case study public innovation

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When faced with the opportunity to reimagine an existing public space, the City of Memphis focused on bringing to life more than a refresh – leveraging the historic Tom Lee Park to foster an inclusive, shared experience among all residents. 

In “Inclusive Placemaking: Tom Lee Park, Memphis,” researchers from the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins explore four key lessons from Memphis that can aid other cities in putting equity commitments into action. Through strategic investments, partnerships, gradual placemaking, and strong focuses on public art, landscape design, and communications, Tom Lee Park has become a living embodiment of how a City’s commitment to inclusivity can help build a stronger city.

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Governance Innovation Case Study Series

A student case study series on how Global South governments are innovating to make governments more accountable, transparent, and responsive to citizens.

The Governance Innovation Case Study Series

What are the challenges, opportunities, and decision making tradeoffs that bureaucrats face when designing public sector innovations within resource-constrained governments? Over the winter 2022 and summer 2023, MIT GOV/LAB’s Governance Innovation Initiative worked with six graduate student fellows and various public sector innovation labs, agencies, and other actors in the Global South to co-produce practitioner-friendly case studies that illuminate context-specific innovations. The first pilot case was researched by Mariama N’Diaye, as part of her MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellowship with the MIT GOV/LAB, while the first cohort of summer research fellows were launched in collaboration with Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG) and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI ).

You can find the case studied chronicled on our Medium site, or as downloadable PDF links.

[ Case Study 1: Sierra Leone ] Whole-of-Government Innovation in Sierra Leone: The Challenges to user-Centered Design in Government Innovation  Case Researcher-Writer: Mariama N’Diaye, MBA and Masters’ Candidate in Urban Studies and Planning 

[ Case Study 2: Kenya ] Market and People Solutions to Access and Accountability: The eCitizen story in Kenya Case Researcher-Writer: Deepika Raman, Masters’ Candidate at MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP)

[ Case Study 3: Kenya ] Kenya’s Horizontal Revenue Sharing: Leveraging Public Participation Data for Optimal Efficiency Case Researcher-Writer: Leonard Francis Vibbi, Masters’ Candidate at the MIT Media Lab (MAS).

[ Case Study 4: Mexico City ] Digital Government as a Vehicle for Redesigning Public Services: The Legal and Design Genesis of Mexico City’s Single Sign-On System Case Researcher-Writer: Eli Epperson, Master’s Candidate in Urban Studies and Planning.

[ Case Study 5: Brazil ] Catching Innovative Feels: How One Lab in Brazil is Creating the Space and Support for Civil Servants to Innovate  Case Researcher-Writer: Vineet Abhishek , Master’s Candidate in Urban Studies and Planning, with Carlos Centeno, Associate Director, Innovation.

[ Case Study 6: Cape Verde ] NOSi’s Reform of Cape Verdean Elections: Navigating Legal Challenges in Digital Governance Innovation. Case Researcher-Writer: Lakshmi Gangamreddypalli, Master’s in Urban Studies and Planning.

Header photo by Carlos Centeno.

Related Work

[mit news] new mit fellowship supports student research on governance innovation with global south governments.

A new cross-institute initiative between MIT Governance Lab, MISTI, and the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center to support graduate student work in public sector innovation.

Call for Applications: Governance Innovation Research Fellowship

MIT GOV/LAB is partnering with the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives to offer summer fellowships in Mexico, Brasil, Tunisia, Kenya, and Cape Verde for MIT graduate students.

Designing Governance Innovations in Resource-Constrained Settings

A learning case series from the Governance Innovation Initiative on pathways and bottlenecks to designing governance innovations with cases from Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Governance Innovation

This initiative combines evidence and methods from design and social science to co-develop governance solutions with practitioner partners.

MIT GOV/LAB Digest #9 – Building Trust, Governance Innovation, and New Practitioners-in-Residence

Newsletter highlighting our work from the past year on governance innovation and engaged scholarship, as well as research we’ve published and funded.

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Taking the pulse of public-sector innovation

As a new report identifies global trends in public-sector innovation, here’s where cities are leading the charge.   

