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The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving our Most Complex Challenges
Current responses to our most pressing societal challenges—from poverty to ethnic conflict to climate change—are not working. These problems are incredibly dynamic and complex, involving an ever-shifting array of factors, actors, and circumstances. They demand a highly fluid and adaptive approach, yet we address them by devising fixed, long-term plans. Social labs, says Zaid Hassan, are a dramatically more effective response.
Social labs bring together a diverse a group of stakeholders—not to create yet another five-year plan but to develop a portfolio of prototype solutions, test those solutions in the real world, use the data to further refine them, and test them again. Hassan builds on a decade of experience—as well as drawing from cutting-edge research in complexity science, networking theory, and sociology—to explain the core principles and daily functioning of social labs, using examples of pioneering labs from around the world. He offers a new generation of problem solvers an effective, practical, and exciting new vision and guide.
Social labs bring together a diverse a group of stakeholders—not to create yet another five-year plan but to develop a portfolio of prototype solutions, test those solutions in the real world, use the data to further refine them, and test them again. Hassan builds on a decade of experience—as well as drawing from cutting-edge research in complexity science, networking theory, and sociology—to explain the core principles and daily functioning of social labs, using examples of pioneering labs from around the world. He offers a new generation of problem solvers an effective, practical, and exciting new vision and guide.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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263 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 17, 2020
If you are looking for a book to understand the reasons to have a new approach towards solving complex problems, it's a good book. But if you are looking for the approach itself - skip to last chapter.
The content is worth following, but it can be condensed immensely. It can get repititive and very philosophical/ less practical (due to lack of examples) at many points. Rather the author could have extended the content with more cases which he does very well in last chapter.
The content is worth following, but it can be condensed immensely. It can get repititive and very philosophical/ less practical (due to lack of examples) at many points. Rather the author could have extended the content with more cases which he does very well in last chapter.
January 17, 2014
Great book and introduction to social/change labs. Going to read it again and provide a full review.
April 6, 2017
What Makes Social Change Happen?
“Planning based-approaches — so common across government, civil society, and even business — represent a neo-Soviet paradigm” and have long been shown to be at best minimally effective in fostering meaningful social change.
If that assertion is a revelation to you, you’re sure to find The Social Labs Revolution illuminating. No matter how familiar you may be with economic development, urban planning, or other fields in which disciplined planning is a fixture, you’re likely to discover something new in this challenging book.
The author, Zaid Hassan, has built a consulting business on the basis of his belief that, instead of “strategic planning” by “experts,” the world’s most urgent and compelling problems can be solved only by bringing together large, diverse teams representing every aspect of the population that is most directly affected. Working together over months or years as a “social lab,” a team consisting of as many as 36 people struggles together but, eventually, and after considerable conflict and unhappiness, will arrive at a set of practical approaches to prototype as the first stage in solving the problem they share. At its core, a social lab is characterized in three ways: it’s social, it’s experimental, and it’s systemic (in that the ideas that emerge “aspire to be systemic in nature.”). Work within the lab is based on the “U Process” championed by Otto Scharmer.
The problems Hassan and his colleagues choose to address are invariably deep-seated and often life-threatening. The Social Labs Revolution focuses on three long-running experiments, one on sustainable food, a second on malnutrition in urban children (specifically, those living in Maharashtra state in India), and the third on stabilizing the (notoriously unstable) nation of Yemen. For example, the first of these three, a Sustainable Food Lab, was global in scope and participation, bringing together participants from government (Brazil, The Netherlands), civil society (World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy), and corporate food companies (Unilever, General Mills) who worked together for two years. The author credits the team with putting “sustainability” on the radar screens of global food companies.
As Hassan concedes, his consultancy, Reos Partners, is not alone in advancing the social lab technology. He also mentions a Chilean innovation, SociaLab, which addresses new enterprises to alleviate poverty, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and points to a number of similar though less structured examples such as Greenpeace’s Mobilisation Lab, set in motion “‘to break through and win on threats to people and the planet.’”
The Social Labs Revolution is blissfully short and easy to digest, with the exception of an annoying digression into an academic discussion of the philosophy underlying the social labs concept. I don’t know about you, but whenever I come across repeated references (13 of them) to the philosopher Martin Heidegger and his disciples, or any other recognizable name from the ranks of dead white philosophers, I head for the exits. Instead of that digression, I would have enjoyed a more detailed discussion of the results that emerged from the three social labs mentioned most prominently in the book. What Hassan offers is spotty and inadequate.
Nitpicking: Someone — the author, the editor, or the proofreader, I know not who, or what potential combination of them — seems to believe that Jack Welch was “the legendary CEO of General Motors.” Fact-checker, please!
