applied Sciences) work on challenges within Innofest, related to the RIS and NIA. Startup hubs as BeStart (and with a letter of intent Launch Cafe; Entrepreneur Factory and Founded in Groningen) scouting on the basis of the challenges leading innovations and together with Innofest guide the route to the festivals. The SME platforms (Water Alliance, NOM and HANNN, and with a declaration of intent SMEs North and Circular Fryslan) identify and connect SMEs to these projects and ensure that products or services are further helped after the festival season. After 2019, North Dutch festivals must have a strong position as innovation catalysts. In 2019, Innofest ensured that at least 30 innovative projects were launched from knowledge institutions (by students, student entrepreneurs or researchers) and at least 45 innovators (innovative SMEs and start-ups) were further helped by developing, testing or launching within a festival context. This new activity in the North has been used to inspire and grow SMEs (established SMEs, according to the innovation pyramid) which is by nature less innovative. Innofest engages at least 45 of these established SMEs and encourages and supports them to innovate from their existing products or services. The activities all take place in an annual cycle, with as climax the eight rich moments that the festivals offer in the summer season. With this, Innofest creates the innovation scene, or living lab, with which the Northern Netherlands can become the recurring temporary innovation scene of Europe, with a lasting impact on the innovation ecosystem in the North Netherlands.