Public Sector Innovation Labs - realising innovation imperative in the public sector

Public sector innovation labs are multidisciplinary units where stakeholders with different backgrounds use innovative methods to understand and address complex social challenges. The organizational innovation laboratory is a... [ view full abstract ]

Public sector innovation labs are multidisciplinary units where stakeholders with different backgrounds use innovative methods to understand and address complex social challenges. The organizational innovation laboratory is a well-known concept in the private sector. In the business environment, labs serve as a fun, creative and rapid approach to achieving a competitive advantage. They provide space for developing new products, services and business models; solving organizational problems or encouraging organizational learning by experimenting with the latest technologies, methods and trends . With a growing pressure to become more efficient and effective, the public sector also started adopting a similar approach in recent years. Innovation, change, public, social and policy labs proliferated around the globe. Nesta's “I-Teams” report from 2014 covered 20 innovation teams from national, regional and local governments; a year later Nesta identified about 100 labs worldwide, and the latest mapping exercise for the EU Policy Lab in 2016 revealed almost 80 lab initiatives in the UE member states only.
There are no two same labs; each one is unique in terms of political sponsorship, organization, objectives, focus and techniques used. As a relatively new phenomenon, labs have not been yet sufficiently evaluated and researched to ascertain their benefits and optimal operating models. There is a great deal of hype around the labs and the available publications focus mainly on the potential benefits from running a lab, leading to a conviction that a lab might be a panacea for all the world’s problem. That is why some experts see the concept at the verge of the peak of inflated expectations and trough of disillusionment of the hype cycle, and their real value and impact yet to be discovered. Nevertheless, some of the labs are commonly referred to as the successful ones.
This paper seeks to present a literature review of extisting knowledge on public sector innovation labs, as well as the insight from an evaluation of the Northern Ireland Innovation Lab undertaken by PDR at Cardiff Metropolitan University between September and October 2016, to reflect on the role of the labs in the broader innovation movement in the public sector.