Co-Labs

What are Co-Labs?

Co_Labs were designed by our co-founder Jenny Andersson, as a way to address the need for radical inclusivity, safe spaces for difficult conversations, the complexity of globalised humans, and to capture the collective intelligence of teams, organisations and communities. 

A single brain alone is unable to absorb and cope with the vast complexity of the interconnected challenges we face in today’s globalised world – whether we are talking about international supply chains or climate change. The only way forward is to activate and engage the collective intelligence of our communities.

That means we have to get better at communication and collaboration as well as ideation and innovation.  It’s not always the best and brightest ideas that succeed. It’s usually the ideas that are best executed. That means we need human intelligence. All of it. Whatever the worldview. Whatever the culture. Whatever the life experience. Whatever the personality. We need ways to all come together and work together.

We designed Co-Labs to create an accelerated platform to surface the collective intelligence of large or small groups – wherever they are in the world and whatever their challenge.

How do Co-Labs work?

Nature thrives on diversity. Diversity creates resilient, innovative and evolutionary communities – that are agile and able to adapt to change.

Humans often do GroupThink. Our natural urge to belong, to agree, to blend in, does not help to surface the radical thinking, innovation and courage it takes to activate the transformation we need.

CO-Labs are designed using deeply researched methodologies that raise collective intelligence, including processes such as World Cafe, Liberating Structures, appreciative inqiry, open source technology, sprint and scrum. We ensure everyone has a voice and every voice is heard.

We ensure a safe space where people gain confidence and courage through paying particular attention to container hygiene, building trust and allowing vulnerability to be present.

Co-Labs are modular and can be adjusted to suit the needs of the community we’re serving. They can be run in-person and have also been fully digitised thanks to Zoom, alongside apps such as Mural and Miro so can be run anywhere in the world.

We combine advanced technology with world-leading facilitation and advanced user experience. Each Co-Lab has a unique design and programme produced to support your unique challenge.

What kind of challenges do we work with?

We can help you:-

• Find strategic pathways forward through complex challenges
• Ensure your disruptive innovation projects are creating the transformative future you want, and not in danger of being ‘captured’ groupthink or business-as-usual thinking
• Engage your community in co-developing strategic plans – particularly useful for regional economic planners, urban developers, city authorities
• Develop new policy, surface innovative campaign ideas, and new strategic narratives
• Explore challenging subjects that hold you back like bias, racism, privilege or even corporate colonialism
• Co-Labs can be combined with our Doughnut workshops for cities, towns, villages and island communities, and our Power of Place story workshops.

How many people can participate?

Each Co-Lab can be design to accommodate:

• Large engagement or innovation events of up to 100 participants

• Medium workshop events of 25 to 50 participants

• Intimate small group work of 6-12 people