DATE & TIME
30 September 2026, 11:00 – 12:30
ROOM
Toucan B
TRACKS
TRACK 2: Living Labs for Policies, Governance, Collaboration and Innovation Ecosystems
TRACK 5: Living Labs Operations, Methods, Tools, and Impact
Description
Stop relying on grants by positioning your lab as an External R&D service. This workshop teaches how to use institutional assets as test beds to prove the efficacy of unproven innovations. Participants will learn to deliver decision-ready data that moves social solutions to adoption and scale.
Agenda
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 11:00 – 11:10 | The Utility Shift: Intro to the Rally Grid Shifting from “Project Manager” to “Infrastructure Architect.” Defining the External R&D service model and the three conditions that make institutional assets available as test beds. |
| 11:10 – 11:25 | The Asset & Demand Audit (individual reflection, then pairs) Two columns, forced entries. Column one: three institutional asset holders in your region. Column two: the operational headache each is currently paying to solve. Final five minutes in pairs, pressure-testing column two. |
| 11:25 – 11:50 | The Scaling Sprint (5 teams of 4) Each team selects one member’s asset holder and maps the Test-to-Scale pathway for that single case using the Rally Grid Canvas. One real institution, not a composite. Unproven idea through to institutional adoption. |
| 11:50 – 12:15 | The Sustainability Review (peer-to-peer exchange) Teams swap canvases and stress test the financial logic. Receiving teams answer three questions directly on the canvas: Who signs the check when the pilot ends? What evidence does that person need to see? Does the proposed data actually produce that evidence? Marked-up canvases return to the originating team. |
| 12:15 – 12:30 | The Commitment: Naming Your First Test Bed (full group) Each participant names one asset holder they will approach, the headache it addresses, and the first decision-ready data point required. Rapid round-robin, then close on the Rally Grid as a reusable operating frame. |
Facilitators
Kyle Christian Steele
Executive Director & COO, Rally
Kyle Christian Steele
Executive Director & COO, RallyKyle Christian Steele envisions, designs, and guides the organizations, systems, and spaces that are sustainable and affirm human dignity. His mission is to help people find and fearlessly move into the power of their unique story. As co-founder and Managing Partner at The Conduit, he has spent ten years building Central Florida's top workspace, anchored by an 18,000-square-foot flagship and a community of more than 380 members who stay three times longer than the national average. As Executive Director and COO of Rally, civic innovation infrastructure wholly owned by the Central Florida Foundation, he designed the strategy the organization now executes across the region, helping it source, build, test, and scale solutions to its most pressing challenges alongside partners that include the City of Orlando, Orange County, the University of Central Florida, and regional healthcare systems. He has also served as a Visiting Social Entrepreneur at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation. A Detroit native, Kyle lives in Orlando with his wife and son, where his focus has turned to improving the systems and infrastructures that quietly decide who gets to flourish.