Innovation for Real Transformation

Insights from the CONVERGE Canadian Lab Practitioners Exchange:

• Going from best practice to next practice - how can we ensure that our solutions aren’t just improving safety nets (better variations of what already exists) but instead creating trampolines that redefine the premise of the issue we’re working on? How are we peeling apart the status quo?

• We need to be non-neutral facilitators holding a strong values set, reshaping preferences by showing alternatives and expanding the possibility space rather than just translating what people bring to us. We need to be critically conscious of the frequent gap between espoused values and what is lived. Behaviour will reveal the dominant mechanics and logic of the system.

• Tools and processes can be false comforts, giving us a sense that we’re doing innovative work while avoiding the challenge of hosting fundamentally different kinds of human interactions - radically authentic conversations.

• Be aware of who sets the ‘ends’ of your work - is it you, your funders, clients or the people you’re meant to be serving? Practice uncovering and exposing the differences in endpoints between them. e.g. working with homeless, do they actually want housing and better case management or is something else important to them?

• Accessible language - how can we make terminology that is easier to understand as a way of opening up the ‘black box’ of lab practice to everyone? Who are you currently excluding with the language you’re choosing to use?

Present Questions

• What are we collaborating for? To produce innovative products or also dismantle existing power structures? Where is power being held and how is your lab shifting that?

• Are our well-intentioned attempts at solving social problems actually further reinforcing the status quo?

• Are we too focussed on process as a way to shift thinking and action?

• How do we grapple with our own privileges and the length of time it takes to actually make the changes we want to see?

• Are we making the right decisions about deploying scarce resources for the most important outcomes?