“Planning based-approaches — so common across government, civil society, and even business — represent a neo-Soviet paradigm” and have long been shown to be at best minimally effective in fostering meaningful social change.
If that assertion is a revelation to you, you’re sure to find The Social Labs Revolution illuminating. No matter how familiar you may be with economic development, urban planning, or other fields in which disciplined planning is a fixture, you’re likely to discover something new in this challenging book.
The author, Zaid Hassan, has built a consulting business on the basis of his belief that, instead of “strategic planning” by “experts,” the world’s most urgent and compelling problems can be solved only by bringing together large, diverse teams representing every aspect of the population that is most directly affected. Working together over months or years as a “social lab,” a team consisting of as many as 36 people struggles together but, eventually, and after considerable conflict and unhappiness, will arrive at a set of practical approaches to prototype as the first stage in solving the problem they share. At its core, a social lab is characterized in three ways: it’s social, it’s experimental, and it’s systemic (in that the ideas that emerge “aspire to be systemic in nature.”). Work within the lab is based on the “U Process” championed by Otto Scharmer.
The problems Hassan and his colleagues choose to address are invariably deep-seated and often life-threatening. The Social Labs Revolution focuses on three long-running experiments, one on sustainable food, a second on malnutrition in urban children (specifically, those living in Maharashtra state in India), and the third on stabilizing the (notoriously unstable) nation of Yemen. For example, the first of these three, a Sustainable Food Lab, was global in scope and participation, bringing together participants from government (Brazil, The Netherlands), civil society (World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy), and corporate food companies (Unilever, General Mills) who worked together for two years. The author credits the team with putting “sustainability” on the radar screens of global food companies.
As Hassan concedes, his consultancy, Reos Partners, is not alone in advancing the social lab technology. He also mentions a Chilean innovation, SociaLab, which addresses new enterprises to alleviate poverty, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and points to a number of similar though less structured examples such as Greenpeace’s Mobilisation Lab, set in motion “‘to break through and win on threats to people and the planet.’”
The Social Labs Revolution is blissfully short and easy to digest, with the exception of an annoying digression into an academic discussion of the philosophy underlying the social labs concept. I don’t know about you, but whenever I come across repeated references (13 of them) to the philosopher Martin Heidegger and his disciples, or any other recognizable name from the ranks of dead white philosophers, I head for the exits. Instead of that digression, I would have enjoyed a more detailed discussion of the results that emerged from the three social labs mentioned most prominently in the book. What Hassan offers is spotty and inadequate.
Nitpicking: Someone — the author, the editor, or the proofreader, I know not who, or what potential combination of them — seems to believe that Jack Welch was “the legendary CEO of General Motors.” Fact-checker, please!
March 24, 2014
My interest in this book was triggered both by the nature of Hassan’s work (solving complex problems) and the (work of the) people Hassan calls colleagues: Adam Kahane, Joseph Jaworski, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer.
I was disappointed in the book because—unlike books I read by the four authors above—few deep reflections or insights were triggered due to shallow substance. For instance, Hassan lists three essential elements of a social lab (diverse participants, an iterative process, and systemic solutions) but in my reading experience fails to show how to realize these elements or fails to explain in lucid words how he has observed things going right or wrong.
I am deeply interested in the process of solving complex challenges and I believe Reos partners has the hands-on experience to facilitate these processes. I think this is an opportune moment to publish a book about Social Labs. However, I think you probably learn more by experiencing one day in a social lab organized by Hassan than by reading the book.
I was disappointed in the book because—unlike books I read by the four authors above—few deep reflections or insights were triggered due to shallow substance. For instance, Hassan lists three essential elements of a social lab (diverse participants, an iterative process, and systemic solutions) but in my reading experience fails to show how to realize these elements or fails to explain in lucid words how he has observed things going right or wrong.
I am deeply interested in the process of solving complex challenges and I believe Reos partners has the hands-on experience to facilitate these processes. I think this is an opportune moment to publish a book about Social Labs. However, I think you probably learn more by experiencing one day in a social lab organized by Hassan than by reading the book.
January 10, 2018
I listened to this as an audiobook in hopes of better understanding how to build a social change lab, how they are facilitated, and what practical outcomes can result. Surely this is the book for just that, right? Unfortunately not.
The Social Labs Revolution is stuffed with metaphors and anecdotes that rarely resonate, shrouded in abstract theory, and void of concrete examples of what labs actually accomplish. To be fair, some facilitation and execution challenges are identified in case examples, and there are scattered pieces of wisdom...but what were the outcomes? What actually happened during these multi-year, breathtakingly innovate processes? How have the theories of change manifested through practice? The answers never come.
Perhaps these generalized, self-help-like tidbits of advice resonate with some, but I expect that for most, this book will fall far short of expectations; serving as a lackluster promotion of how great social labs could be, as opposed to an introduction and primer for practical change lab implementation.
The Social Labs Revolution is stuffed with metaphors and anecdotes that rarely resonate, shrouded in abstract theory, and void of concrete examples of what labs actually accomplish. To be fair, some facilitation and execution challenges are identified in case examples, and there are scattered pieces of wisdom...but what were the outcomes? What actually happened during these multi-year, breathtakingly innovate processes? How have the theories of change manifested through practice? The answers never come.
Perhaps these generalized, self-help-like tidbits of advice resonate with some, but I expect that for most, this book will fall far short of expectations; serving as a lackluster promotion of how great social labs could be, as opposed to an introduction and primer for practical change lab implementation.
September 23, 2019
I mean…the basic premise is fine, but it doesn’t really go deep into anything. If you are looking to become a practitioner in social labs and facilitation or are one looking more more methods and frameworks, this book probably isn’t for you.
Also maybe a book on approaches organizing should spend more time quoting non-white organizers and women of color than Nazi philosophers?
Also maybe a book on approaches organizing should spend more time quoting non-white organizers and women of color than Nazi philosophers?
October 25, 2022
Intriguing but not fully satisfying; never quite describes what the social labs approach is, more outlines the history of the concept and some principles
January 5, 2022
“A social lab is a strategic approach toward addressing complex social challenges. As a strategy, it isn’t too hard to grasp. It can be stated simply. Bring together a diverse, committed team and take an experimental, prototyping-based approach to addressing challenges systemically, that is, at a root-cause level. Keep going. That’s it… Addressing complex social challenges requires deep strategic commitment coupled with radical tactical flexibility. We are required by the nature of the challenge to take the long-term view, to make serious strategic commitments that survive short-term reversals of fortune. At the same time, we need to take an experimental approach, to try things out and hold them lightly. This combination of deep strategic commitment with tactical lightness is very hard to pull off because it simultaneously requires different temperaments. In fact, dominant responses to complex social challenges often confuse what we need to hold fast to versus what we need to hold lightly. Our commitments should not be to tactics - to a particular plan or technique. Rather, we should serve our deepest commitments for strategic goals.”
If you like books about systems thinking and approaching complex challenges; Hassan makes the compelling case for social labs as an approach to addressing societal challenges and provides lessons that businesses and other organizations will find wise, useful, and prudent.
If you like books about systems thinking and approaching complex challenges; Hassan makes the compelling case for social labs as an approach to addressing societal challenges and provides lessons that businesses and other organizations will find wise, useful, and prudent.
September 20, 2020
5 stars solely for challenging the predominant planning-based narrative (which anyone who has worked in this can see has big holes in terms of addressing complex problems) and providing an alternative, even if (as other reviews here indicate) could have have more examples and outcomes. However, instead of wishing for that, you can directly take part in social labs to effect practical change with Hassan’s org, Complexity University (don’t work for them but currently working on a mental health-based lab).
November 19, 2017
Interesting if you’re interested in policy, creating change in social issues or marketing. Some revolutionary thoughts, some retelling of old tales (which to be fair is suggested as a method of review). Worth a read for academic purposes.
October 3, 2020
I do not remember very well this book as I read it some months ago. I think it was a requirement for my Marketing Communications class to my MBA studies. It is connected to a try by the academia to bring innovation closer to the state as possible, back from the private sphere.
April 15, 2014
First off, thank you Sherry for recommending this book!
I thought the idea of social labs was fascinating, the idea of trying to turn social science into science is very real, and I loved the entrepreneurial spirit and willingness not to plan, but to simply adapt, that accompanies this philosophy.
However, in reading Ziad's account, I did wonder about the overall impact of the social labs he was part of. Did the food lab have an impact? And moreover, how do we go about measuring that impact? With such complex, dynamic, fast moving problems, like the one he diagnoses in Yemen, how can we truly address these problems in any sustainable yet scientific way? Even when industry, civil society and government all coalesce, they will be hard pressed to find solutions that meet every party's needs. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try, but it might not work in every scenario. And I also think its fallacious not to compare social labs to projects: there are a lot of similarities.
Also, I loved his discussion of habitus and BAU. No, we cannot solve problems with the same, old tired solutions. We know that, and we need to innovate. Talk to any entrepreneur. The question is how, and social labs seem like a viable means toward that end, though not a panacea. And the idea of "spread betting" built in is so key, especially in development. Having a back-up plan is essential. I;m really digging these ideas surrounding social entrepreneurship and even social venture capital, and think there is a lot to be said for them. As Hassan puts it "At the core of our challenge is energy in the most holistic sense, and reconciling the sacredness and profanity of energy is the circle we must learn to square."
