About

Overview

Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) is a centre for research and innovation based in the Faculty of Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) operates on a model that integrates academic research, professional engagement, education and skills development for stakeholders in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. sLab is a growing community of researchers and practitioners, design and business professionals, teachers and students, who are passionate about envisioning possible futures.

Located in Will Alsop’s landmark Sharp Centre for Design at 100 McCaul Street in Toronto, sLab builds on the groundwork of the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, founded in 2005. Our work investigates the intersections of human behaviour, new technologies and organizational capacities. We develop and apply design research, visualization, prototyping and strategic foresight methodologies in order to clarify and feed the front end of the innovation process. From our base within Canada’s largest and oldest university of art and design, we combine deep experience in imaginative and visual thinking with skills in interdisciplinary collaboration, business analysis and strategic planning.

Our Vision

sLab at OCAD will be the leading Canadian design research centre recognized internationally for strategic foresight and innovation, engaging a diversity of expertise to create sustainable solutions and meaningful change. Rooted in a heritage of design thinking, our approach places human needs, desires, behaviour and culture at the heart of problem finding, problem framing, and problem solving.

sLab brings an understanding of complex systems and futures studies, through techniques such as environmental scanning, emergent signal analysis, scenario learning, and technology assessment. Our highly collaborative partnerships and client engagements develop creative insights and intellectual property that we work to leverage through the development of strategic roadmaps, communications programs, products and services, policy frameworks and other outcomes. Strategic Innovation Lab’s research complements and extend the work of management consultants as our imaginative speculations and informed propositions tap into insights and areas that technology tracking, and quantitative, rearview mirror analyses simply cannot reach. Unlike future forecasting institutes, we develop and implement creative but focused action plans that deliver specific objectives for short- and medium-term as well as long-term future horizons.

Site credits

This site represents the participation of the entire sLab community, and we thank everyone who's had, and continues to have, a hand in shaping and adding to its form and content. A few individuals deserve credit for their extensive contribution:

Creative direction Greg Van Alstyne
Technical direction Ramtin Lotfabadi
Design direction Garry Ing

Please contact us with comments on the site, including features you would like to see added.

Terms of service

Copyright
Except where otherwise noted, content on slab.ocad.ca is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

Privacy and personal information collection
A research group within the Faculty of Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) is committed to the principles of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), namely:

Transparency: information under the custody and control the university should be made available to the public with limited and narrowly defined exceptions (i.e., private donations to the university archives; most labour relations and employment related records; teaching materials; and research related records).
Privacy: personal information under the custody and control of the university should be protected from unauthorized collection, use, and disclosure. sLab respects the privacy of personal information under its custody and control and adheres to the privacy protection principles for the collection, use, disclosure, retention, and disposal of personal information embodied in FIPPA.

Personal Information
sLab collects and uses personal information from participating faculty, students, and other parties through the Strategic Innovation Lab Web site, http://slab.ocad.ca. The purpose for collecting this information is to enable sLab to pursue its mission of developing and disseminating original research into and through design, innovation, and strategic foresight.

The information will be used, among other things, to support the operation of sLab’s academic research projects; to promote the credentials and achievements of participating faculty, students and other parties through internal and external communications, including email newsletters and Web publication; and to promote, record, document and publicly share sLab events and activities.

Personal information, including email addresses, will not be disclosed to a third party without explicit consent from the individual user. Personal information will be collected, protected, used, and disclosed in accordance with Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)(R.S.O. 1990).

Questions about the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by the University should be directed to the Privacy Coordinator, Library Services, Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1W1; email: fippa {at} ocad.ca