The optimal Social Lab duration

solutions to old problems. Recognizing that intuition is built up from latent experiences and subtle observations, future Social Labs can allow a greater role for intuitive understanding and primal responses of the lab fellows. Intuitive ideas not directly derived from conscious induction from the collected stories can be captured and put forth for small scale experimentation, afterwhichanalyticdatafrom the collectedstoriescan beput backto evaluate the experiment. Occasional break from the inductive framework can unleash the lab fellows from the structural boundary that may restrain creativity.

The optimal Social Lab duration

The Market Lab lasted for four months from March to July in 2019, during which the lab fellows went through the trajectory from acquainting with the Social Lab methodology to delivering the prototypes and formulating recommendations to the government office concerned. For the voluntary lab fellows who had simultaneous work or study engagement, the four-monthprocesswascompactandtight,totheeffectthattheydidnotfindadequatetemporal space to truly empathize with the stakeholders, and generate authentically innovative ideas through repeated experimentation.

Extending the duration of future Social Labs to allow thoughtful implementation of the various Social Lab methods can help evading the emotional block to creativity that time pressure can create. However, momentum of the Social Lab team may not carry if prolonged participation in theSocial Labinterferes with the otherpersonal engagements ofthelab fellows. An alternative is identifying the suitable time niche for specific population to enable fullfledged participation during the Social Lab period. For example, students may be more available during the summer. As an action process for nurturing young change makers, future Social Labs may consider targeting the student population.