Innovation Practice

Kafue Innovation Center, Zambia.
Kafue Innovation Center, Zambia.
The MIT D-Lab Innovation Practice team works with diverse partners to advance and apply inclusive innovation as an approach to tackling poverty challenges.

 

The MIT D-Lab Innovation Practice team facilitates inclusive innovation processes to build better products and services, more equitable value chains, more dynamic local innovation ecosystems, and more resilient communities.  

At D-Lab, our inclusive innovation approach includes a variety of processes to incorporate the needs and visions of diverse stakeholders, including Creative Capacity Building, Co-Design, Innovation Centers, and Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. Read more about our approach here.
 
The common goal of these processes is the creation of practical solutions — technologies, processes, businesses, value chains, and ecosystems — that deliver measurable and sustainable improvements over what people experience now and that can serve as building blocks towards lives and communities defined by opportunity instead of poverty.

Applying Inclusive Innovation

We apply and test inclusive innovation processes in our own programs:

Enabling Inclusive Innovation

We inspire and enable other practitioners to incorporate inclusive innovation processes in their work:

  • Global Workshops
  • Professional Education
  • Learning Labs
  • Trainings of Trainers
  • Publications

Core Innovation Practice Team

Libby McDonald, Associate Director for Practice
Heewon Lee, Research Associate

Amy Smith, Founding Director
Martha Thompson, Humanitarian Innovation Specialist