Introducing Future Housing Lab

The House is partnering with a new collaborative network of smart tech, innovation and housing experts to create Future Housing Lab

Housing associations are under more pressure than ever to innovate services and find ways to do more with less. At the same time, demographic shifts are changing what people need from their homes, neighbourhoods and communities, while technological advances are changing what a home can be and do.

How can today’s social housing providers make sense of the opportunities and challenges of the present, and build the innovative cultures of the future?

That’s where Future Housing Lab comes in. We’re a group of clever and compassionate thinkers and doers who ask the right questions and help you to create forward-thinking, sustainable solutions. Our goal is to help you build quality of life, not just build houses.

We help you to:

1. Solve real problems

As experts in purposeful business and the mission-driven economy, we understand the real world challenges you face. This means that we can ask the right questions and help you develop the right answers.

2. Use design thinking

Cutting-edge processes and tools will help you understand customer needs, capabilities and opportunities. In doing this, your team will benefit from the guidance of world-leading experts in the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, hardware, software, home building, energy grids and social enterprise.

3. Develop innovation cultures

To succeed, you must develop your people in parallel with adopting and innovating new tech solutions. Our team includes radical (but easy to work with) thinkers with experience in developing cultures of curiosity.

4. Deliver social and commercial impact.

We are committed to long term, value-creating transformation for customers and the social housing sector as whole. To achieve this, we will help you to identify and realise strategic opportunities to generate social and economic sustainability, hand-in-hand.

In short, Future Housing Lab will help you create the homes, that build the neighbourhoods, that make for smarter towns and cities.

We offer technology and innovation thinking that connects people to the outside world, reducing isolation and making it easier for people to build communities. We do this by creating practical solutions that reduce the cost of running a home for a customer, and of maintaining a development for a provider.

Smart technology has the potential to transform how housing associations deliver services and create impact. But it’s not about asking which smart technologies are available. It’s about asking why smart technology is needed in the first place.

Future House Lab puts people first. Our human-centred approach allows us to work with a range of tech, software, health tech and hardware providers to build customised solutions around the needs of our clients and their customers. For us, it’s not about creating expensive, speculative tech design concepts, but about doing more for less and creating practical solutions to problems faced today. Less “what if?” and more “what now?”

By putting people at the centre of innovation and tech strategy, housing associations can seize opportunities to increase social impact while making their businesses more commercially sustainable.

That’s what Future Housing Lab is here to do. What could we do for you?

To find out more about how the Future Housing Lab can help you to build a culture of innovation, get in touch with The House on 01225 780000 or email steve@thehouse.co.uk.