On Oktober 12-13, 20 leaders of innovation labs gathered with academics and policy experts from the European Commission to formulate a vision for labs in Europe by 2020. The challenge was to show how innovation labs might help solve complex social, environmental and economic challenges through sustainable, human-centered and democratized innovation. See Stepháne Vincents photos from the event, which was held at MindLab, here.
Lots of topics were discussed, drawing on insights from the practical work taking place at diverse organisations like NESTA Lab and the Innovation Unit of the UK, la 27e Region of France, and Medialab Prado of Spain. One of the most fascinating aspects of the conversation was the question whether innovation labs are value-driven? Because if a particularly strong sense of mission and purpose is crucial for labs to be effective, what does that mean for the potential of labs, and what are the implications for how to create, lead and grow them? To shape relevant future policy, might we first have to better understand how values are selected and cultivated in a ‘lab’ enviornment?
The discussion made me think back to early 2007, when we started on the journey towards the second generation of MindLab. One of the first things we did in our newly assembled core team was, in fact, to formulate a set of common values. Through a creative process, we arrived at the following five value statements, which have proven to be, in fact, central to our daily work:
Challenge. We challenge traditional thinking and bureaucracy
Communication. Our communication is inspiring and straitforward
Cooperation. We challenge each other’s thinking
Atmosphere. We drink black tea and green coffee
Results. We experiment with the objective in mind.
We often refer to these values when making key decisions: Who to join the team, which projects to take on, how to relate to the barriers we encounter, how to treat each other, who to collaborate with externally. (Ohh, and what kind of coffee to drink!).
Our values are, in many respects, of greater operational importance than our strategy.
So, yes, MindLab is value-driven. And perhaphs innovation labs have to be, in order to maintain a strong sense of purpose and direction in the midst of a chaotic, complex and difficult reality.
I would therefore like to extend an invitation to our fellow innovation labs around the globe to join the conversation here on MindBlog:
What are your values, and what do they do for you?
Because perhaps by understanding the role of values better, we can also learn how to create effective innovation labs that can help shape the future we desire.
Peter Dröll kl. 13.04 29/10/2009
Yes, value-driven is important.
As the EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso has put it, the current crises (financial, economic, social) are also a crisis of values of our societies.
I think, however, there are different uses or levels of value definition: Values for the team itself (like the one of mindlab – for our team we defined trust, results, hapiness and work/life balance as the core values) and the broader purpose values (societal, environmental, …)
Perhaps innovation labs need both.
Peter
Christian Bason kl. 23.05 1/11/2009
I agree entirely that we need to both consider value as ‘team culture’ in an innovation lab, and value that addresses ‘impact’. At MindLab we’ve built our entire strategy around the kinds of impact we want to achieve, addressing the following five key objectives:
1. Better outcomes, such as increased employment, health or growth as results of a public service, programme or regulation.
2. Better service experience for citizens or business, such as degree of satisfaction when using a specific public service.
3. Culture change amongst the civil servants we work with, to place citizens at the center of policy development, and to work more collaboratively across the public sector.
4. Creation of new knowledge, by conducting PhD research and sharing our methods and insights.
5. Recognition (‘branding’) of MindLabs and our three ministries’ efforts to strengthen innovation.
At MindLab we measure these five types of value through a coherent performance management model. It includes systematic quantitative and qualitative questionnaires and follow-up with all our project partners, annual reporting to our Board, and on-going sharing and narrative techniques to facilitate our own learning.
Because at the end of the day, it is value for citizens and society we are here to create.
Brenton Caffin kl. 15.45 27/11/2009
Christian,
We are currently drafting our purpose and values for The Australian Centre for Social Innovation that i’m happy to share and welcome feedback on.
Our core purpose is to identify and support the innovative ideas, methods and people that will contribute to and accelerate positive social change.
Our core values are:
• People-centred – we believe that ideas alone do not change the world; people with ideas do. People lay at the heart of our thinking and approach to innovation. We do ‘with’, not ‘to’ people.
• Impact focussed – we pursue innovation for the positive impact it can have on people’s lives and will focus on achieving the greatest impact where it’s needed most.
• Brave – we welcome risk-taking, experimentation, and learning from our experience and encourage others to do so too. We are biased towards action, insatiably curious, and willing to challenge the status quo.
• Open-source – we are transparent in our dealings, share our thinking and learning, welcome dialogue, encourage collaboration and use the collective intelligence of society.
• We are ethical in everything we do.
Brenton
Christian kl. 00.20 28/11/2009
Brenton
Thanks for your post, I think those are excellent and extremely important values that will serve your organisation well. In particular I like your impact focus which, at the end of the day, is our reason to exist.
Christian