One of the highlights of my experience doing a social innovation study fellowship at MaRS was the opportunity to contribute to the Labs for Systems Change global gathering put on the the Solutions Lab and Social Innovation Generation (SiG) Network.
In advance of the conference I prepared a research report on the world's leading labs, and during the event my role was to co-host a half day of Open Space programming among world-class lab practitioners.
I had previously had exposure to these methodologies in applying lab-inspired approaches to the creation of Brains for Change and Make Your Mark, however, it was in contributing to this conference that I truly gained an appreciation for the depth, breadth, and importance of this 'labs' movement. Take a look at the research primer I prepared for the SiG Network to learn more.
The concept of a 'lab' is simple enough in a scientific setting. It is a place where experiments take place; where hypothesis' are tested. Widely it is accepted that the nature of experimentation often involves 'failure'. Regularly, the experiments that take place in our scientific labs might simply confirm what doesn't work. However, every once in while there can be big breakthroughs that lead to entire paradigm shifts, whether in our healthcare, in our energy supply, or in our cosmic understandings. In the public consciousness, the necessity of lab environments for the advancement of science is well understood.
Yet, in the context of our governments, there is little room for public sector to 'take risks' when trying to solve social or policy issues. Citizens are skeptical of tax dollars being "wasted", journalists are keen to stir up a scandal, and politicians are fearful of being embarrassed. The result is an intense accountability towards immediate and measureable results.
On one level this makes sense: we expect our investments to yield results. Yet, increasingly it feels like our traditional methodologies of understanding and action in the public sector aren't quite keeping up with the complexity of challenges like climate change, income inequality so we can't simply keep using the same old approaches.
That is where the Labs for Systems Change community comes in. This is a global community of public sector pioneers, creating zones of experimentation to lead to new approaches to policy development and service delivery.