How
In spite of the three Labs types with their peculiarities, all the Cocoon Pro Labs share the following working specifications:
- Labs are open for entrance just to CP members and contributors.
- Each Lab will be expression both of CP’s core values and of market-pulled needs and opportunities.
- Each Lab has to produce a minimum of 1 output / half year, or it will be closed.
The three different kinds of Lab, are then meant for three different kinds of value production, as follows.
Know-how Labs
These Labs are meant for the development of high-level professional know-how on specific topics and practices. They are normally topics specifically relevant to the results we are able to bring our customers, directly or indirectly.
This is the oldest type of Lab in Cocoon Pro, as it was born in 2012 with the name of Open Work Groups (OWG), eventually evolving in the current concept of Lab with its three types. You can think of this kind of Lab as communities of practice around key and transversal topics.
Tools Labs
They are platforms for the generation of mastery in the usage of official tools for our customer-projects. And they are needed both to evolve our ability of selecting and using the right tools for each customer situation, and to test, understand and select new tools for the near future.
Until a tool has been successfully used by a unique facilitator within up to three different CP customers, it’s considered as an alpha tool. Until it has been successfully used by up to three different facilitators within at least three different CP customers each, the tool is considered as a beta. Then the tool becomes “official”. The steps from alpha, to beta, to official are treated as decisions in CP Open Governance, before the eyes of everyone.
X Labs
This is where game-changers and intrapreneurs are welcome to introduce and test new sustainable value proposition parts or complements of the Cocoon Pro business model. Intrapreneurship ideas can be presented inside Cocoon Pro as long as the project has found a full time commitment by its founders and a CP member sponsoring the presentation.
Founders can’t be more than four, they publicly declare themselves within CP, they take on the complete responsibility and the thoughtful acceptance of the CP startup envisioning process.
The Lab is then open only if the founders recruit a team of “investors” among the contributors with at least one person. It then has a few months to complete its discovery and validation phases and, if so, to win seed support by CP in multiple steps. Every 6 months an internal demo-jam takes place where to present the validated projects, in order to enlarge the team and to compete for this CP investment.