Personally, I've hoping the Lab would isntitute a type of daily 'job' that would allow residents who cannot otherwise make any decent money in SL (either because those don't subscribe or don't want to buy lindens) to make some decent daily, or weekly cash that they could then use to help fuel the SL economy.

If new players realized they didn't have to struggle all the time to make L$, or come home from their jobs to login to their SL jobs to make L$, that might help retain some users and get more returning users as well.