Current social innovation labs are often conceptually based upon design thinking methodology. These labs are increasingly used to foster innovation and learning processes in organizations, not only in the business world, but also in education and social services.
In the tradition of progressive education the term laboratory has been coined over a century ago and laboratories have been applied and tested ever since. John Dewey’s concept of a “laboratory school” was based on the idea of collective experience, which allows fort developing and testing social solutions in an organizational setting, which was an educational laboratory at a university department.
Wheres so-called social innovation labs are a relatively recent phenomenon. These labsare based upon the concept of design thinking, which has been developed in the 1980 and 90s at the Stanford School of Design, offering a methodology to develop more human-centered product designs.
The purpose of this paper is to compare the underlying conceptual design of laboratories in the progressive education tradition and laboratories in the design thinking tradition, based mostly on document analysis and own empirical research on social innovation labs. The comparison follows a practice theoretical research interest to identify laboratory practices that are assumed as useful for the purpose of fostering innovation and organizational learning. Based on the notion of social practices, we assume, individual learning always and inevitably reflects the social context in which the learning appears and in which it is put into practice. Therefore the contexts of the labs are seen as an important frame and influence on the innovation practices of the analysed labs. Other dimensions of the comparison include, how practices contribute to which type identity and to what degree the practices can be desbrided as participatory.

Both traditions, progressive education as well as design thinking are widespread all over Europe and the United States and have considerable influence on organizations in the various fields of education and social work.

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