Surprisingly Good - Lab for Social Innovation
As a co-founder of Surprisingly Good – Social Lab, a nonprofit organization, I was part of a pioneering effort that combined stakeholder engagement, design thinking, and experience design to develop new frameworks for social innovation and sustainability. Over a three-year period, from 2010 to 2013, Social Lab worked on projects addressing pressing social and environmental challenges. This included initiatives in green energy, combating youth homelessness, and strengthening cycling culture in Copenhagen.
Our approach was based on a fundamental belief that creative collaboration across sectors can bring about real change. Through partnerships with organizations such as Roskilde Festival, the Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Roskilde University (RUC), Region Zealand, IBM, the City of Copenhagen, the One Life Foundation, and the EU, we brought together diverse resources, expertise, and networks around shared ambitions.
A key element of the work was actively involving various stakeholders—particularly young people and minorities—in idea generation and problem-solving. We facilitated workshops where participants worked on developing new solutions to social and environmental issues and were given concrete tools to take action. At the same time, we shared international examples of social innovation through exhibitions, which provided inspiration and sparked conversations about new ways to understand and solve societal challenges.
In addition, we established mentoring programs that paired young people with experienced professionals in relevant fields. These programs provided guidance and support and helped empower the next generation of social entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into concrete and meaningful solutions.
At its core, Social Lab was founded on a few simple principles: optimism, creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. These values shaped the entire process—from idea development to implementation—and formed the basis for a practice and approach to social innovation in which humanity, imagination, and shared responsibility went hand in hand.