By Cathryn Carson How do you build an organization that will change as fast as the field itself does? It was a year ago that the D-Lab design team started its work. Already the technology solutions on our radar screen are being revised. What Berkeley researchers are doing with data – what methods they want to learn, what datasets they’re drawing on – is constantly up for grabs. We think of D-Lab as a start-up. When we say that to ourselves, we own the fact that we’re getting off the ground. But we mean more than that. D-Lab is trying to create operating principles of querying, experimenting, and iterating – including trying, failing, and trying again. We only succeed if we keep on top of, or ahead of, what users will need. That means we have to pay really deliberate attention to learning processes, feedback loops, and organizational design. This isn’t always how Berkeley has operated. We are betting we can institutionalize this kind of responsiveness, even in the middle of the university’s long-established structures. We partly look outside for models – for fluid, adaptable organizations in the social and private sectors that are attentive to fitting into a scene that is constantly in flux. We also look inside. One thing crystallized out of the D-Lab design process: Berkeley’s graduate students are vastly talented and incredibly inventive. They are D-Lab’s first target audience, as well as the core of our start-up team.