Where is public-sector innovation heading? A new report, “ Embracing Innovation in Government ,” provides some answers and identifies four global trends, including:  1) new forms of accountability for a new era in government ;  2) new approaches to care ; 3) new methods for preserving identities and strengthening equity ; and 4) new ways of engaging citizens and residents .

But because this annual analysis, published by  the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation, takes a broad look at innovation at all levels of government, Bloomberg Cities has gleaned some of the report’s city government-specific details. Here’s what we found.

Public-sector innovation is more strategic and increasingly systems focused. 

This year's report includes more innovations than ever—1,084 compared to 161 in the  inaugural report in 2017—and those innovations show a new level of sophistication across the field, according to principal author and OECD Innovation Specialist Jamie Berryhill. “The nuance of the efforts we’re seeing is much greater, in a very positive way,” he says. “When we first started [in 2017], we’d see a lot of interesting stuff that wasn’t super directed or strategic; it was trying new technologies just to try new technologies, or putting in something new and different because they've seen something like that work elsewhere. Over time, these innovations have gotten much more strategic and systematic, so that they are really aligning things in new ways across levels of government instead of as these one-off kinds of interventions.”

Berryhill also reports that there were more city innovations than ever submitted for this year’s report. This trend mirrors Bloomberg Philanthropies’ insight, reflected in this research from the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, that  shows a global proliferation of city-funded and -focused innovation units—from one in 2008 to 119 by the end of 2022.  

“What we’re seeing in this report is the evolution of public engagement and stakeholder engagement,” Berryhill says. “There’s more maturity and more recognition that the best sense for what residents need is not completely known by a bunch of smart people from government in a room trying to figure things out.” 

With those lessons in mind, cities are scaling their resident engagement approaches by taking advantage of a new opportunity: digitalization. From enabling community members to participate in proposing their own landscape architecture solutions using augmented reality in Tallinn to crowdsourcing data on damaged streets from bicyclists in Helsinki , governments have made digital tools a centerpiece of their approach. 

This report also highlights a 10-step citizen participation model —with digital tools at its center—to help city leaders take action.  

One of them is in the way city leaders are rethinking service delivery. “Rather than requiring citizens and residents to go to different organizations and offices based on the functional structures of government, government absorbs this burden and provides holistic services that meet people where they are.” That’s a core characteristic of Bogotá’s CARE Blocks program, which was both an innovation examined by the OECD and a winner of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2022 Global Mayors Challenge . The program not only centralizes support services for the city’s 1.3 million women who work as unpaid caregivers, it also includes mobile units that deliver service to those women’s homes and personnel who can relieve them from their home-care burdens while they’re taking advantage of those services. 

[ Read more about Bogotá’s pioneering approach to public health. ]

The report also identifies a secondary trend around “public administration transformation,” where governments are rethinking nuts-and-bolts operations, like procurement, to drive change. This is reflected in a number of innovations highlighted by the OECD, including the Plymouth Alliance Contract , an effort in Plymouth , U.K., to consolidate 25 contracts—spanning supports for people that include substance-related issues and homelessness—into one. This cross-cutting work is emblematic of how local governments can put larger, systems-focused approaches to work not just on service delivery, but also on internal operations. 

What’s next for public-sector innovators?

One of the biggest benefits of a report like this is to “spread ideas, have other people test them and adapt them to their own cultures and context, and then see what works,” Berryhill says. Bloomberg Philanthropies provides one model for this : Taking winning ideas from its Mayors Challenge program and supporting cities around the world in adapting and implementing them. This is driving the adoption of proven ideas such as Stockholm ’s biochar program —which enables the reuse of plant waste from parks and homes to help combat climate change.

As local governments continue to grow their innovation capabilities, there’s also an opportunity for practitioners to compare those efforts to the hundreds of case studies that have already been cataloged by OECD. “That’s the level of exchange we’d like to see more of,” he adds. “Not every city needs to reinvent the wheel.”

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Government innovation

Governments today must be able to adapt to changing environments, work in different ways, and find solutions to complex challenges. OECD work on public sector innovation looks at how governments can use novel tools and approaches to improve practices, achieve efficiencies and produce better policy results.

