Public Innovation Labs - The New Brunswick Experience
How visionary leadership and the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network seeded a generation of public innovation labs — and what NouLAB's fiddlehead-shaped lessons can teach any public sector trying to build innovation capacity.
This narrative begins with visionary leadership. The Late Honourable Andy Scott envisioned effective governance and connected government for the 21st century. Recognizing that the public sector's capacity for research and policy design was weakening while problems grew more complex at an accelerating pace, he understood that leaders needed flexibility, systems thinking, and openness to innovation — qualities typically absent from government culture.
In 2009, Andy Scott established the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network (NBSPRN). This partnership unified the Government of New Brunswick, post-secondary institutions, and civil society organizations to develop evidence-based policies through citizen engagement and networked governance.
Networked governance is an approach to problem-solving that seeks to integrate the capacities of external organizations and actors with government.
Initially, the Network facilitated cross-sector connections and stakeholder convening. However, fundamental questions emerged:
- How do we enable the government to work with its external environment and collaborate with non-governmental actors to innovate and deliver services?
- What are the specific mechanisms and activities to do so effectively?
Innovation labs addressed these challenges. Like most public and social innovation labs, they employ multi-stakeholder convening, systems thinking, design thinking, and iterative prototyping and testing. This approach suits problems characterized by uncertainty and unknown solutions requiring exploratory thinking.
The Network's innovation process prioritizes problem understanding over idea generation, following these steps:
- Problem identification and framing
- Critical discussion and reflection
- Strategic focus and system thinking
- Human-centred design
- Methodological and iterative approaches
The first lab — NouLAB — began as a first-generation initiative by facilitating The Academy, designed to help public sector staff and stakeholders collaborate on complex challenges. Over several years, cross-sector teams addressed affordable housing, food security, adult literacy, gender equality, wellness, immigration, and aging.
The initiative evolved into a second-generation lab — the Economic Immigration Lab — a multi-year effort with diverse stakeholders tackling immigration-related challenges.
Key Lessons from NouLAB
It's Everyone's Job
Making innovation succeed requires organization-wide participation. "You can't scale change without the lawyers and accountants on board," as noted during a panel discussion. Innovation capacity shouldn't reside in isolated units or be restricted to an internal "cool kids' club." Every department and role contributes to shifting from isolated successes toward an innovative culture.
Labs Are Primarily About Learning
Innovation operates as an iterative learning process across systems, organizational, project, and individual levels. Labs provide parallel learning structures that help bureaucracies continuously improve and adapt. Sharing these learnings broadly is essential.
Fiddleheads as Innovation Metaphor
The Scented Path
Fiddleheads' spiral shape represents security and safety. When wild mammals prepare to rest, they spiral their approach, leaving a scented trail — a predator following this spiral provides early warning. Similarly, labs should offer safe spaces where participants can take risks, share ideas, and learn from mistakes without career or relationship consequences.
The Natural Fractal
Fiddleheads are naturally occurring fractals containing "self-similar patterns" that repeat systematically. As Wired Magazine explains, "Ferns...contain patterns that can be mathematically generated and reproduced at any magnification." These systems exhibit iterative, unpredictable yet deterministic behavior.
Labs should mirror this principle: organize collaborative projects to reflect the behavior, patterns, and desired future state of emerging systems. They provide spaces to discover and experiment with new working methods while developing solutions to public challenges.
Be the Change You Wish to See
(Thanks to Nicefutures for the fiddlehead inspiration during NouLAB development)