Insight Labs

Description

There’s another interesting quality of families as social systems: they operate like a “cogwheel” of developmental needs. In well-functioning families, everyone is at different stages of development. You may have a five-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 30-year-old mom, a 35-year-old dad — each of them are at different developmental stages in their lives. Add a 65-year-old grandparent or a 90-year-old great-grandparent. Let’s say they’re all living in the same house. There is a cogwheel of their developmental cycles; their cycles meet the needs of each other’s cycles. For example, grandchildren may meet the needs of grandparents to be generative. The grandparents meet the need of the children for an older presence in the family. Young adults may help meet the needs of children as they explore the world.

Joe Shields : You know, a lot of companies big and small outsource design to specialty firms. You could work with one of those firms, make them your partner on every project. You could do all the work up front to make sure that they understand your mission and your values. And then they could handle the process of vetting all of these other people who want to work with you. That would take a lot of work off of your plate.

A foundation designed to develop and disseminate new models for solving social challenges, Insight Labs tackles 10 problems a year in partnership with organizations dedicated to solving those problems. The Labs leverages the biggest, boldest thinkers in every field with an approach most colorfully described as the “love child of a think tank and flash mob for good.” None of Insight Labs’s work is proprietary; all research and findings are shared freely, both on this site and through various media.

: I love how it resonates with the cogwheel. Because it means there is some sense in which we don’t just share the experience of the doghouse. We also share the experience of being in charge. Our friend Josh McManus says that power is not a static thing, but a baton that is passed from person to person, and a lot of times it’s just left lying around. I feel like that’s what happens when organizations don’t get this mutual regulation thing.

Jennifer Bennet : We get approached by entities like pharma companies all the time. The challenge we have as an organization that’s mission-focused is the balance between fulfilling our mission and being a part of innovation to create better solutions for everybody. We want to be a part of working with design teams or developing new technology. There is all sort of energy in the for-profit world, people who want to test things or try things out.

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