• Global Trends in Government Innovation
• Tackling Policy Challenges Through Public Sector Innovation

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Key messages, innovation is a strategic function that must be integrated into broader public sector governance..

Innovation rarely happens by accident. Governments can increase innovation in the public sector through deliberate efforts using many different levers, from investments in skills or technology, to applying new policymaking methods or adapting existing processes. Our work helps governments assess their innovative capacity, providing practical and evidence-based steps to embed innovation in policymaking and administration. This means governments are better able to respond to changing environments and develop more impactful policies.

Behavioural science helps governments put people at the center of public policy.

Understanding cognitive biases, behavioural barriers, and social norms  is essential for the development of impactful policies and public uptake. Behavioural science is an interdisciplinary approach, providing insights that enable policymakers to design more effective and targeted policies that reflect actual human behaviour and decision-making. Our work encompasses research on context-specific behavioural drivers and barriers to support countries in the use of behavioural science from policy design to implementation and evaluation. Through the OECD Network of Behavioural Science Experts in Government, we further foster the exchange of best behavioural science practices and mutual learning.

Governments must anticipate, understand and prepare for the future as it emerges.

The nature of policy issues that governments are confronted by is volatile, uncertain, complex and often ambiguous. Governments need to consider a variety of scenarios and act upon them in real time. This requires a new approach to policymaking, one that is future and action oriented, involves an innovation function and anticipates the changing environment. By governing with anticipation and innovation, governments can prepare for what’s coming next. They can identify, test, and implement innovative solutions to benefit from future opportunities while reducing risk and enhancing resilience.

Innovation in public services unlocks efficiency, responsiveness and citizen satisfaction.

Innovating and digitalising public services can bring many benefits, including improving the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of services, enhancing equitable access and reducing administrative burdens. While it holds tremendous benefits for supporting the overall well-being and satisfaction of citizens and public trust in institutions, governments must ensure high standards of transparency and ethics, particularly when employing the use of data and artificial intelligence to improve or deliver public services. Our work is building towards an OECD Recommendation on the design of government services to effectively improve people's experiences including through life events and the development of more effective and equitable services.  

The public has a lack of confidence in public agencies adopting innovative ideas.

Governments must do better to respond to citizens’ concerns. Just fewer than one in four (38%, on average across OECD countries), feel that a public agency would be likely to adopt an innovative idea to improve a public service. Enhancing innovation capacity can strengthen resilience, responsiveness and trust in public institutions.

Confidence in governments’ adoption of innovative ideas is directly related to trust in civil servants.

People who say they are confident about innovation in a public office are more likely to trust civil servants. On average across OECD countries, the share of people who trust the civil service is equal to 70% among those who are confident about public sector innovation. This trust value is more than two times larger than among those who say that the public sector would not adopt innovative ideas.

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• Anticipatory governance In an era characterised by rapid technological advances, environmental shifts, changing demographics, geopolitical tensions, and evolving societal needs, traditional governance models are increasingly under pressure. Governments worldwide are seeking ways to not only respond to present challenges but also to anticipate and shape future possibilities. Anticipatory Innovation Governance is a proactive approach that integrates foresight, innovation, and continuous learning into the heart of public governance. Learn more
• Behavioural science Governments around the world are increasingly using behavioural science as a lens to better understand how behaviours and social context influence policy outcomes. At the OECD, we research context-specific behavioural drivers and barriers, and support countries in the use of behavioural insights, from policy design to implementation and evaluation. Learn more
• Digital government Digital government explores and supports the development and implementation of digital government strategies that bring governments closer to citizens and businesses. It recognises that today’s technology is a strategic driver not only for improving public sector efficiency, but also for making policies more effective and governments more open, transparent, innovative, participatory and trustworthy. Learn more
• Innovative capacity of governments Governments must develop their capacity to adapt and change the way policies and services are designed and delivered if they want to implement ambitious reform agendas, meet climate targets and respond to global crises. Without intentional efforts, innovation is left to chance, fuelled sporadically by circumstance and crises. Our work helps governments assess and improve their innovative capacity, providing practical and evidence-based steps to embed innovation in policymaking and administration. Learn more
• Innovative public participation Citizens must have a say in the decisions that affect them. Inclusive and impactful participation not only enriches the policymaking process by incorporating diverse views and harnessing collective knowledge, but also strengthens public understanding of outcomes, promotes policy uptake, and reinforces trust in public institutions. It is essential to institutionalise participatory and deliberative processes and better articulate them with representative democracies. Learn more
• Strategic Foresight The Strategic Foresight Unit in the Office of the Secretary-General plays a central role in supporting more effective and resilient public policy by spearheading strategic foresight as a tool of modern, evidence-based, and anticipatory policy making and governance. Learn more

