Draft:The Beyond Lab

The Beyond Lab is a multi-stakeholder innovation lab at the United Nations Office at Geneva focused on driving social innovation for long-term sustainability. Formerly known as the SDG Lab, it serves as UN Geneva’s collaborative space leading on social innovation for long-term sustainability. Building on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda, the Beyond Lab works to enable systemic change by influencing policies and decision-making in an inclusive, intergenerationally equitable way. Its mission is to “make sustainability a way of life” through shifting mindsets of decision-makers and championing new value-based models of development aligned with long-term sustainability.

History

The Beyond Lab originated as the SDG Lab, which was established in early 2017 within the Office of the Director-General of UN Geneva. Conceived as a “startup” unit inside the UN system, the SDG Lab’s creation responded to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the need for new collaborative approaches to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It was co-founded by Michael Moller with the support of the Swiss Development Agency and was initially led by Nadia Isler who served as the first director. From its outset, the Lab acted as a neutral platform to bring together diverse stakeholders to connect, innovate, and scale up solutions for the SDGs. The SDG Lab leveraged International Geneva’s “ecosystem” of organizations by identifying strategic opportunities for convergence, amplifying successful practices, and incubating interdisciplinary partnerships.

By 2022, as the Agenda 2030 reached its midpoint, the Lab began expanding its focus beyond the immediate SDG targets to address longer-term and emerging sustainability challenges. In 2023, under the leadership of Özge Aydoğan (who succeeded Isler as Director) the Lab undertook a strategic “SDG Lab 2.0” reflection, engaging in broader debates on intergenerational equity, regenerative development, and the “known unknowns” that lie beyond 2030. This evolution culminated in a rebranding of the SDG Lab as The Beyond Lab in 2024. The new name reflects an ethos of going beyond the status quo across all aspects of development and adopting a whole-of-systems approach. As the Beyond Lab, the initiative embraces new “lenses” for sustainable development, such as long-term futures thinking, emotional and behavioral insights, and greater inclusion of future generations to complement the original SDG mandate.

Mission and Approach

The Beyond Lab’s vision is to drive transformative change toward sustainability by fostering collaboration across sectors and time horizons. Its stated goal is to make sustainability a “way of life” by ensuring that policy and decision-making processes are inclusive of diverse voices (interdisciplinary and intergenerational) and oriented toward long-term well-being. To this end, the Lab challenges conventional development paradigms and promotes innovative, value-based models that go beyond short-term economic metrics.

In practice, the Beyond Lab functions as an open multi-stakeholder laboratory for the SDGs, convening governments, UN agencies, NGOs, academia, and private sector actors to co-create solutions. It provides a neutral “safe space” for experimentation and systems thinking, where participants can break down silos and test new ideas to address the interconnected challenges of the 2030 Agenda. The Lab’s approach emphasizes integration, collaboration, and innovation, identified as key enablers for sustainable development, in order to amplify the impact of individual initiatives through collective action. By connecting the right stakeholders at the right time, initiating joint projects, and helping to scale up successful practices, the Lab seeks to accelerate progress on the SDGs and catalyze a broader shift in mindset towards regenerative and equitable development. This collaborative ethos is reflected in the Lab’s core values (the “5 Cs” – Care, Creativity, Curiosity, Circularity, and Collective Intelligence) which underscore inclusion, innovative thinking, and shared learning in all its activities.

Key Initiatives and Activities

The Beyond Lab undertakes a range of initiatives, pilot projects, and knowledge-sharing activities aimed at re-imagining sustainable development. Its work spans thematic “**What’s Next?**” dialogues on emerging issues, capacity-building programs like the **Beyond Lab Residency**, and co-creative challenges that invite broad participation in shaping the future. Two **flagship initiatives** illustrate the Lab’s focus on redefining development models and ensuring long-term sustainability: **“Moving Beyond GDP”** and **“The Futures Balance.”**

Moving Beyond GDP

Moving Beyond GDP* (formally the **Youth “Moving Beyond GDP”** initiative) is a program that engages young people in rethinking how we measure progress and prosperity beyond the singular metric of gross domestic product. This initiative responds to the recognition that GDP, as a short-term economic indicator, fails to account for critical social and environmental dimensions of development, thereby neglecting well-being, sustainability, and the interests of future generations. In partnership with civil society and UN agencies – notably **Rethinking Economics International** and the **UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)** – the Beyond Lab launched *Youth Moving Beyond GDP* to foster an intergenerational dialogue on new measures of progress. The project aims to “break the intergenerational glass ceiling” in economic discourse by empowering youth to contribute to the design of complementary indicators and frameworks for sustainable development.

