Overview
Overview:
This Guide to a Social Innovation Lab is offered as a resource to peers, colleagues ,practitioners, leaders from all sectors, and concerned citizens – all who have and/or will participate in change-making processes. One hope for this work is that these ideas on social innovation and these recommendations for new practice will result in a greater sense of agency for those who work on what often seem like impossible aspirations for a different, better world. Probably our greatest hope is that these ideas help to transform the impossible into the possible.
The interest in the social sector in the idea of Labs – however broadly defined – offers an opportunity: can we push on the limits of existing processes to develop something tailored specifically to focus on complex problems and to build strategies for transformation in systems? This led to our team’s efforts to design and testa process that can effectively support social innovation. We call this process the Social Innovation Lab.
The Social Innovation Lab emphasizes not only imagining high potential interventions but also gaining system sight, redefining problems, and identifying opportunities in the broader context with the potential to tip systems in positive directions. It is a three-step process of developing, testing and instigating innovation strategies.It requires the right starting conditions, an investment in research and skilled facilitators. It also makes use of computer modeling to prototype interventions in complex systems. Like other processes for convening multi-stakeholder groups working on complex challenges, it is best suited to the early stages of making-change
Spud’s Thoughts:
This is a hefty guide, but has some really good content in it for those working to build programs and facilitate workshops towards social change. The guidebook has a detailed listing of workshops and activities you can run over the course of a few days to build the core infrastructure of a ‘Social Innovation Lab’. This is primarily useful for those facilitating processes for others working on social innovations – it probably won’t be overly useful if you are someone who would be going through one of these programs.
