WHAT WE DO

NouLAB is New Brunswick’s public and social innovation lab. We help the public and innovators act together to address our most pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges. By connecting change agents from across sectors, convening them around pressing issues, and facilitating their journey to deep change, NouLAB is making the change process smarter.

Connect

CONvene

Facilitate

It’s time to tame complexity.

How might we ensure everyone has a place to sleep at night?
How might we make newcomers to New Brunswick feel at home?
How might we re-design New Brunswick’s food system, starting in our own backyards?
New Brunswick’s greatest challenges are complex and require systems change.

As supporters of NouLAB, we believe in a more entrepreneurial and collaborative New Brunswick; New Brunswick where everyone owns a piece of our great challenges, and one where our default is to solve problems together, not as individuals in silos.

Join the movement of public and social innovators. 

What Makes This Different?

Process

Inspired by MaRS Solutions Lab and GovLab methodologies, NouLAB first convenes the knowledge of diverse stakeholders who understand our greatest challenges; then facilitates a process of problem framing, systems mapping, research, experimentation, and scaling successes; and, finally, connects innovators with influencers. These activities make the change process quicker, smarter, and more sustainable.

Challenge Framing

Let’s not jump to solutions. We promise, we’ll get there, but time and again we build solutions to problems we don’t fully understand. NouLAB helps lab teams intricately understand their challenges so they can be smarter about how they intervene.

Experimentation

Lab teams take an iterative approach to intervening on the challenges they want to address. By understanding, acting, learning, and adjusting, lab teams start small and scale interventions using an iterative model.

Co-Creation

Lab teams are made up of diverse change agents and citizens from the private sector, public sector, social sector and academia. The teams work collectively to understand the nature of their challenge from multiple perspectives, and design, create, and test interventions together, always working towards scale and always learning.

Third-Party Convening

NouLAB is designed to address public challenges. Challenges that affect many and ones no single party or institution can solve alone. The status quo isn’t working. We exist to be a trusted, neutral convenor of the change process and care most about changing our legacy systems to get the most desirable outcomes. NouLAB offers the space and process to do this.