Social Innovation Labs research project

As part of my Cambridge MSt in Social Innovation, I wrote my dissertation about Social Innovation Labs as a strategy to shift large-scale institutions. Entitled "Time after time: institutional challenges and
strategies of the Social Innovation Lab practice", drawing from the experience of practitioners from the Presencing Institute, my research reveals that that the main challenges labs meet pertain to the phase before the lab, namely engaging key stakeholders as participants and funders due to institutional logic clashes and uneven power distribution. These challenges influence the labs for the rest of their life cycle and result in significant pressure on the lab teams. To address these challenges, SILs deploy strategies such as practice work, disembedding work targeting key stakeholders, and different types of temporal work. My analysis reveals labs as microcosms for the larger system and the wicked problems they seek to address, requiring significant invisible work from lab teams. Lastly, I highlight the long-term orientation of this type of institutional work, suggesting that labs can be seen as part of a larger systems change effort.

I learned a lot from this research process as well as its outcomes, and the final dissertation was awarded the excellent grade of 77/100.

Graduation day in April 2023