What is a Lab Note?

The spirit behind the NCP Lab Notes is one of humility. It is not about having the right answers about how to do collaborative, experimental, system change work. It is about exploring the illuminating questions that will guide a community of change makers through complexity. In this way, notes are like lanterns we hold in front of us to light the paths towards a reimagined economic system that works for all people and our planet. 

Quite practically, a Lab Note is a brief write-up of a question, insight, challenge, success, failure we discover through the design, practices, tools and techniques of the New Capitalism Project (NCP). Together, we hope these notes will form a more coherent cartography into a landscape of activity that’s hard to see while moving through it. A Lab Note is not a polished view of the past, a diary of the project, or a reflective retrospective with the benefit of hindsight. 

Our hope is that, over time, these notes serve as a record of the evolution of NCP and its Lab--the people in it, the ideas and insights that come from it, the messy, confusing, frustrating and exhilarating what and how of doing system change work. The form of this “thinking in public” is inspired by many, many others. We think of Lab Notes as evergreen shoots in a digital garden, growing over time as we learn more and as the world and our thinking changes. 

There’s no other stance we can take, as the NCP Lab is an experiment itself--in what it takes to provide a different type of field-building infrastructure for economic system change, in new types of philanthropic practice to support leaders and their shared ideas facing the long-term system change road. 

Why spend the time creating Lab Notes?

NCP is an emergent systems practice. We are drawing on a rich and varied set of existing practices, system change work we (NCP Co-Leads) have been part of for over a decade, and work by other system change leaders. We will acknowledge those whose work has informed ours; as we will invite them, and others, into this learning. We hope that a growing collection of notes will serve multiple worthwhile purposes for NCP:

Share the work. Build the community.

Notes are modular. They can be used to onboard and educate others about NCP in “bite-sized” ways, combined or juxtaposed to explain more complicated, ambiguous, or emerging aspects of the work, and synthesized to develop new approaches or tackle new opportunities.

Draw connections.

An important technique of systems change is creating new connections and supporting new flows of information within the system. Notes help us to reflect on and articulate where connections exist and discover new connections. The connections among Notes set the ground work for connections among people, practices and resources. 

Discover possibilities.

NCP is about scouting for leaders and ideas for economic system change--and supporting both on the path to change. Innovation often exists in the “adjacent possible.” Describing our work and reflecting on the connections within it will help reveal openings in the “blank spaces” between topics, opportunities that come from synthesizing and remixing ideas, and intentionally connecting people in networks of trust. 

Track emergence. 

NCP has evolved in many ways since its launch in 2020. That said, the main engine of this work has always been to sense emerging field needs and adapt to meet them. To consider an underlying field “utility” within the economic system change terrain; and to play a range of roles—from sensemaking, convening, catalyzing, cohering, mobilizing, incubating, funding, cheer-leading—in supporting it. A collection of Notes that grows and is updated over time will create a useful record of how our practice and community evolve.