Draft:The Beyond Lab

The Beyond Lab

Abbreviation	The Beyond Lab
Formation	20 June 2017 (2017-06-20)
Type	Research institute
Legal status	Active
Headquarters	Geneva, Switzerland
Head	Director Özge Aydogan
Parent organization	United Nations Office at Geneva
Website	www.thebeyondlab.org
Politics portal

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.

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 "Spillover-Innovation Learning Journey" journey, 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

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. 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 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. Other activities have included workshops, events and interventions at international fora such as the Summit for the Future, The Hamburg Sustainability Conference or the International Conference on Financing for Development.

The Futures Balance

The Futures Balance is an initiative to create a forward-looking policy framework and AI based 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.

The 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.

Collaborations and Networks

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 long term sustainability. 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).

Crucially, the Beyond Lab leverages multistakeholder networks that extend beyond the UN. The Lab has built connections with civil society initiatives like Rethinking Economics and research institutes such as the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Academic partnerships have also been central for instance, the Lab collaborates closely with Geneva Graduate Institute, University of Geneva and ETH Zurich. 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.