Key activities under Moving Beyond GDP have included a global essay competition, *“What Counts in the Future? A Youth Perspective on Measuring What We Value,”* which in early 2024 gathered over 600 submissions from young people worldwide. The top essays were published and the winners were invited to present their ideas at a high-level policy dialogue in Geneva, ensuring that youth perspectives directly inform discussions on **Beyond GDP** metrics. Subsequently, the Lab has organized multiple dialogues and workshops – for example, an official side-event during the UN *Summit of the Future* in September 2024 – to formally launch the initiative and integrate its outcomes into ongoing UN processes. Through these efforts, *Moving Beyond GDP* is building a youth network as a “sounding board” for Member States and for the UN Secretary-General’s expert working group on beyond-GDP measures. This initiative aligns with the UN’s broader call (in the *Common Agenda* and *Pact for the Future*) to develop new well-being and sustainability metrics beyond GDP. It has been highlighted as part of UN Geneva’s push to **“measure development beyond a country’s GDP”** by elevating intergenerational voices in economic policymaking.

The Futures Balance

The Futures Balance is an initiative to create a forward-looking policy **framework and tool** that helps decision-makers account for the long-term impacts of their actions on future generations. Conceived as a kind of *“intergenerational balance sheet,”* the Futures Balance provides a visionary accounting and planning approach anchored in the principle of **intergenerational equity**. It addresses the challenge that current policy and finance models often prioritize short-term gains while accumulating unintended *“debt to the future”* – liabilities such as environmental degradation or social deficits that will burden coming generations. The Futures Balance framework encourages policymakers to move beyond extractive, short-term mindsets and instead to **value the creation of long-term assets** (natural, social, human, and economic) for sustainable prosperity.

In practical terms, the Futures Balance tool is designed to help governments and organizations identify where today’s investments can **build regenerative assets** versus where they may impose liabilities on tomorrow. By making the trade-offs transparent, it guides a shift in investment and policy decisions – increasing support for activities that yield durable benefits (e.g. education, clean technology, ecosystem restoration) while phasing out those that create future harms. The approach draws inspiration from financial accounting (expanding on concepts like generational accounting) and integrates methods from futures studies and foresight planning to navigate uncertainty. Ultimately, the goal is to **eradicate our “debt” to future generations** by institutionalizing long-term thinking and *“futures literacy”* in policy design. The Futures Balance initiative has begun pilot collaborations (for instance, with platforms such as the TASC Platform) and advocacy to raise awareness of our collective *“futures footprint”*. UN Geneva describes the Futures Balance as providing policymakers a concrete tool to identify sustainable investment areas so that *“future generations will benefit from governments’ decisions made today”*.

Partnerships and Network

Beyond Lab** operates through extensive partnerships across the UN system and with external stakeholders. As part of the UN Geneva ecosystem, the Lab collaborates with various UN agencies and programs to mainstream innovation for the SDGs. For example, it has worked jointly with **UNCTAD** on the *Beyond GDP* initiative and engages with the UN **Innovation Network** through fellowship programs (reflecting the Lab’s role in the UN’s internal innovation community). The Lab often convenes or contributes to global and regional forums – such as the **Summit of the Future**, **Financing for Development** conferences, and Geneva’s **Building Bridges** sustainable finance summit – to inject system-change perspectives into multilateral discussions.

Crucially, the Beyond Lab leverages **multistakeholder networks** that extend beyond the UN. It was conceived to amplify the unique strengths of “International Geneva,” tapping into the 100+ international organizations, 400 NGOs, academic institutions, and private sector entities based in Geneva’s global hub. The Lab has built connections with civil society initiatives like **Rethinking Economics International** (a youth-led network for economic reform) and research institutes such as the **International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)**. Academic partnerships have also been central – for instance, the Lab co-launched the *Geneva SDG Data Forum* with the Graduate Institute Geneva and private sector partner Deloitte to explore data-driven SDG solutions. Through these collaborations, the Lab plays a bridging role, linking grassroots and expert communities with policymakers. It strives to *“connect the right people at the right time”* and to translate local innovations and research into policy-relevant insights.

The Beyond Lab’s work is supported by a number of **government and donor agencies**. The **Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs** (through the Swiss Development Cooperation) has been a key supporter since the Lab’s inception in Geneva. Likewise, the **German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)** and its implementing agency **GIZ** have partnered with and funded Lab activities, reflecting an interest in scaling innovative SDG approaches globally. These institutional partnerships, along with others in the UN and donor community, enable the Lab to function as a **facilitator of co-creation** rather than a traditional project implementer. By pooling resources and expertise from across sectors, the Beyond Lab exemplifies the SDG 17 principle of revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development.