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Public innovation: An Australian regulatory case study

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Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review

The urban water sector must innovate to meet a multitude of challenges. In Australia, innovation needs to occur primarily within the existing framework of public ownership. Supporting innovation necessitates understanding all the potential regulatory levers which could influence its adoption. This paper analyses the place of public utilities within Melbourne's urban water regulatory terrain and examines how innovation thrived or withered amidst the various regulatory influences through an empirical case study. We conclude that water regulatory systems are overlapping, heterogeneous and more sophisticated than often assumed. Yet despite this inherent regulatory complexity, innovation can occur inside trusted public institutions.

• Urban water

Access to Document

• 10.1016/j.jup.2017.08.006

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• Link to publication in Scopus

Projects per year

A3.2: Better Regulatory Frameworks for Water Sensitive Cities

Hodge, G. , Campbell, C., Freiberg, A. , Harris, E. , Lane, R. & O'Connor, P.

Cooperative Research Centres Association (CRC)

1/08/12 → 30/06/16

Project : Research

T1 - Public innovation

T2 - An Australian regulatory case study

AU - Hodge, Graeme

AU - McCallum, Tara

N2 - The urban water sector must innovate to meet a multitude of challenges. In Australia, innovation needs to occur primarily within the existing framework of public ownership. Supporting innovation necessitates understanding all the potential regulatory levers which could influence its adoption. This paper analyses the place of public utilities within Melbourne's urban water regulatory terrain and examines how innovation thrived or withered amidst the various regulatory influences through an empirical case study. We conclude that water regulatory systems are overlapping, heterogeneous and more sophisticated than often assumed. Yet despite this inherent regulatory complexity, innovation can occur inside trusted public institutions.

AB - The urban water sector must innovate to meet a multitude of challenges. In Australia, innovation needs to occur primarily within the existing framework of public ownership. Supporting innovation necessitates understanding all the potential regulatory levers which could influence its adoption. This paper analyses the place of public utilities within Melbourne's urban water regulatory terrain and examines how innovation thrived or withered amidst the various regulatory influences through an empirical case study. We conclude that water regulatory systems are overlapping, heterogeneous and more sophisticated than often assumed. Yet despite this inherent regulatory complexity, innovation can occur inside trusted public institutions.

KW - Innovation

KW - Regulation

KW - Urban water

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029231482&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jup.2017.08.006

DO - 10.1016/j.jup.2017.08.006

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85029231482

SN - 0957-1787

JO - Utilities Policy

JF - Utilities Policy

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate ( GOV ).

Validation that this is an official OECD website can be found on the Innovative Government page of the corporate OECD website.

Innovation labs through the looking glass: Experiences across the globe

• Innovation Labs

Governments are constantly searching for enablers to help them to keep up with changing times, move beyond the constraints of traditional approaches, and leverage innovation to improve public policies and services. Public innovation labs belong to this stream of change. They aim to boost the ability of governments to navigate emergent threats and opportunities and provide sustained, inclusive and proactive responses to people’s needs and expectations. The last 20 years have seen a surge on the emergence, spread and occasionally death of public innovation labs across the globe. While the lab hype cycle might be behind us, government labs continue being incubated across high, middle, and low-income countries.

So, what can we learn from these experiences? To inform the design of new and the evolution of existing labs, we lay out the primary uses of innovation labs and aggregated lessons from public innovation labs across the globe. Our analysis is founded on the initial review and the insights gathered from a public innovation lab directory covering 137 cases from 37 countries and four international organisations. This analysis was complemented with an extensive literature review of research on public innovation lab experiences across the globe.

