Social Innovation Lab
Social Innovation Labs are an emergent framework practiced by different types of organizations that includes governamental, non-profit, for-profit and a mix of them all. The key aspects of what constitute labs and the methodologies used by them can be a powerful framework for those seeking social innovation.
Collaboratio Helvetica presents Social Labs as a process inspired by Zaid Hassan's understanding of Social Laboratories that follows the U-journey after MIT’s Theory U and integrates diverse methods, tools, practices along the way (check out our toolbox). It’s a format designed to address complex problems like those addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals. Solutions coming out of this process are meant to tackle the root causes of a challenge and have systemic impact, rather than fight symptoms.
In order to support a catalyst in the process of co-initiating a Social Innovation Lab, Collaboratio Helvetica have developed this inspiring canvas as a visual aid to your thinking and exploring. We will be covering how catalysts use this canvas in future blogs.
This blog aims to give a wider view of how this framework is used across the globe. This body of knowledge is excerpted from my research on the topic while attending the first cohort on Social Innovation at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
Social Innovation Labs history
Labs have existed in the academic and for-profit sectors since the 1800’s. However, in the early 2000’s innovation labs with human-centred design methodologies aimed at studying social impact started to appear in all sectors, including governments, universities and international organisations. Today, many universities (ex: Harvard i-Lab and Stanford d.school), international organizations (ex: UN, UNHCR and ICRC) and governments (ex: NESTA, UK and MindLab, Denmark) have innovation labs.
Labs can be referred to as social innovation labs, civic labs, system innovation labs, incubators, i-teams, hubs, and accelerators, among other terminologies. However the best definition I found was of a “semi-autonomous organisation that engages diverse participants -on a long-term basis in open collaboration for the purpose of creating, elaborating, and prototyping radical solutions to open-ended systemic challenges” (Gryszkiewicz Lykourentzou and Toivonen 2016, p.17).
How long each lab lasts varies widely. A social innovation lab framework could in principle be applied in one day intervention, but usually these labs need time that can expand over years.
Lab Practices
Labs methodologies are based on ethnographic-inspired user research, creative ideation processes, and visualisation and modelling of service prototypes (Bason, 2013).
According to my research, labs use well known collaborative methodologies such as:
Leadership that is based on consensus and inclusion and shared by conveners (those who own a problem) and facilitators (trained professionals neutral to the topic, to guide the group into the process);
Diverse Stakeholders that can bring in social capital (knowledge of the problem, network or power to change legislation) and shared resources (direct capital, in-kind work or tools ) but who are also open to discuss a divergent vision of the problem;
Process that is immersive (participants need a safe space where thrust reins) and open to emergent solutions (solutions can’t be pre-cooked and has to emerge from the group then and there).
Additionally, “the right timing for action” is also an important external element that will affect the framework; the more the problem or challenge is pressing the more the stakeholders will grant motivation, social capital and shared resources to the initiative.
Examples
As previously mentioned, the main characteristics of labs are of being systemic, experimental and social, and that labs create inter-organizational collaboration to tackle society’s complex problems. Most of them focus their activities around themes addressed by the SDG’s such as food, water, poverty, and energy.
In the sustainable fashion lab facilitated by Reos Partners, it was a change in legislation addressing irregular working conditions that motivated a very diverse group of stakeholders, representing all layers of the system (legislators, big company buyers, small middle person and sewers), to work together. They met a few times per year and each meeting took place in a neutral space, lasting three days at a time. Time was required to build trust among the participants and deepen their understanding of the problem and challenge to be tackled. Techniques to help the participants of the group to learn from one another such as democracy of time (independent of their place on the food chain, everyone had the same amount of time to express themselves) and learning journeys (visits to small sewer’s ateliers where they were the experts) were also employed. Finally, the group was able to generate and test ideas using the transformative scenarios (imagine the worst and best scenarios and the path to get to them). At the conclusion of my research, the group, which had been working for more than one year together, continued to meet and discuss new ideas on how to improve their sector. The initiatives originally developed by the team have turned into projects, with schedules and budgets.
NESTA, a UK organization focused on governamental work, has led a global study on 20 teams leading social innovation labs. They published the “Open Book of Social Innovation” that has several examples of labs, including metrics to measure success and alternative sources of funding.
MarsLab in Canada has its focus on urban problems of their cities. La27region create programs to test new innovation methods for designing public policy involving all public stakeholders. Schools, such as the New School in NY through the Parson Desys Lab, are also entering this domain. Although these labs tackle a variety of topics, many focus on a specific one, such as the American eLab that is searching for the future of the electricity sector or the Cambodian inCompass that wants to bring the best practices in innovation to serve the poor.
Conclusion
The effort involved in organizing and leading a social innovation lab requires time to understand the problem at hand, techniques that allow the participants to drop their ‘organizational’ voices and to learn one from another, and tools for the experimentation of new ideas.
Geoff Mulgan, from NESTA, states that “simple solutionism (rapid prototyping, quick and dirty approaches) takes hold, while complex system dynamics can be underestimated – this can hurt [social] innovation where in most cases long-term engagement is important to have a real impact”. It is important to respect the systemic nature of the labs and draft realistic expectations of what deliverables they can produce within a given timeframe.
Furthermore, the creation of a space that allows a group of people representing a system to extend the understanding of the problem and of the system itself should be considered as an important part of the outcome.
Further literature to the topic
Claudia Marcelloni has worked in science communication and innovation for more than a decade, mostly at the world’s largest laboratory, CERN leading projects such as TEDxCERN and Sparks. While working towards bridging the gap between scientific and technological development to public knowledge, Claudia grew interested in learning how these advances could be put to use for the social good. She was part of the first cohort in Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School, conducting research on collaborative methodologies for social innovation labs.