Social Innovation Lab Guide

ORGANIZATION:
Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience

Author +
Frances Westley, Sam Laban, Cheryl Rose, Katharine McGowan, Kirsten Robinson, Ola Tjornbo, Mark Tovey

Year: 2015

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 Guide begins with an overview of the history and thinking behind this new process. This is followed by a detailed set of step-by-step, practical recommendations for the design and delivery of a Social Innovation Lab. The final sections of this guide hold a collection of relevant resources that include overviews of complexity and social innovation concepts to help develop a common understanding by convenors/participants, descriptions of other lab processes, further information on the research and on activities in the workshops, and an exploration of the use of computer modeling in the Social Innovation Lab.

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
PROLOGUE By: Joeri van den Steenhoven
ANTECEDENTS
Social Innovation
Whole Systems Processes
Design Thinking + Design Labs
Computer Modelling
SOCIAL INNOVATION LAB
Workshops
Alternative Workshop Agendas
LAB PROCESS in ACTION
RESOURCE BANK
Initiation Phase
Research Phase
Workshop Phase
Computer Modelling