Not starting from scratch, we build on our own experience and research to share our initial contributions to this topic. At the same time, we want to use this occasion to kick-start an open-ended crowdsourcing exercise to gather first-hand experiences in engaging, managing, and leading public innovation labs and keep building on our knowledge base.

This first blog presents then our initial systematisation of the purposes and learnings of public innovation labs. In a second post, we will put forward factors that may have led labs to fall short of expectations.

Unpacking the purposes of public innovation labs

A pivotal characteristic of public innovation labs is the multiple formats, approaches and labels they take. Laboratory, itself, can interchangeably refer to the concrete space, interdisciplinary teams, portfolios of methods and practices, or temporal slots that structure and materialise its activities. Public innovation labs can be embedded in diverse sectors of government, placed at the center of government, or operate across administrative boundaries. However, common to all, is their feature as purpose-driven enabler of change: public innovation labs exist to generate, scale and/or spread public sector innovation and associated reform initiatives through tangible and practical initiatives. While there are many potential purposes for a lab, recent research suggests that it is important to clearly spell out the purposes for design, study and evaluation reasons. In addition, the purpose needs to align with overarching government priorities and be communicated clearly to decision makers, stakeholders, beneficiaries, and citizens at large.

From the initial review, a set of purposes stands out as especially relevant to define the mission, format, and activities of public innovation labs:

• Question business as usual in governments: public innovation labs are created out of dissatisfaction with existing solutions, entrenched processes, or pre-set answers. For the renewal of prevalent practices, labs bring alternative approaches to the fore. These labs open outwards-in processes , which don’t assume government have all the answers to all the challenges (“governments knows best”) and, instead, reframe its initiatives from the standpoint of citizens (or users at large) to design, assess and implement innovative initiatives. Among others, public innovation labs also heavily rely on rapid and agile interventions for their initiatives, breaking the cascading procedures of traditional policymaking thanks to their relative autonomous status, small size, multidisciplinary skill sets, and/or flexible and agile ways of working. Public innovation labs help also to recognise approaches and activities that may need to be “ discontinued ” in government (and in the lab itself, of course).
• Foster problem-oriented, context-sensitive approaches: Context matters. Innovations cannot be transplanted and replicated across countries, regions and/or organisations in a dogmatic way – they often need to be re-framed and/or re-contextualised. Public innovation labs engage with public sector challenges and problems as they emerge, orienting themselves to cope with existing gaps and bottlenecks as well as to bring knowledge, circulate information, and improve capacity to steward changes. For those reasons, labs heavily rely on context-sensitive approaches, adapting processes and solutions to be understandable and usable in those circumstances.
• Open safe spaces for experimentation inside government : Public innovation labs enable governments to explore and experiment (usually at small-scale, limited costs and controlled regulation) with alternative and creative approaches, counteracting risk aversion and resistance to change. Using prototypes, pilots and testbeds, among many others, labs can test solutions before implementing a new policy or service – and do that acting “ quick and dirty ”. They can also boost capabilities to gather, synthesise and use evidence for decision making . This often entails rigorous experimental ways of working as well as sourcing data, including insights from citizens and those directly affected by the challenge at hand.   
• Facilitate co-creation, inclusiveness, and participation : Labs facilitate approaches that build on networking, stakeholder engagement and participation, and co-creation. Against the centralised vision that insulates governments from their surroundings, these labs are prone to establish networked approaches, both with “internal” and “ external stakeholders ”, such as civil society organisations, the private sector, universities and research centers. At the same time, against the command-and-order approaches to decision making, public innovation labs help to include diverse voices, bridge gaps between (knowledge) communities, and correct power asymmetries in the ideation, design and development of innovative approaches. Public innovation labs see inclusive processes as key, while acknowledging that they are a necessary but not sufficient condition for better outcomes.
• Promote cultural change and capacity-building in public administration : Public innovation labs nurture practical engagement, (self-)confidence and often empathy among public servants and managers in the exploration and use innovative approaches, methods and tools. As such, labs can contribute to promote cultural changes that transform both skills and attitudes, appearing as learning terrains that complement existing pedagogical strategies.
• Demonstrate value : Public innovation labs can provide tangible evidence of the value of new ways of working, regardless of whether these are rooted in technology. Public innovation labs often first work on making the case for a new way of working, before expanding a government’s toolbox and bringing what was once at the edge to the core of how business is done. There is an intent to empower everyone in the public sector to leverage an approach that has proven its value, thus facilitating the transition of innovative methods from the confines of the laboratory into extensive application.

