Process
From the decision you need to settle to evidence you can act on, in weeks, not seasons. Every Lab engagement runs the same five stages. The structure is deliberately simple; the value is in how well each stage is done.
We start from a decision, never from a dataset we happen to have. We work from the human side first throughout. And we report what the evidence says, including the parts that are inconvenient. That is the entire value of asking an independent research team rather than an instrument built to reassure.
We begin with the choice you actually face. Whether to expand into a market. Whether a programme is working. What to fix first. What has to change before you can act. A short design conversation establishes the real question, the population that holds the answer, and the evidence that would genuinely change your mind.
Most research is wasted here, by gathering data that was never going to settle anything. We would rather spend the time getting the question right. When the question is about how a niche technology will engage the regime around it, the BRW framework enters at this stage, so the study measures the right mechanism (bypass, repurpose, or weaken) rather than a generic outcome.
We design the study to fit the question. Interviews where depth matters. Surveys where comparability matters. Baseline, midline, and endline where the claim is about change. We draw on validated instruments where they exist, and build bespoke ones where they do not, always blending impact questions with the operational and experiential ones that make findings useful day to day.
Every qualitative instrument is grounded in the in-depth interview guide, the five-levels-down principle behind the Lab's field work. Where the claim is about measurable change over time, the impact-tracking template structures the baseline-midline-endline comparability. For European projects tracking demonstration outcomes across sites, see also European Impact Tracking. For placing a technology on the readiness axes, see TRL & SRL.
Trained researchers who speak the language and know the place reach respondents directly, by phone, face-to-face, or on site. We work only with participants who have given informed, recorded, revocable consent, and we anonymise by default. In difficult contexts, low-connectivity, multilingual, informal, dispersed, this stage is where most studies quietly fail; it is where the Lab's field research craft matters most.
Consent and ethics standards follow the international framework independent research is held to. See the Electric transport in Nairobi, MiMaji, and Pyropower cases for three contrasting examples of how this stage plays out on the ground.
We clean, code, and analyse the data with the same rigour that goes into the Lab's published articles. Where a comparable benchmark exists, GOGLA on the off-grid solar market, C40 Cities on urban transport, we place your findings against it explicitly so a number carries its comparison. Where no benchmark exists, we say so.
The Impact Measurement service page has more on how we structure Reach, Depth, and Experience readings across a study. For the Lab's own reading of how transitions play out across state capacity and niche success, see the Four Ways a Transition Lands matrix, and for the wider innovation-scaling asymmetry that shapes many engagements, see Europe Invents, America Scales.
You receive clean data, a clear analysis, and a written reading of what it means, benchmarked where a benchmark exists and honest about the limits of what the study can conclude. Turnaround is measured in weeks, not seasons. Deliverables include a decision-maker briefing, an interactive dashboard where appropriate, and the raw instrument in a form that can be re-run.
Because instruments are built for repetition, the first study can become an ongoing time series rather than a one-off. That continuity is what makes evidence more valuable in month twelve than in month one. See Monitoring, Evaluation & Dissemination for the shape of that continuing work, and the case studies for engagements that have grown from a first study into a running measurement.
Independence from the thing being measured. Rigour equal to the Lab's own published research. And findings written to be used by a decision-maker without a translator, plain, specific, and tied to the choice in front of you.
We are based in Delft, The Netherlands. We do fieldwork in the places our research takes us, through researchers and partners who already speak the language and know the place, because the quality of field research depends on it. Our published work on the BRW framework, on TRL and SRL readiness, and on the Transitions Outcomes matrix is the proof of the method; the same method is what a commissioning partner receives.
Take a manufacturer weighing whether to expand electric two-wheelers into a new region.
The the mobility case study shows this shape of engagement in a real market. For a very different context under the same method, see the MiMaji water-transparency case in Nairobi and the St. Eustatius Transport Directorate case in the Dutch Caribbean.
The Lab's approach draws on the socio-technical transitions literature (the Sustainability Transitions Research Network is the primary hub), on the state capacity and industrial policy debate that shapes the environment new technologies land in, and on the parallel body of applied social measurement in the OECD DAC evaluation criteria tradition. What we add is fieldwork done at the depth those frameworks call for, in the settings where it is hardest to gather.
For the underlying theory behind our reading, see the multi-level perspective originated by Geels and colleagues in the early 2000s; for the state-capacity side, Mariana Mazzucato on the entrepreneurial state and Dani Rodrik on industrial policy set much of the frame the Lab's applied work operates within.
For the services this process delivers, see What We Do. For the field cases that show the shape in practice, see Case Studies. For the methods themselves, see Resources. To start a conversation, see Contact.
Start a study
Send a short note about what you need to know and who it concerns. We will come back with an approach, a timeline, and an honest view of what evidence can and cannot settle.