TIAL

Reimagining public institutions: A time for bold experiments
2025-06-05 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
We are living in an era of intersecting crises—climate disruption, digital transformation, displacement, misinformation, and inequality. These aren’t isolated issues but systemic and deeply interwoven. Today’s volatility demands institutions that can lead with clarity, legitimacy, and a long-term perspective.

The question is no longer how to restore the status quo—but who we, and our institutions, need to become to lead through permanent unpredictability.

At the 2025 Creative Bureaucracy Festival, taking place in Berlin, this session invites you into a live fishbowl conversation with Demos Helsinki, Transition Collective, and TIAL. We’ll explore real-world experiments in reinventing public institutions—from housing and climate resilience to AI governance.

Together, we’ll unpack design principles, values, and trade-offs—and open the space to your questions and ideas.

A session for curious civil servants, institutional innovators, and those ready to lead beyond business as usual.

Get your Festival ticket here

Find out more about the Festival

Speakers:

Christian Bason, Co-founder, Transition Collective

Nina Langerholc, City Transformation Lead, Demos Helsinki

Geoff Mulgan, Professor, University College London & Co-Founder, TIAL

Caio Werneck, Community Coordinator, TIAL

Louise Agersnap, Head of Innovation Hub, World Health Organisation

Fixing procurement for the era of AI
2025-05-20 16:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
An online event about how public procurement could evolve

This conversation is part of the activities of the community of practice Reimagining Public Institutions.

Public procurement is one of the most powerful tools governments have to become more effective. Yet, it is still underutilised for its potential. Procurement can shape innovation, strengthen capacity, and deliver more wisely to society. Yet in an era of rapid technological change, procurement systems remain rigid, slow, and vulnerable to failure.

Join us for an online conversation between Geoff Mulgan, TIAL cofounder, and Leonardo Quattrucci, author of the white paper A Well-Architected Framework for Public Procurement, to explore how governments can fix procurement by bringing about more agile, adaptive, accurate and accessible systems.

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST HERE

Who should join?

This event is designed for professionals working in government, civil society, and technology organisations, as well as anyone passionate about exploring how institutional innovation can help us reimagine and reshape public organisations.

When and where?

May 20th, 4pm CET

Online (link received after registration)

What will you get

Discuss the white paper on Well-Architected Framework for Public Procurement with the author

Join an insightful and purposeful conversation between policymakers, tech experts and academics interested from different parts of the world

Find peers with common interests and contribute to building the field of institutional architecture

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST HERE

Istanbul Innovation Days 2025: shaping the institutions of tomorrow
2025-03-25 08:00 - 2025-03-26 17:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
Since their inception in 2015, Istanbul Innovation Days have served as the development community’s flagship event for exploring emerging signals of change, co-creating transformative pathways, and building innovative partnerships for a better future.

This time, we focus on Institutional Innovation in an Unsecure World — a topic of profound relevance to our current moment. In a world increasingly defined by persistent “polycrises”—where overlapping political, climatic, economic, and technological challenges converge—our institutions struggle to provide adequate responses. Yet, these moments of complexity also offer unprecedented opportunities to rethink and transform institutional paradigms.

The upcoming Istanbul Innovation Days (IID) will take place in Istanbul on 25-26 March 2025, in partnership with the Government of Türkiye. Brought to you by UNDP, TIAL and Demos Helsinki, IID 2025 will explore how public institutions might reinvent themselves to seize these opportunities.

Read more

Explore the official website

See the programme

Related posts

Dozens of illustration cases celebrated at Istanbul Innovation Days 2025

13 March 2025

No Comments

In preparation for Istanbul Innovation Days 2025, for which TIAL has partnered up with the…

Read More

Institutional innovation and institutional design start to garner media attention

12 March 2025

No Comments

The story of institutional innovation is getting told around the world.

Read More

TIAL x UNDP: A time to build – shaping the next generation of public institutions

19 December 2024

No Comments

In March 2025, the IID – through a partnership with Demos Helsinki & TIAL – will focus…

Read More

Reimagining Public Institutions
2025-02-25 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
Are our institutions equipped to deal with tomorrow’s world? Considering issues like disruptive technologies, or pressing crises like climate change, there’s a growing argument that we urgently need to rethink the design of public bodies.