12 lessons learned about public innovation labs

While there is no universal recipe for success, our research identified 12 elements that are especially relevant to steer and strengthen the action of public innovation labs:

• Top-level sponsorship and sustained support: Protection and sponsorship of high-level decision-makers is key , together with the existence of strong mandates (legal and institutional) to pursue their mission and the access to sustainable and continued sources of resources. In order for public innovation labs to endure , they need to be cautious of relying on only one sponsor or champion and be mindful of shifting political agendas. The Lieu de la transformation publique (France), the innovation lab of the Inter-Ministerial Division of Public Transformation (DITP), given its transversal and cross-sectoral nature, is especially suited to federate and steward the innovation labs that are disperse across different ministries, public organisations, regions and municipalities, providing support and visibility to their initiatives.
• Target citizens’ needs and expectations: Public innovation labs are oriented to solve concrete policy challenges and build on citizens needs and expectations. Labs target these needs and expectations not just as part of their narratives, but use them to set their strategic objectives and prove their significance and justify their existence. Participation of users in the ideation, design, development and test of potential solutions ensures that public innovation labs stay “ close to reality ”. The Bangladesh Government Innovation Lab has inscribed citizen-centric at the core of its definition of success: one of the initial principal drivers of change was the reduction of the “TCV”, i.e. the time (T), the costs (C) and the number of visits (V) that citizens need to access public services. The lab has achieved considerable impact on this metric and has since expanded its work as the ‘A spire to Innovate ’, a multinational digital transformation organization.
• Organisational embeddedness and autonomy : The integration of public innovation labs into public sector organisations ensures that their team is not isolated, but rather involved with the organic life of the public administration. Yet the format of the institutionalisation of public innovation labs can ensure its relative “ independence ”. While labs have to keep their autonomy protected in order to explore and experiment with innovative approaches, this embeddedness also brings access to pools of resources, support services (e.g. administrative or communication), and the ability to interact directly with government sectors and organisations. NIDO , the innovation lab of Belgium’s public administration, has built itself as a “safe environment” that allows public servants and managers to identify and analyze the challenges of their organisations as well as to reflect in an open way about innovative approaches. The lab even plays on words to present its mission: the lab wants to be the nest, “nid” in French, to “strong ideas and innovative solutions”.
• Skills and attitudes in core team: Public innovation lab teams rely on the right balance of skills, attitudes and mindsets to answer the challenges at hand and to preserve an environment favorable to innovative activities and initiatives. Labs with sustained activities seem to have a combination of diverse profiles and a multidisciplinary portfolio. GNova, the innovation lab from the National School of Public Administration (Brazil), has developed the “ CoLab ”, a capacity-building and mentorship programme to support lab teams across the country to access leadership, management and technical skills. After an open call for applications, the programme supported 10 units in its first edition (2022).
• Redistribution and capillarity: Labs that actively engage stakeholders and build up their initiatives through exchanges and partnerships across government and with the innovation ecosystem raise their visibility, circulate information and expertise more easily, and increase the mobilsation of resources. Networks and communities of practice are among the most recognisable initiatives of labs – including to connect labs with each other. In Peru, the “ national network of innovation labs ” connects 118 labs, incubators and accelerators to ensure the transference and circulation of experiences as well as to build shared agendas in a decentralised way.
• Free port policy: Gatekeepers and potential “ veto players ” have to be integrated early into the discussion of the initiative. Successful labs work proactively on identifying important players that might block their work and longevity. They define strategies to engage them and secure their support from an early stage. For ensuring a constant and direct connection with its beneficiaries and relevant stakeholders, GovLabAustria has established a “sounding board”. The board members’ meet to provide the lab with their knowledge and networking abilities, besides acting as “sparring partners” for the lab projects.
