As we reach the conclusion of NCP’s “lab” experiment, we’re reflecting on the field infrastructure role that the NCP Lab has played and the momentum it has generated for a range of diverse leaders. We call out four different types of value we’re seeing from the NCP Lab process.

There is nothing easy about this work. We’ve learned a few things along the way as we’ve supported the NCP intervention ecosystem. We could write a book on the lessons—successes and failures--gained at every level; but in this NCP Lab Note we capture four which reveal implications not just for NCP’s path forward but for those wanting to work in a more “ecological” way.

The Lab is just one (key) part of NCP’s broader goal of testing what it takes to provide infrastructure for a healthier field working on transforming our economic system. We’re taking a minute to reflect on the Lab’s role as a piece of field infrastructure, to understand the broader picture of what we’ve built together and what it might allow us to build next. The most critical output is a set of “assets” that we’ve come to describe as the evolving “NCP Stack.”

Introducing the ideas being developed in in the NCP Lab. We think of the set of ideas as an emerging portfolio, addressing the inter-connected barriers and manifesting the aspired future identified by the NCP Design Team. The work underway is to develop each system change hunch into a set of bold experiments. Exploring where there might be greater coherence among the ideas; and more impactful opportunities for coordination and collaboration among them.

We are weaving together a growing network of field leaders committed to moving beyond individual organizational theories of change and galvanized to manifest a powerful shared vision for the field. They don’t want to work in isolation to do this work. They want to work in partnership with others in the Lab to do this work. The Lab’s value is in its collectivity; and in building the field infrastructure to allow people, ideas and practices to stay in relation with each other over time as they intervene directly to change the economic system. The next mountain to scale is to design the right model to fund this systems change portfolio. To engage an equally aligned and committed group of funders as co-designers.

The process of developing NCP’s shared vision had three important outcomes critical in system change work--and which have set the foundation for the transformative collaboration we’re now supporting in the Lab.

More experimentation is needed around how we best develop “fragile” hunches--and support the leaders committed to experimenting with them--into powerful system change interventions. The NCP “Lab” is one such experiment, animated by its own hunches for what is needed for lasting system change.

The NCP Lab is an experiment --in what it takes to provide a different type of field-building infrastructure, in new types of philanthropic practice to spur system change, in bringing nascent, transformational ideas to life to create a better economic system.

Our practices will evolve as we try things, learn and adapt. Our lab notes are an attempt to learn in public as we undertake that process of adaption.