The Rise of Innovation Labs: Three Stumbling Blocks Along the Yellow Brick Road Christian Bason
A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.
1
The Economist,
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Schumpeter, the business columnist for British weekly The Economist, has char-
September 6th, 2014;
acterized the rise of innovation labs in the public sector under the heading “test
economist.com/news/
tube government.”1 With some surprise, he notes that certain public institutions
business/21635620-governments-are-borrowing-ideas-
are now “liberating” key staff from their daily routines and encouraging them to
about-innovation-private-sec-
invent the future. Quoting a range of examples from around the world, including
tor-test-tube-government.
the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights team, the New Orleans Innovation Delivery Team
2
The Economist, December
6th, 2014.
and Denmark’s MindLab, the columnist discusses whether what is happening is merely a fad and the teams ultimately “jargon-spouting irrelevancies.” The piece concludes, however, that the efforts of innovation labs may yet be worthwhile: “Reforming government is hard and often boring work. The innovation labs are making it a bit faster and a lot more interesting.”2 It is the chance to contribute to the “interesting” work of government service redesign that is a key part of the underlying motivation one senses in the contributions to this volume, in which a range of the world’s foremost innovation lab practitioners share their experiences, learnings and challenges. Between the lines, the lab work comes across as adventurous, exciting and, dare I say it, cool. I am happy
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The Journal of Design Strategies