Prototyping Progress: Why McGill Needs a Social Innovation Lab
When it comes to indigenous representation, McGill is lagging behind. Just 0.8% of the student population at McGill identifies as aboriginal, significantly lower than the national average of 3%. McGill is committed to solving this problem, and hopes to find ways to integrate indigenous perspectives and practices into university life through a wide consultation process. There’s no question that these kinds of initiatives are important. Tackling this challenge requires careful consideration and long-term engagement on the part of the University’s administration.
However, we need to explore new approaches. We need a way to accelerate learning and a process that emphasizes outcomes. When it comes to exploring the intricacies of the natural world or the human brain, McGill has some of the best laboratories in the world. Is there a way for us to foster innovation that is reflected in institutional culture and administrative and academic processes?
Prototyping Progress
Enter the social innovation lab. Social innovation labs combine the approaches of design thinking and whole systems processes with social innovation tools and methodologies to innovate on complex social problems. Even those with a deep understanding of a particular social problem are often unable to design solutions that can move across scales to produce broad impact. By keeping the complexity of the system firmly in view, social innovation labs can address this major barrier to change.
Much like more traditional approaches, social innovation labs begin with the gathering of a variety of perspectives that range from the very local and specific all the way up to broad policy contexts. What sets the social innovation lab apart is its focus on prototyping, testing, modelling, and iteration. For example, prototyping could involve the development of computer models capable of representing the current state of the system and testing alternate scenarios.
No matter how successful the prototyping stage was, the complexity of social innovation demands an ongoing evaluation of the impact of the solutions developed in the lab.
The challenge of indigenous underrepresentation at McGill is one that emerges from a highly complex social context. To address it, we need approaches capable of developing solutions that operate on a system-wide basis — social innovation labs represent an opportunity for us to do just that. Through prototyping and testing, we will be able to quickly feed insights back into the more traditional consultation process which is already taking place at McGill.
The complexity of social innovation also means that interventions are most likely to have a broad impact at critical thresholds, moments where the normal state of the system has been disrupted by changes in attitudes and beliefs. The recent focus on reconciliation with aboriginal peoples in Canada, along with McGill’s renewed commitment to solving the problem of indigenous underrepresentation represents an incredible opportunity for us to foster innovation and prototype new approaches that can bring about the social innovations we believe are important to a fair and just society. The time to try out new approaches to social innovation is now.
The Office of Innovation wants to start a conversation around Social Innovation Labs at McGill. If you are interested in participating, please get in touch. We’ll be announcing a discussion session very soon.