• Methodologically, not expertise, based : While there are labs that circumscribe their areas of intervention, diverse and adaptable portfolios and kits are assets that accelerate the capacity of labs to react and adapt to changing priorities and urgencies. Ultimately, the selection of methods and tools depend on the purposes of the lab. Often labs have developed and subscribed to process-based approaches to the resolution of problems , often through actionable, experimental and iterative logics. The innovation lab of the city of Bogotá (Colombia), iBO has adopted a methodology that rests on the “maker culture”, emphasizing guiding principles – such as citizen-centric design or systemic thinking – and combining multiple domains of knowledge.
• Experimentation, iteration and simulation: The adoption of robust research, design-driven and experimental methodologies in public innovation labs – that often appear as “ islands of experimentation ” – help to justify decision-making processes, improve the quality of delivery, and provide strong legitimacy. Portugal’s LabX has been adopting an extensive portfolio of experimental approaches in its projects, including the organisation of living labs in public services, the adoption of do-it-yourself approaches to design tools, or the use of gamification to solve public challenges.
• Transfer and dissemination of experiences and learnings : Public innovation labs are often invested in learning, from design to implementation. They seek out lessons from other contexts, either to prevent repeating errors or to profit from consolidated methods and solutions (“what works”). Sharing practices, products and methods also helps to strengthen the innovation culture in the public sector at large and builds a favorable environment for labs to thrive. The Japan+D is a team of volunteers in the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that wants to spread design approaches and methods as a way to support the transformation of Government. The team gathers and shares knowledge, searches to implement cross-sectional initiatives, and connects with relevant experts and units at the national and international level.
• Time to thrive: Public innovation labs are able to provide fast actions and early results, while nonetheless giving enough time to build the necessary durable relationships and close-knit communities for impact to blossom. The Laboratorio de Gobierno (Chile) is its way to complete its 10 th anniversary in 2025. Since 2015, the lab has known changes in its team, its work priorities and streams, and even its institutional position (right now, it is located in the Ministry of Finance). This long journey was at the same time crucial to enable its initiatives and programmes to demonstrate their value and to be constantly improved, as happened with the successive iterations of the Innovation Index .
• Measurement and evaluation : Tracking, monitoring, and measuring the value-creation and impact of lab projects, outputs and practices is critical to sustain its mission. It is also part of their commitment to deliver societal value and conduct transparent, accountable, useful, and responsible activities. The existence of (self-) evaluation loops is also important to receive feedback, consolidate learnings, and fine-tune current activities to the ongoing changes. The iLab , the Northern Ireland Innovation Lab (United Kingdom), has commissioned an evaluation of its activities and governance (leadership, operating model, methods, capacity), including impact case studies (to provide tangible evidence on investments), to gather good practices and identify pitfalls.
• Storytelling : Public innovation labs that engage with their own communities, the government at large, and the public sphere need to tailor their messages to specific audiences, create or explore the most suitable channels, and find compelling formats and styles to convey their narrative. The Solutions Lab , in the city of Vancouver, Canada, has been communicating its mission, history and ambitions using a strongly visual journey – and emphasizing publicly that its existence is a vocation that answers a call “to respond to the root causes of these systemic challenges, not just apply incremental quick fixes”.

Tell us about your own experience!

We want to expand our perspective by including new and diverse examples and experiences of public innovation labs. In doing so, we will be able to present a more comprehensive and fine-grained account of the status, capacities, strategies and visions of labs. Share your contributions in this short questionnaire here . While the questionnaire is open-ended, we plan a first feedback review phase by late March 2024. 

This is the first in a series of blogs on public innovation labs. The second blog will be about why many labs fall short of expectations, followed by a blog that highlights the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation’s experience in designing and piloting an innovation lab in the Government of Romania , the Laboratorul de Inovare. In a final blog, we will raise questions about the possibilities to re-invest public innovation labs in the face of the emerging and complex challenges faced by governments.

This blog is funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

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