Policy labs on the fringes: boundary-spanning strategies for enhancing innovation uptake

Abstract

Governments around the world are increasingly launching policy labs to break the alleged inertia of public bureaucracies. Operating on the fringes of their parent organizations, however, public policy labs often live a secluded life with little or no subsequent organizational adoption of lab-designed policies. This research examines how lab managers enhance policy innovation uptake through boundary-spanning strategies and practices connecting public policy labs to their bureaucratic parent organizations. Based on a qualitative study of three Danish public policy labs, it coins and conceptualizes three boundary-spanning strategies for enhancing policy innovation uptake: agenda linking, arena linking, and actor linking. Analyzing how the lab managers carry out each of these strategies in practice, the study shows their respective strengths and weaknesses in building political-administrative support for lab-designed policies on multiple levels of the public bureaucracy. The study findings suggest that lab managers must strike the right balance between under- and over-integration of policy labs in the public bureaucracy in order to enhance innovation uptake, connecting the lab to bureaucratic agendas, arenas, and actors, without compromising the integrity of the lab as a creative space for the experimental co-design of public policies. Conceptualizing managerial strategies and practices for bridging the gap between policy labs and public bureaucracies, the study contributes not only to policy lab theory and practice, but also to the mounting collaborative governance, management and leadership literatures on the tensions and dilemmas arising at the interface between hierarchical government and interactive governance.