Public Sector Innovation Labs Blog One: Scaling deep and transformative learning
The City of Vancouver Solutions Lab and our Auckland Co-Design Lab have been in a dialogue and writing process together over the last year or so, exploring some of the ways that we have been integrating the role of learning into our theory of change.
Transformative learning as part of scaling deep has become a core part of how we think about our work, and we were curious about what we might be able to learn and share with the field if we tried to understand why this has become so important for us, and the role that learning plays in our work.
We found that a focus on transformative learning and scaling deep became more and more necessary for us as we moved beyond doing the surface work of discrete projects and innovation focused on solutions and into longer term initiatives, relationships and learning partnerships that had a better chance of grappling with the systemic transformation of business-as-usual paradigms and practices of government. A longer article is in the works, and in the meantime we have gathered up our (in progress) shared insights in the form of articulating a PSI lab archetype focused on transformative learning and scaling deep, and six moves that public sector innovators and lab practitioners might consider as a pathway to deepening the impacts of lab work.
We are both deeply grateful for our colleagues and collaborators in our respective labs, organizations, and communities, and we hope that the ways that we’ve gathered up this thinking honour what we’ve learned together alongside each of you.
You may be interested in this article if…
You’re a public sector innovator and/or lab practitioner who is interested in how a learning-oriented approach — at the individual, relational, and systems scales — might support your practice.
You’re feeling the limitations of a project-by-project and discrete approach to public sector innovation, and are seeking to work at a deeper level that integrates across these silos and into the systems, structures, and paradigms of government.
You enjoy reading about how other public sector innovators and labs are reflecting on their own practice.
There are three main sections in this post, so please jump around as you wish: a little bit of theory; five lab typologies; and six moves toward scaling deep and transformative learning.
Read more at Public Sector Innovation Labs: Scaling deep and transformative learning.
Read the second blog post here