Social Innovation Labs: The Practice Ground for Connection and Collaboration, A Systems Re-design for Social Change

This thesis explores the confluence between social innovation, social incubators and the emergence of a new way of thinking and being while also participating in a gift economy. As participant and observer, the researcher visited one extraordinary social innovation lab located in Chatham, New York to study experiences of lab participants, alumni, organizers, and members of the coach team. Single case study and narrative ethnography were the overarching methodologies to study data and to guide the data collection and interpretation process. The purpose of the visit was to explore questions such as, what is a social incubator? Why design a social incubator that is based on a gift economy? The final inquiry was to investigate how social innovation could be a method to help facilitate group creativity, and group process. Some of the indicators included heartfelt engagement such as nurturing honest conversation and deep listening, sharing of feelings, inclusion, safety, building of trust and connection, experimentation, generosity, recognizing and experiencing the importance of relationships, all contributing to an ongoing living expression of the culture that participants wanted to practice and embody.