Start a Lab

Create a sustained platform where people and institutions can understand a complex challenge, experiment together, and develop new approaches.

A lab is not simply another project. It creates an environment in which multiple projects, partnerships, experiments, and learning processes can emerge.

Your Pathway

1. Challenge → 2. System → 3. Convene → 4. Architecture → 5. Portfolio → 6. Activate → 7. Learn

1. Challenge

Identify the challenge around which the lab will organize.

Frame it broadly enough to allow discovery but clearly enough to give the lab purpose.

You're done when: The lab has a compelling challenge statement rather than simply a list of activities.

2. System

Understand the larger system surrounding the challenge.

Explore stakeholders, institutions, incentives, power, policies, existing initiatives, resources, relationships, and competing interpretations.

Help me do it
[Ask ChatGPT] [Work with Claude] [Open Systems Tools] [See Example]

You're done when: You have an initial picture of the system and know where major uncertainties remain.

3. Convene

Bring together people who see different parts of the system.

Look beyond the usual partners. Include actors with different positions, knowledge, authority, resources, and lived experience.

You're done when: The lab has a diverse initial coalition capable of seeing more of the system together.

4. Architecture

Design how the lab will work.

Determine governance, facilitation, participation, learning cycles, decision making, knowledge management, communications, and institutional home.

You're done when: Participants understand how they will work together.

5. Portfolio

Develop a portfolio of inquiries, experiments, projects, fellowships, research, or interventions rather than betting everything on one solution.

You're done when: The lab has several ways of learning about and acting on the challenge.

6. Activate

Start the lab.

Convene participants, launch initial inquiries and experiments, establish working rhythms, and begin collecting signals.

You're done when: The lab is producing activity and learning, not merely holding meetings.

7. Learn

Continuously interpret what the lab is discovering.

Ask what assumptions were wrong, what changed, what unexpected possibilities appeared, and what the lab should explore next.

You're done when: Learning changes the lab's portfolio and understanding of the system.

Country Context

[Global] [Pakistan] [Nepal] [Senegal] [Philippines]

Start with Step 1: Challenge →