The Role of Public Innovation Labs in Collaborative Governance—The Case of the Gipuzkoa Lab in the Basque Country, Spain

Alfonso Unceta, Xabier Barandiaran and Natalia Restrepo
Additional contact information
Alfonso Unceta: Sociology 2 Department, University of the Basque Country, 48940 Leioa, Spain
Xabier Barandiaran: Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Deusto, 20012 San Sebastian, Spain
Natalia Restrepo: Sinnergiak Social Innovation Centre, University of the Basque Country, 20018 San Sebastian, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: Public sector innovation labs have gained increasing importance as one of the material expressions of public sector innovation and collaborative governance to address complex societal problems. In the current international context, there are various experiences, interpretations, and applications of this concept with similarities and differences but all of them are based fundamentally on the establishment of new forms of participation and collaboration between governments and civil society. This paper aims to examine, through a case study, how policy innovation labs could play a prominent role in promoting decision-making at the local level in order to create a more sustainable public sector. To do this, this article focuses on an analysis of the “Gipuzkoa Lab”, a public innovation lab developed in the Gipuzkoa region located in the Basque Country, Spain, in order to confront future socio-economic challenges via an open participatory approach. An analysis of a pilot project to address worker participation, developed within this participatory process, indicates that these collaborative spaces have important implications for the formulation of public policies and can change public actions, yielding benefits and engaging citizens, workers, private companies and academics. This paper provides a contemporary approach to understanding good practice in collaborative governance and a novel process for facilitating the balance between the state and civil society, and between public functions and the private sphere, for decision-making. In particular, this case study may be of interest to international practitioners and researchers to introduce the increasingly popular concept of public sector innovation labs into debates of citizen participation and decision-making.

Keywords: collaborative governance; policy labs; public policies; public sector innovation; decision-making; worker participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/6103/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/6103/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:21:p:6103-:d:282874

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().