About Fieldlabs@Scale

Fieldlabs@Scale addresses scaling challenges faced by field labs and ensures their sustainability and impact in mission-driven innovation.

Background information

Within a field lab, knowledge institutions, companies and other regional organizations experiment with new solutions to social problems. However, the innovations developed in this way often prove difficult to scale, making it difficult to demonstrate the impact on social earning capacity.

In the Fieldlab@Scale project, our interdisciplinary consortium conducts research into scaling up mission-driven innovations through field labs in various domains: smart industry, healthcare, agriculture and infrastructure. Together with policy makers, regional network organizations, field labs and their underlying organizations, we map out the mechanisms for joint experimentation and develop an instrument and training program for field labs based on these insights.

Project Foundation

This work package forms the basis of the project. It focuses on building a collective case database of more than 250 field lab cases to generate a taxonomy and evaluate results of field lab types through interdisciplinary collaboration among all researchers in 'team science'.

Building Knowledge

This work package examines the formation, development and long-term sustainability of field labs that deal with conflicting interests and the struggle for continuity. It develops a system dynamics model of field labs as knowledge ecosystems and knowledge on how field labs can thrive on the fertile soil of regional structures, resulting in a policy brief for policy makers and funding agencies.

From Knowledge to Business

This work package explores the problem of scaling solutions across business ecosystems and addresses the associated value conflicts. It identifies scaling mechanisms, actionable scaling strategies, a framework and a tool to deal with value multiplicity in mission-driven innovation.

Empowering with Knowledge

This work package translates scientific results into a field lab toolkit, including a serious game for field lab coordinators and participating organizations. It co-creates Fieldlab Academy programs run by four consortium partners covering domains and regions, ensuring dissemination beyond the duration of this project.

More about work packages