What I learned from founding an innovation lab
This article is written by Carolina Pozo, former Secretary of Planning of Quito and founder of the innovation lab LINQ.
When I was 15 years old I got the chance to attend a lunch meeting with a former president of Ecuador. During lunch, he said: “mediocrity is the second largest resource our country has, after oil”.
This impacted me greatly. What did he mean by that? And how did he dare say that about his own country-men? His statement on mediocrity made me uncomfortable, but also drove me to become an active citizen pushing for change.
I won’t accept this self-perception of us Ecuadorians as mediocre; we cannot let that be the default mindset.
In response to this view, we must ask the tough questions, speak up and state facts. Even if it makes many people uncomfortable. However, from my experience, it’s the only way to ignite change and address public problems. Today we call this “social innovation”.
But what does social innovation mean in practice?
9 lessons from founding an innovation lab
In 2015 I founded and led LINQ, Quito’s Innovation Lab, the first public innovation lab in the country and one of only four in the region. Our objective was to design and implement innovative open government projects, where the pillars of transparency, citizen participation and collaboration could improve our governance models, generating direct benefits for citizens.
I learned a lot from this venture, which has informed my work ever since. In this article I will draw out 9 lessons I’ve learned from putting social innovation into practice:
1. You must defend ideas and principles against all odds
One of the first hurdles we encountered was launching the first open government initiative in Ecuador, which involved preparing an official 20-page report explaining that open government was not a made up term. By that time 70 countries worldwide had already joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP) but for Ecuador, the concept was still brand new.
The pattern repeated itself in almost all of the other innovation projects we launched. My latest report was a 200-page document to Ecuadorian government authorities explaining the value of open data for smart governance. All in all, the takeaway is that political will is essential to get started, but so is a great team of professionals who can advocate and defend projects with facts on a daily basis, and who are willing to deal with the challenges and obstacles that the system itself imposes.
The other leaders of the first four innovation labs in Latin America and I had an ongoing group chat in WhatsApp for many years — in fact, it became our support group
All these aspects are part of our duty as public servants; there is no fast-track to innovating in government, especially while simultaneously doing other important work, which in my case involved leading anti-corruption policies.
2. Effective communication and quick wins are key for innovation
Start by designing and implementing an effective communication strategy both within and outside the government.
Design a “quick-win” project, with a low budget that can potentially have a high impact — by doing this, you give yourself legitimacy. Engage with media partners to promote action and results, not political agendas. Our quick-win, for example, was launching the first open data platform only four months after our local city administration had taken office.
3. Citizen’s tools for auditing the government are a must for building trust
To generate greater confidence in government, civic audit tools that are easy to use and access should be implemented.
At LINQ we designed — at zero cost to the administration — a user-friendly civic audit tool on open contracting for public infrastructure. But before it was launched it got boycotted by the head of a public Infrastructure Company in Quito, as well as the mayor, because it revealed the inefficiency in public infrastructure progress to the public. This happened to many other government labs, but it is still an essential tool for transparency.
4. Launch co-created projects to strengthen the innovation ecosystem
Co-creation processes require an active ecosystem where private institutions, academia, civil society organizations and citizens contribute to the government with proposals and with direct implementation of solutions for the city. We did it at zero cost by launching a platform previously implemented in Medellin, which accelerated the capacity to co-create with the public.
5. Find support and share lessons for accelerating innovation
International cooperation is key, especially between cities. The other leaders of the first four innovation labs in Latin America and I had an ongoing group chat in WhatsApp for many years — in fact, it became our support group. Our spirit of collaboration involved replicating best practices, and sharing lessons learned, with no red-tape and at higher speed than usually seen in government.
6. Think deeply about how to institutionalize innovation in order to make it sustainable
Open government strategies must reach beyond the periods of the current administration and must have short, medium and long-term objectives.
Public innovation is probably one of the hardest things to implement: you need a team of active advocates to push for legislation, technical knowledge to design processes and comply with international standards.
Changing government — like any undertaking — is a challenge, but it’s also contagious
The first time open government legislation was presented in Ecuador was by our team at the City of Quito. It took us less than six months to write and present it, while it took our local politicians three years to discuss and approve it. Innovation means change — change requires investing in capacity building.
Open government should be adopted as an innovative governance model where the principles of transparency, collaboration and citizen participation prevail. This is possible when there is clear political will, high efficiency and effective management. But all of this is not possible without investing in capacity building for public servants. Because all of the latter entails change and, at the end, innovation is not possible if people’s mindsets do not change.
7. Surround yourself with the best
Put together a multi-disciplinary team of innovation champions that are:
- Purpose-oriented professionals who fight mediocrity with example.
- Fearless in challenging the status quo.
- Resilient when facing criticism.
- Assertive defending ideas and presenting facts.
- Positively irreverent by not asking for permission when shaking outdated structures or challenging closed-minded individuals.
A multi-disciplinary team provides a wider perspective that is crucial in problem solving, and can widen your scope to see the many different approaches that are out there.
9. Curiosity and inspiration are at the heart of innovation
Do not, ever, be afraid to reach out for a mentor.
Another great take-away from my experience at LINQ was finding my mentor, Sam Pitroda, the Indian innovation guru who connected India. He is a global advocate who always reminds us that: “we live in a world with 19th century mindsets, 20th century processes and 21st century needs (…)our global institutions are all outdated, they were all last designed after World Wide II (…) we now need to redesign the world”. I couldn’t agree more; we all have the responsibility to take action, not just government.
10. Remain fearless — public innovation is tough
Changing government — like any undertaking — is a challenge, but it’s also contagious.
Disruptors, youth and minorities are not only speaking up but starting to take action in Ecuador and around the world. A new platform, with new players, confident and brave enough to prove that mediocrity is out of the question and that a new path for progress can be redesigned is very much needed. So stay strong. — Caroline Pozo
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