What is a “Lab” for Economic System Change?
We learned a ton during the months-long NCP Roadshow in 2021 to share the Design Team’s shared vision for a better economic system and initial ideas for how to move towards it. The “tour” revealed interest not just in the content of the team’s thinking, but in the practical process to support them, and the broader field, in the development and experimentation of system change ideas. From NCP funders and others we engaged, we heard a similar chorus around the need for a “lab-like mechanism:”
“When I saw some of the practical ideas the team surfaced, I wondered how you might be able to sustain them? How do you continue to build a community that’s keeping their eye on the big picture, evolving the narrative which is the glue for them; and figure out the lab mechanism of how you can identify a project, resource it, kick it off and get it done. If you could build that machine and imagine solving a bunch of problems, that could be very interesting.”
“The need for innovation extends to the process of problem-solving itself…Many problems simply need creative environments for people to float ideas and explore cooperation on next steps, away from the pressures of microphones and public spotlights.”
“These ideas are promising but all incredibly fragile. They’re not light switches we can just turn on. What will it take to innovate and diffuse these ideas?”
So the questions became: What to do with “fragile” ideas that can’t be switched on or activated from the sides of leaders’ desks? What is a “utility” for those working to shift the economic system—to sense, surface, incubate, develop, and support a range of experiments? Where do ideas go that aren’t “proven,” ready to scale, backed with years of evidence, but are strong hunches from those working on the frontlines of a system?
The NCP Lab emerged from these questions. While the term “lab” is well-worn moniker for a range of activities to support ideas, we quickly learned that there is no neat label for the roles we would assume in this work. We are equal part conveners, catalysts, cheerleaders, coaches, project managers, therapists, incubators, strategists, sense makers. We’re whatever is needed in the moment to support a group of leaders trying to act and aspire in new ways.
We can, however, start to describe the Lab through our stance to transformational change and its component parts. We can share some of the hypotheses we’re testing about how to support system change ideas which have informed the Lab’s design:
Increasing coherence and alignment among leaders and ideas within a field is a necessary precondition for any kind of system change.
Transforming a system requires simultaneous change across multiple aspects of the system. Change is not linear nor does it follow a tidy sequence of single-point interventions pushing isolated theories of change. Shifting a system requires a level of coherence and alignment among efforts, but too much command-and-control will stymie emergence and adaptation. Launching a range of independent efforts, united by a shared vision of the transformed system and understanding of the barriers to achieving it, gets closer to an important balance.
Therefore, the NCP Lab…
…centers around a shared vision of a better economic system developed collaboratively by Design Team members. This vision is used to inspire others to join our community, as the basis for selecting a Lab idea, and for connecting individual ideas into a broader system change portfolio.
…treats our shared vision as a living aspiration and a tool for our work, which should evolve over time as more leaders join and we learn from collective experimentation. Only by evolving can a shared vision sustain its power as an aligning force.
…centers on collaboration as a critical ingredient for transformative ideas and deliberately uncovers and supports the connections among leaders, organizations, and ideas, weaving them together in a rich tapestry of impact.
Specific, actionable ideas are more likely to emerge “from the ground up” and from diverse points of view, rather than from top-down analysis of the system.
Those working closest to the current system are uniquely able to understand what change is needed and where the“cracks” exist to leverage. This understanding is amplified when individual insight ladders up to a collective point of view. Supporting more transformative ideas means helping to increase the volume of ideas heading “in the right direction,” understanding what works and why, what fails and why, rather than “picking the winner.” Learning and adaptation are critical.
Therefore, the NCP Lab…
…begins its work well before any specific idea is selected for support. A significant amount of our effort is listening throughout the field, ongoing pattern recognition of what ideas (aligned to the NCP vision) are gaining momentum, and creating spaces where leaders can do their own pattern recognition about what they are sensing, individually and collectively.
…relies on field leaders to initiate ideas they are excited by and that share NCP’s vision of a better economy. We then focus on empowering those leaders. We value and support interest and commitment of collaborators around these ideas as indicators of system salience.
Focusing on clusters of ideas is as important as specific ideas themselves.
We work tirelessly to mobilize a fragmented set of actors and activities to manifest a shared and evolving vision for an economic system that serves all people and the planet. This requires looking “among” various discrete ideas to increase coherence, foster resilience through connection, and share resources and learning as effectively as possible. This is especially important when it comes to funding the strategic experiments that emerge from the Lab. Not surprisingly, it’s raised another set of critical questions: How can philanthropic resources be a tool for reducing fragmentation rather than exacerbating it? How can dedicated resources to connect discrete but coherent ideas allow the whole to be more than the sum of the parts?
Therefore, the NCP Lab:
…asks teams to use a Lab tool, the Idea Canvas, to articulate the transformative opportunity they see, the crux of that opportunity today and a collaborative, strategic experiment they want to launch towards that opportunity. This process helps to “mature” fragile ideas in anticipation of raising money to support experimentation and to reveal potential connections among ideas.
…focuses on portfolios of ideas as the most tangible “output” of our work. Brings together idea teams and funders to discover the connections among their ideas and develop collective funding proposals that support each idea’s individual experiments as well as connections across the portfolio of ideas.
…works closely with aligned funders to facilitate their own reflection on what it takes to support such system change portfolios and respond to “collective action asks” from field leaders.
New and richer connections among people are as transformational as the ideas themselves.
Altering the relationships and connections within a system, the quality of connections and communications among various actors, especially among those with differing histories and viewpoints is a key leverage point in system change.
Therefore, the NCP Lab:
… relentlessly focuses on building and sustaining trust, shared vision and common ground among field leaders across differences of identity, theory of change, strategy and tactics.
…encourages Idea Champions to use Lab resources to reduce barriers to collaboration (e.g. providing stipends for collaboration) and adapting our timelines and support to “move at the speed of trust.”
The NCP Lab is informed by and indebted to a rich and varied history of work and thinking about how to change systems, innovate, organize and address big, complex issues. We are adding our experimentation to the mix. We know this work is difficult. It is often the “invisible work” in networks for system change. We cross our fingers and hope for more trust, better alignment, greater coherence, more transparency, and for new ideas to magically appear--without realizing that achieving these things means, well, doing the work to attend to them.
The Lab is a way to do that work.