Social Innovation Labs & Change Processes
Social Lab Process inspired by Theory U - presencing institute
We support the design and facilitate in depths transformational change journeys based on the Social Innovation Lab approach and Theory U. Weaddress and explore social challenges of systemic relevance in and with your ecosystem, bringing together different stakeholders and unlikely allies to co-create solutions that tackle the root causes of today’s challenges.
For: Ecosystems, organisations, networks
What is a Social Innovation Lab?
A Social Innovation Lab is first and foremost a way to address complex challenges, which cannot be solved by linear strategic planning. It is anchored in a quest (challenge), a topic of systemic relevance as for example those contained in the Sustainable Development Goals. It brings together a diversity of people that are stakeholders from all sectors or in other ways have things to contribute, around the shared intention or guiding question contained in the endeavour. A Social Innovation Lab offers space and time to create an in-depth, holistic (body, mind, soul) understanding of the root causes and hold space for realignments. The room opens for individual (challenging beliefs, seeing beyond habits and assumptions, learn new ways of being) as well as collective transformation (becoming present together, surface collective knowledge). The process allows for experimentation, prototyping and fast learning cycles, opening space to fail and try again. Where we cultivate the ability of not knowing and hold the question, allowing things to emerge. It creates a space to train together how to become and be a conscious living system; a learning, sharing cycling organism. The outcome is prototype solutions that go through a continuous iteration of testing in the real world, collecting data for further refinement and testing again.
We understand and use Social Innovation Labs, as a process inspired by Zaid Hassan’s understanding of Social Laboratories by combining them with the U-journey after MIT’s Theory U, Art of Hosting as well as integrating diverse methods, tools, practices along the way (check out our toolbox). It is a format, a process, but also a type of strategic response to complex systemic challenges. Solutions coming out of this process are meant to tackle the root causes of a challenge and have a systemic impact, rather than fighting symptoms.
Social Labs are:
They are social. Social labs start by bringing together diverse participants to work in a team that acts collectively. They are ideally drawn from different sectors of society, such as government, civil society, and the business community. The participation of diverse stakeholders beyond consultation, as opposed to teams of experts or technocrats, represents the social nature of social labs.
They are experimental. Social labs are not one-of experiences. They’re ongoing and sustained efforts. The team doing the work takes an iterative approach to the challenges it wants to address, prototyping interventions and managing a portfolio of promising solutions. This reflects the experimental nature of social labs, as opposed to the project-based nature of many social interventions.
They are systemic. The ideas and initiatives developing in social labs, released as prototypes, aspire to be systemic in nature. This means trying to come up with solutions that go beyond dealing with a part of the whole or symptoms and address the root cause of why things are not working in the first place.
They are personal. As Scharmer (p.35, 2018) puts it, “if Bill O’Brien is correct that the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener, then leadership is the capacity to shift the inner place from which we operate.” In order to bring about outer change you first need to practice the interior condition that you want to bring to the world (-> see Impact loop of inner and outer change of the fieldbook). By practicing the inner condition, you want to prevent mindless action and thus consciously or unconsciously reinforce or perpetuate the patterns that have created the problems in the first place. Shifting patterns ongoingly is probably the hardest, yet the most important work after all.
Based on our experiences of the past years, we added a fourth component which speaks to the interconnectedness of the inner and the outer dimension of doing this work.
They can produce different kinds of results or capital:
Intellectual: new insights and knowledge
Physical: prototypes that are new infrastructure, products or services
Human: new capacities, skills and mindsets
Social: increased trust and grounds for future collaborations in the system
Natural: impact on the natural environment, regaining of land or biodiversity
Financial: cash flows based on any of the above and the cost of not addressing the challenge
Our connection with the method
Our Practitioners Circle and some of its members have been part of trainings and have hands-on experience of having facilitated Social Innovation Labs.
In our Catalyst Lab, participants learn how to apply systemic change methods in their own area, how to engage, bring together and work with multiple stakeholders around societal challenges, and how to launch their own Social Innovation Lab or other systemic change initiative.
We have offered 2 Social Innovation Labs teaser trainings in 2019 and 2020.
New trainings will be announced soon. Reach out to us if you are interested in a training.
Toolbox & articles
Find descriptions of tools and our experiences with them in our open-source toolbox:
Practice examples and personal experiences:
Toolbox entries:
