WHAT'S SOCIAL INNOVATIONS LAB?
UP SILab is an open, centering place to develop and deploy effective solutions to challenging social and environmental issues. UPSILab innovators would leverage the social science disciplines, translating research into “technologies” for solving problems. To differentiate itself from other centers of innovation (say, in business), the lab seeks to identify the social and organizational dimensions of problems and work its way towards holistic, efficient people-centric problem-solving exercises.
WHY SOCIAL INNOVATIONS LAB? WHAT IS IT FOR?
The operative word here is “lab”. UPSILab is a laboratory where people could try out new projects to address seemingly intractable problems in society. The innovation could be new to a target population but not necessarily to the other parts of the world. The lab seeks to deploy transformative technologies like choice architecture, signaling, incentivization, gamification, modeling and scaling technologies. Emphases are given to the following:
- problem solving processes and outcomes for affected groups
- building new innovative capacity among sectors where traditional policy approaches appear to be ineffective in addressing pressing social needs
- engineering social relations
- technology-mediated approaches to problem definition as well as to the co-creation or co-management of social change
WHAT ARE THE PRIORITY PROJECTS OF SILAB?
Projects along the lines of
- sustainable development goals (SDG)
- safe spaces free of violence, gender discrimination; safety in the workplace
- citizenship; people empowerment
WHO CAN JOIN SILAB
Anybody from UP. Especially encouraged are faculty and students from the social sciences and related disciplines.