In our globalized and networked world, it is easy for new trends to take root. One such trend is that of Innovation Labs. There are Innovation Labs to develop products and services. There are Innovation Labs to develop projects and improve the organization in business. There are Innovation Labs to improve government services. There are Social Innovation Labs to organize communities to improve the society in important ways. Such activity does reflect some inherent value to the approach. But, what is the value? And, why now?
First, let me start off with a caveat. As with all trends, there are some who jump on the trend bandwagon and use the new vehicle simply to repackage what is already being done. This reduces the idea behind the trend to a marketing approach. Behind the new vehicle could be the same old, tired and tried approaches. At the same time, it must be pointed out that many seek to integrate into the new approach methods that have been successful and still add value. One example is the use of strength-based approaches, e.g. Appreciative Inquiry, in Innovation Labs. All of these help to enrich and continue to develop the new vehicle. The Innovation Lab is an example of all of these phenomena - for both good and ill.
One value to an Innovation Lab is that it moves away from the old linear approach that starts out with developing the new idea, designing the product or service, planning for implementation and then finally implementing. This has proven to be a costly approach and one that is too slow for our quickly-changing world. Innovation labs embody an agile approach where a concept is thoughtfully developed by a diverse group of participants, quickly embodied into a tangible product, service or project and then moved out into the world where feedback can be obtained to help with ongoing iterations.
Innovation Labs help with our past practice of evaluation. The detriment with past modes of evaluation is that they represent a look backward. One only gains useful information after-the-fact. With an agile, Innovation Lab approach, evaluation is much closer to real-time. This makes the feedback about the innovation far more useful.
The Innovation Lab is represented as a vehicle that can more successfully involve people either as participants or as customers. Any vehicle that can serve as even an excuse to more effectively involve stakeholders and customers has a virtue. However, this depends on the methodology and philosophy of the particular Innovation Lab approach.
Some seasoned and respected practitioners of Innovation or Design Labs claim that such a Lab can best be successful by limiting the actual participants in the Lab to a selected group. Others want to use the Lab to reach out to larger segments of an organization. I do not want at this point to move into a methodological debate as to whether an Innovation Lab can or cannot be used with larger groups of an organization or in what situations. This does depend on the specific purpose of the individual Lab. I would like, however, to point out that to the extent that an Innovation lab is seen by others as an exclusionary initiative, it may not be adding value over more traditional approaches.
Both camps would say that even when an Innovation Lab is in the hands of a selected group, its approach to reaching out to customers does represent a significant improvement.
One must then ask the question of how an Innovation Lab advances the agenda of businesses that are already seen as customer-focused. Here one does need to move into a methodological question. The practitioners of Theory U would say that an Innovation Lab properly done allows for greater empathy with customers. The Theory U approach provides for Empathy-based Inquiry with customers. I assume that in the hands of trained Innovation Lab participants, this may be attainable. Without this type of methodological enhancement in accessing the experience of customers, an Innovation Lab would not represent the desired advancement.
An Innovation Lab to the extent that it represents the spread of ideas developed by IDEO in product development can still be valuable. This is a way of putting into the hands of everyone the Design Lab approach that worked for IDEO, Stanford, Harvard, MIT and other institutions.
As noted, Theory U practitioners do attempt to integrate into the idea of an Innovation lab many of their own ideas. These are refreshing though at times challenging in terms of making abstract Theory U ideas sufficiently tangible to be useful. To the extent that this is possible, an Innovation Lab can become more of a transformational vehicle.
Social Innovation Labs are attempting to do what network approaches and Collective Impact did for organizing large segments of a community in support of important goals. It appears that many of the components among all of these are similar. Each requires a long period of trust-building. Each requires the development of initiatives that pursue a common sense of direction. Innovation Labs provide some specific approaches that could be useful in all of these endeavors.
What I like about an Innovation Lab is that it summons a commitment to make immediate progress on a particular challenge by getting something effectively thought out and tangible into the hands of customers, users or the community. I do assume that to be successful, key stakeholders must be championing the effort. People must be enlisted to participate in the effort. Bonds of relationship and trust must be relied on or further developed with users. When the City of Boston used an Innovation-Design Lab approach to reduce pot-holes, it represented a real, immediate venture that did succeed in involving the citizens throughout the City. And, it produced noticeable results. Anything that makes it easier to do this and results in real benefits to citizens has value.
In the end, an Innovation Lab is an effort to be proactive in a quickly changing world. The methodology, intentions and values behind it will make a difference.
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