Lastly, I think his rules are great. 1. Make what works stronger. 2. Let go of what doesn't work. 3. Discover what you don't have. In saying, so simple, but in doing, ever so challenging. His discussion of innovation in the context of Plato and Badlou, and the riff on Scrum and Agile are new topics for me that seem inherently implementable and realistic in organizations. Then this feeds perfectly into his requirements: diverse teams, iterative processes, and systemic spaces to drive change and innovate. I still need to wrap my mind around this and what it means de facto, but I think the ideas are powerful and more improtantly, common sense.
Best quote "The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world" And yet here I am behind the computer screen...
I thought the idea of social labs was fascinating, the idea of trying to turn social science into science is very real, and I loved the entrepreneurial spirit and willingness not to plan, but to simply adapt, that accompanies this philosophy.
However, in reading Ziad's account, I did wonder about the overall impact of the social labs he was part of. Did the food lab have an impact? And moreover, how do we go about measuring that impact? With such complex, dynamic, fast moving problems, like the one he diagnoses in Yemen, how can we truly address these problems in any sustainable yet scientific way? Even when industry, civil society and government all coalesce, they will be hard pressed to find solutions that meet every party's needs. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try, but it might not work in every scenario. And I also think its fallacious not to compare social labs to projects: there are a lot of similarities.
Also, I loved his discussion of habitus and BAU. No, we cannot solve problems with the same, old tired solutions. We know that, and we need to innovate. Talk to any entrepreneur. The question is how, and social labs seem like a viable means toward that end, though not a panacea. And the idea of "spread betting" built in is so key, especially in development. Having a back-up plan is essential. I;m really digging these ideas surrounding social entrepreneurship and even social venture capital, and think there is a lot to be said for them. As Hassan puts it "At the core of our challenge is energy in the most holistic sense, and reconciling the sacredness and profanity of energy is the circle we must learn to square."
Lastly, I think his rules are great. 1. Make what works stronger. 2. Let go of what doesn't work. 3. Discover what you don't have. In saying, so simple, but in doing, ever so challenging. His discussion of innovation in the context of Plato and Badlou, and the riff on Scrum and Agile are new topics for me that seem inherently implementable and realistic in organizations. Then this feeds perfectly into his requirements: diverse teams, iterative processes, and systemic spaces to drive change and innovate. I still need to wrap my mind around this and what it means de facto, but I think the ideas are powerful and more improtantly, common sense.
Best quote "The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world" And yet here I am behind the computer screen...
August 18, 2014
Overall a good book. Concise and densely packed, what I like in a book. The approaches he describes are nothing revolutionary but well stated and with good examples. Good case studies are hard to come by in this space. The writer casually passes over things like how you secure multimillion dollar consulting contracts to actually do this kind of work. But even if you are doing something smaller and more manageable, you can use the ideas here. I would say these are more guiding principles than step by step approaches. I dropped the book a star level because of several gross factual errors (Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, not General Motors, 6 degrees C of temp rise from climate change is not 41 deg F rise - wow, we would be in tough shape with that). Maybe that's just poor editing. But overall, definitely a book I will refer to in my own work.
August 17, 2014
An amazing show by Hassan. From the philosophical underpinnings, to the design thinking elements, to the sense of urgency—a joy to read. I was delighted to see my friends adaptive leadership and systems thinking found a seat at Hassan's table. It gives me great hope that the paths I am currently exploring are indeed sound, despite how fraught with uncertainty they are. Bonus surprise: the director of my study abroad program makes an appearance.
Can't recommend this book highly enough. It was exactly what I needed as a next read in my learning journey.
Can't recommend this book highly enough. It was exactly what I needed as a next read in my learning journey.
January 3, 2015
Whether you work in government, an NGO, or if you're just committed to change, this is a great read! It takes you through the evolution of social labs to solve complex social problems. Unlike most strategic planning books, this is not a dry read. Zaid uses everything from zombie apocalypse metaphors to real world food crises and environmental crises to illustrate scenarios. He also uses really really awesome quotes, which are uplifting or thought-provoking enough in and of themselves!
October 30, 2016
A book that pushed my planner and project management muscles into rest and relax mode. Simple in its explanation but leave you think further of many things of how you approach social issues.
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October 17, 2014361.1 H353 2014
September 30, 2018
If you love writing that takes what's obvious and dresses it up in abstraction and jargon, be sure to read this book.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews