A T-Lab can be defined as a highly designed and expert facilitated process intended to support multi-stakeholder groups in addressing a complex social problem. It is not just a ‘stakeholder engagement’, but an intentional intervention in the system that requires a deeply planned process (e.g. who will be there, what is question) whilst allowing for emergence and the unexpected to occur.

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The purpose of the T-Labs is to generate innovations that have large-scale transformative impact towards sustainability. This means innovations that can help us deal with major global challenges and create conditions for human wellbeing, today and in the future. The T-Labs aims at contributing to systemic impact and supports the generation of social innovations rather than technological innovations, although it recognizes that technology plays an important role in social innovations.

Q Method is used to study subjective perspectives.

It is useful when you wish to characterise how different groups of people think about a particular issue in a systemic way.

It can be used to explore perspectives on any issue area where there is subjective disagreement, making it particularly useful for studying controversial subjects. Q does not look to link perspectives with objective and external variables such as age, job or income, but instead it looks to understand the subject’s own internal frame of reference (Cairns 2012).

Multicriteria Mapping (MCM) is an interactive hybrid qualitative/quantitative appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on complex strategic and policy issues.  Based around an easily-used, freely-available web-based tool, it aims to help ‘open up’ technical assessment by ‘mapping’ practical implications of different options, knowledges, uncertainties contexts and values – as seen under contrasting points of view.

MCM was developed in a series of collaborations over the past fifteen years by Andy Stirling in SPRU at Sussex University, and an MCM software package and manual was launched in October 2014. It is based on earlier experience with use of many other multicriteria methods in various policy debates in Europe and North America over controversial issues like choosing between energy technologies, siting nuclear facilities, developing conservation strategies or assessing alternative chemicals.

Like other methods, MCM can yield a picture of what looks best overall. But this can conceal all kinds of contestible technical assumptions or value judgements. What’s different about MCM, is that it treats numbers as servants not masters. Paying as much attention to the qualitative reasons for the numbers, MCM reveals the practical implications of contending judgements, in a way that is quite accessible to participate in and relatively easy to understand.