Abstract
As experimental spaces, design-led Policy and Public Sector Innovation labs employ design and participatory practices to help governments innovate. However, their short-lived nature is often detrimental to informing policy processes and government practices systematically. A year-long case study on Zet, a Dutch PPSI lab, including 29 interviews and 2 workshops, explored how organisational transformation from a government-enabled to an independently-run lab acts as a sustaining strategy. This article focuses on how Zet’s organisational transformation affected their potential to inform policy and government practice. Findings reveal that Zet started to prefer long-term client partnerships over short-term assignments. In addition, knowledge of government dynamics increased, supporting the integration of lab outcomes into policy-processes. Nevertheless, barriers to translating and integrating project outcomes remain. These findings place the use of design for just policies in the broader context of organisational sustainability with implications for labs seeking to enhance their impact through increasing their resilience.
Keywords
policy and public sector innovation labs; design-led practices; organisational change; sustaining strategies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1008
Citation
van de Ven, J. (2024) Exploring if organisational transformation enhances policy and public sector innovation labs their impact potential: A case study on Zet, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1008
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Exploring if organisational transformation enhances policy and public sector innovation labs their impact potential: A case study on Zet
As experimental spaces, design-led Policy and Public Sector Innovation labs employ design and participatory practices to help governments innovate. However, their short-lived nature is often detrimental to informing policy processes and government practices systematically. A year-long case study on Zet, a Dutch PPSI lab, including 29 interviews and 2 workshops, explored how organisational transformation from a government-enabled to an independently-run lab acts as a sustaining strategy. This article focuses on how Zet’s organisational transformation affected their potential to inform policy and government practice. Findings reveal that Zet started to prefer long-term client partnerships over short-term assignments. In addition, knowledge of government dynamics increased, supporting the integration of lab outcomes into policy-processes. Nevertheless, barriers to translating and integrating project outcomes remain. These findings place the use of design for just policies in the broader context of organisational sustainability with implications for labs seeking to enhance their impact through increasing their resilience.