Community Innovation Lab
About the CI Lab

Lab Facts

A network of informed, inspired and involved people confronting social issues with the creative use of technology.

The Origins of the CI Lab

The Community Innovation Lab began in 2004 to promote the innovation and adoption of technologies of change as they relate to community empowerment.

Potential community-building opportunities abound—especially on technological themes. Many organizers feel they are cut off from state-of-the-art technologies and the creation of new ones that would be valuable to their communities. Having the means to discover relevant solutions and participate in the design and refinement of new technologies would be desirable activities. However, little, if any, of the hundreds of millions of dollars of charitable giving devoted to community building each year directly addresses this area of need.

The CI Lab's Audiences

The CI Lab cultivates relationships with leaders from organized communities, high-tech companies and universities. The primary value each audience seeks in the CI Lab differs, but an interest in the expansive possibility of collaborating on socially-relevant technologies is shared. Similarly, the CI Lab is seen as a vital resource for methods of stimulating and managing cross-boundary product creation, for access to experts and ideas from diverse disciplines and for leadership at the intersection of social dynamics and technology.

A Set of High-Impact Programs

The CI Lab's audiences are served by a series of three original programs designed to inform, inspire and involve leaders from each sector. Every year, the CI Lab produces the Spark Summit, the annual conference, and the Wisdom in Action competition. Benefits from these programs include:

Building on the Values of MIT and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning

The mission of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. MIT seeks to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind. Clearly, MIT is an ideal location for the CI Lab and its work.

The CI Lab is part of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning within MIT's School of Architecture and Planning. The Department is consistently ranked as one of the top planning schools in the country. With nearly 40 teaching faculty members—more than half of whom are full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty —it has the largest planning faculty in the United States. Moreover, the school's commitment to diversity and social justice has made it a leader in the inclusion of practitioners as well as scholars among the teaching staff.

The CI Lab is complementary to other research centers, laboratories and programs at MIT, including the Media Lab and the Entrepreneurship Center. The research programs supported by the CI Lab will provide flexible research funds to permit MIT faculty, students and fellows to investigate and shape new technologies in the service of community building.

Approach

The CI Lab produces a series of bold offerings designed to stimulate technologies of change by bringing the academy, industry and the citizen sector into relationship. The CI Lab intends to deliver:

The CI Lab also will advance awareness of key concepts and developments through lectures, informal gatherings, publications, and other forms of popular media.