Our mettle is being radically stress-tested now. What used to be hypotheticals – “What if our world was dramatically altered?” – have become today’s realities. The global pandemic is just one of a number of social, economic and technological shocks that are creating internal whiplash for businesses and organizations of every stripe and size. The acronym “VUCA” – shorthand for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous – captures the zeitgeist of the times with uncanny precision.

Neerbosch district in the Dutch city of Nijmegen celebrated its 50 years of existence in 2015. The golden jubilee celebrations brought attention to the district’s history, but were also an occasion to plan the future of the neighborhood for the next generations. Rik Berbé (ChangeLabs) was chosen to be part of the urban planning project to support the district’s leadership during the full process.

Changes in legislation and in the childcare scene in the Netherlands pushed Stichting Peutercentra Arnhem (SPA) to distinguish itself from aggressive competitors in the region. ChangeLabs helped the organization to rethink and transform its market position and to build a strong organisational identity over competitors.

Change Labs are open, collaborative spaces for the co-creation of solutions to complex organizational and urban challenges. Change Labs provide a context, space, and methodology for bringing a diverse set of stakeholders together around a complex challenge they face. Similar to the way we have labs for our technical challenges where we experiment and explore unknown solutions in a safe to fail environment, Change Labs aim to do the same for the complex organizational and urban challenges.

A change project by Humap (Finland) in collaboration with ChangeLabs. In 2015, Cadmatic bought the Dutch software company NCG with which it had been cooperating for a couple of decades. After the acquisition, the goal was to combine the operations of the two companies and build a single, global organisation.