Alternative Incubation Lab: Reimagining Innovation Through Care and Connection
What if innovation began with love and care, not pitch decks?
Too often, innovation is framed as a solitary journey—driven by competition, pressure, and the expectation to scale fast. This session invites a different starting point: one grounded in care, kinship, and reciprocity.
The Alternative Incubation Lab is a participatory space for visionaries, funders, innovators, and systems changemakers to reimagine how innovation is nurtured. If current models prioritise growth, scale, and exits, what would it take to redesign them for life, interconnection, and regeneration?
Building on a successful session at Davos 2026, this Lab creates space for imagination and experimentation—where deep listening meets creative thinking, dialogue, and collaboration. It brings together diverse perspectives, including voices that are often underrepresented in global conversations about innovation.
At the heart of the experience is an invitation to expand how we think about participation itself. The session will include a “more-than-human” perspective, giving a symbolic seat to Nature through Imbali, an AI- and VR-enabled black rhino—challenging participants to consider how innovation might look if it were designed in relationship with the natural world.
What to expect
This will be a highly participatory and immersive session. Participants will engage in guided dialogue, creative exploration, and collective reflection—moving beyond traditional incubation models to imagine new possibilities for how ideas are supported and brought to life.
Who this is for
This session is for innovators, funders, and systems changemakers who are interested in exploring more relational, regenerative approaches to innovation.
What you will get out of it
A new perspective on what it means to nurture innovation
Exposure to alternative models rooted in care, connection, and reciprocity
Space to reflect on your own approach to innovation and support
Connections with others rethinking how change happens
This session invites participants to step outside conventional models and explore what becomes possible when innovation is grounded not in competition, but in relationship.
Speakers
Wakanyi Hoffman, Innovator, African Folktales Project
Dr. Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, Innovator & Facilitator
Ruth Andrade, Environmental Partner (Brand, PR & Communications), LUSH
Anca Damerell, Director of Innovation, Unearthodox
Juliet Le Breton, Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Change Coordinator, Unearthodox
Imbali, Female black rhino, a collaboration between Habitat XR and Nature Perspectives
Location & access
Accessibility matters deeply to us, and we do our best to choose spaces that reflect that. That said, some of our Oxford venues are in historic buildings without lifts. This room is unfortunately not accessible for wheelchair users, those with mobility challenges, or anyone needing step-free access.