The Sustainability Innovation Institute (si²) focuses its efforts on four key areas: social innovation, sustainable energy and climate resilience, the circular economy, and food security and sustainable agriculture. Within these areas, the lab will undertake a variety of activities, including:
Incubation Programs: The T-Lab hosts intensive innovation sprints, modeled after the Exponential Organizations (ExO) framework, to rapidly prototype and test transformative solutions.
Collaborative Research: The lab conducts rigorous research on systemic innovation, sustainability metrics, and social impact evaluation, disseminating findings through publications and toolkits to share knowledge and advance the field.
Education and Training: The T-Lab runs workshops and training programs designed to empower students, policymakers, community members, and entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills needed to become effective change agents in the field of sustainability.
The T-Lab is committed to transparency and accountability, and develops a robust impact assessment framework to track progress and demonstrate its contribution to creating a more equitable and sustainable world. The lab believes that by fostering collaboration, embracing innovation, and working in genuine partnership with communities, we can create a future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive within planetary boundaries.
Three Impact Pathways
The T-Lab is designed to facilitate a range of initiatives that address interconnected social and environmental challenges. These initiatives will vary in scope, duration, and target audience, but will all share a common goal of driving positive change towards a more sustainable and equitable future. To effectively categorize these diverse initiatives, the T-Lab will organize its operations around three distinct “impact pathways” – each representing a different mechanism for creating change.
Pathway 1: Behavior Change Initiatives
These initiatives are designed to influence behaviors at the individual, community, or enterprise level, ultimately shifting mindsets and habits toward sustainability. This could include public awareness campaigns that educate and inspire action, community empowerment sprints that bring together residents and organizations to co-create solutions, or green business challenges that incentivize companies to adopt more sustainable practices. By fostering greater awareness, knowledge, and agency, these initiatives aim to catalyze a broader cultural shift toward sustainability.
Pathway 2: Systemic Innovation Initiatives
Recognizing that many sustainability challenges are rooted in systemic issues, this pathway focuses on creating new systems or transforming existing ones to enable more sustainable outcomes. This could involve incubating new social enterprises that address social or environmental needs, working with policymakers to design and implement sustainability-focused regulations, or supporting industries in transitioning towards circular economy models. These initiatives are characterized by their focus on long-term, structural change and often involve collaboration across different sectors and stakeholder groups.
Pathway 3: Collaborative Research and Knowledge Generation
This pathway emphasizes the critical role of research and knowledge creation in informing effective action. The T-Lab will undertake collaborative research projects, impact assessments, and pilot initiatives to generate new knowledge, evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches, and identify best practices in the field of sustainability. This could involve partnering with academic institutions, community organizations, or businesses to conduct research that directly addresses real-world challenges. By sharing findings and insights through publications, toolkits, and educational programs, this pathway aims to build a robust evidence base for effective sustainability action.
It’s important to note that these three pathways are not mutually exclusive; many T-Lab initiatives will likely span multiple pathways, reflecting the interconnected nature of the challenges being addressed. For instance, a project focused on developing a community-led renewable energy initiative could involve elements of behavior change (educating residents about renewable energy), systemic innovation (creating a new energy cooperative), and research (evaluating the social and environmental impacts of the initiative). By operating through these interconnected pathways of impact, the T-Lab aims to foster a dynamic ecosystem of change, driving progress towards a more just and sustainable future.