Hivos, Natural Innovation and Warwick Business School, with support of Kennisland and The Finance Innovation Lab, organise a one-week Book Sprint to explore the topic of social innovation labs. The outcome of this collaborative writing workshop is the first of its kind: a co-created and openly licensed book that will amount to eight candid, authentic stories and lessons about life in the lab trenches. The book will be published as an e-book on Open Book Publishers (tentative date: July 2014) and will become available in print under the title: “Labcraft: highlighting the art and practice of crafting labs and ecosystems for social innovation”. The Book Sprint is facilitated by Adam Hyde, the founder of Book Sprints.

On behalf of Kennisland, Marlieke Kieboom and Kimon Moerbeek will participate as authors of a chapter about the challenges of Kennisland as an organisation which advocates for experimental learning. They will specifically discuss the methods developed and used in Education Pioneers, a programme which supports teachers in their innovative practices. To conclude, they will reflect on the outcomes in the Dutch education field and the future challenges of support programmes for innovative change.

The other Book Sprint participants are:

• Lena Hansen – Rocky Mountain’s Institute’s Electricity Innovation Lab
• Josh Havey – Unicef’s Kosovo Innovation Lab
• Anna Lochard and Magali Marlin – La 27th Region
• Eduardo Jerzinski – INSTEDD
• Mariko Takeuchi – IECD Cambodia Design Lab
• Rachel Sinha – ICAEW & WWF-UK’s Finance Innovation Lab

The facilitation team consists of Remko Berkhout (Hivos – knowledge program), Hendrik Tiesinga (Natural Innovation and PhD at Warwick Business School), Simone Poutnik (Natural Innovation), Lucy Flood (editor, Berkeley) and the facilitators of Book Sprints.

History of the project

This project has resulted from a shared interest into the practices of social innovation labs by Kennisland, Hivos, Natural Innovation, The Finance Innovation Lab and Warwick Business School (WBS). WBS and the Finance Lab have developed a research collaboration and met the other partners last year during Lab2, a lab on social innovation labs, organised by Hivos and Kennisland. Driven by a shared curiosity into the nitty-gritty of actual lab practices, this partnership set out to develop a Book Sprint on labs. The goal is to produce eight stories, that provide insights on the craft of innovation labs. The target audience consists of both lab practitioners and researchers from around the world.

Open workshop at Warwick University

On Friday 9 May the participants of the Book Sprint are invited to share their experiences with researchers and practitioners in an open workshop at Warwick University. It will be an informal workshop; no panels or speeches. If you happen to be around, you are invited to share your experience in small groups during the workshop.