What is a Solutions Lab?
A “Solutions Lab” is a space that enables diverse groups of people to come together to develop solutions to a problem that no one person or group could solve alone. These challenges are typically complex and systemic – and are not easy to deal with.
The ‘space’ of a solutions lab is not typically a physical space. A solutions lab is really a set of steps (a process) we go through to work together in collaborative ways that don’t start with answers, but start by deeply understanding a problem.
A Solutions Lab:
explores a challenge from the beginning to the end,
·proposes ideas or solutions
experiments with those ideas or solutions to see what works
works on a people-centred problem over time.
Solutions Labs are a response to everyone’s realization that our typical and older ways of tackling big problems have not been working.
About Solutions Labs
Design principles
Whole-System Representation: to find solutions that work in a system, that entire system needs to be somehow represented in the room.
Evidence-Based: Solutions must be informed by multiple form of current evidence
User-Centred Design: Solutions must centre around the experience of person who is going to be using it / impacted by it.
Solutions Ownership: When we come up with solutions, the people or organizations that would play a key role in actually making it happen – must be in the room, as their buy-in is key to successful implementation.
Active sensemaking
The Housing through an Autism Lens Solutions Lab project is using as part of its process Active Sensemaking or Sensemaking.
Sensemaking helps us understand a current system by looking at the real-life experiences of individuals, while we also pay attention to the context around those experiences.
Read more on Sensemaking.
Resources
Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience Social Innovation Lab Guide
The Think Jar Collective Social Innovation Field Guide