This event brought together leaders in institutional innovation to discuss how our governing bodies could be reimagined:

Milica Begovic, Head of UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit

Geoff Mulgan, Professor and Co-founder of the Institutional Architecture Lab

Christian Bason, Co-founder, Transition Collective

Isabella Gady, Senior Expert at Demos Helsinki

Together they explored replicable strategies for instigating transformational change and introduced emerging forms of institutional design. The session concluded with a Q&A, allowing attendees to consider how their insights might be applied within their organisations.

This event took place as part of the launch of the Reimagining Public Institutions Community on the Apolitical platform.

The Reimagining Public Institutions Community facilitated by Demos Helsinki, The Institutional Architecture Lab (TIAL), and the Transition Collective, is for individuals passionate about addressing some of society’s most pressing challenges by building more human, thriving, collaborative, and impactful public service organisations.

Join the community

Speakers

Milica Begovic, Milica Begovic leads UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit, focusing on partnering across disciplines to explore conditions and build capabilities for large-scale transformation. She is also a mom of two girls who keep her grounded.

Christian Bason, Co-founder of Transition Collective, which works with leaders and organizations to enable sustainable transitions in society, is also Adjunct Professor with University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and a Leader in Residence with Copenhagen Business School (CBS). Christian is a writer, author, speaker, coach, trainer and advisor on design, innovation and leadership. From 2014 to 2023 he was CEO of the Danish Design Center, a government-backed non-profit foundation. From 2007-2014 he was Director of MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation team. From 1998-2006 he held various leadership positions in Ramboll, a global advisory group. He is the author of nine books on leadership, innovation and design, including “Expand: Stretching the Future by Design” (2022), “Leading Public Sector Innovation” (2018) and (in Danish) “The Organization Was Set Free” (2023). Christian is M.Sc. (Political Science) from Aarhus University and Ph.D. (Design, Leadership and Governance) from Copenhagen Business School. Christian holds Danish and American citizenship and lives with his family in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Isabella Gady, whose work focuses on building capacities for the next era of public sector transformation, aims to highlight the connection between inner development and societal impact. Specializing in transdisciplinary design, strategic foresight, and psychology, her work spans roles at the Austrian Foreign Ministry, the UN, ideo.org, and 3×3 Design. Co-founder of the Digital Diplomacy Chapter in New York and Assistant Editor of Design for Social Innovation (Bloomsbury), Isabella develops leadership curricula that blend strategy, design, behavioural sciences to foster meaningful change.

Sir Geoff Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Formerly the chief executive of Nesta, he held government roles from 1997-2004, including as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit director and as Downing Street’s head of policy, and has worked for dozens of governments worldwide. He is the founder or co-founder of many organisations, from Demos to Action for Happiness, and the author of many books.

Roundtable on future generations and institutional design
2024-07-15 13:30 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | sbarc | spark, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
How to reflect the interests of future generations in today’s decisions: what institutions, laws and methods can help us?

Welcome to the Roundtable on Future Generations and Institutional Design! Join us for a thought-provoking discussion at sbarc|spark and online that will ask: How to reflect the interests of future generations in today’s decisions: what institutions, laws and methods can help us? This event will bring together experts in the field to explore how we can shape institutions today to benefit future generations. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations and gain valuable insights.

REGISTER HERE

SPARK (Cardiff University Social Science Research Park) is the world’s first social science research park (www.cardiff.ac.uk/SPARK). In collaboration with TIAL (The Institutional Architecture Lab tial.org) we are holding a roundtable to address the institutional options for reflecting the interests of future generations in current decisions. This forms part of the work being done by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and TIAL to guide governments around the world. This has largely been prompted by the Future Generations Commissioner in Wales (www.futuregenerations.wales/) and the spread of ‘Committees of the Future’ in Parliaments, from Finland to Uruguay (e.g. www.ipu.org/event/second-world-summit-committees-future).

We have found widespread interest around the world in this question and are developing a working paper to feed into the UNDP annual ‘Innovation Days’ conference in Istanbul in early 2025. Contributors will include: Geoff Mulgan (TIAL) and Chris Taylor (SPARK), Derek Walker (Future Generations Commissioner for Wales), Roman Krznaric (Author of History for Tomorrow), Denis Naughten (Inter-Parliamentary Union and Teachta Dála in Oireachtas (Irish Parliament), Cat Tully (Managing Director for the School of International Futures), Jane Davidson (Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David), plus speakers from UNDP, Committees of the Future and Network of Institutions for Future Generations.

Publication: How to reflect the interests of future generations in today’s decisionsThis publication examines the many efforts around the world to represent the interests of future generations in public decision making through laws, institutions, and new approaches to finance. Read the publication
