- Why do we need institutional innovation, anyway?
- Who is this Playbook for?
- What will you get using it?
- Some guiding principles for institutional innovation
- Thinking laterally and creatively
- Cases of institutional innovation: from Global South to the North
- Institutional innovation journeys
- Phase 1: Mapping the landscape
- Phase 2: Exploring the pathways
- Phase 3: Laying the foundations
- Phase 4: Building and cultivating
- Phase 5: Learning and adapting
- Conclusion
- Download PDF
This Playbook was developed as a collaboration between UNDP, TIAL and Demos Helsinki. It is a living resource that can help teams have a conversation about strategy and tactics for renewing existing or designing new institutions. We developed this for Istanbul Innovation Days 2025. You can find a flip-book version of it here.
Why do we need institutional innovation, anyway?
The world has long depended on public institutions to solve problems and meet needs — from running schools to building roads, taking care of public health to defense. Today, global challenges like climate change, election security, forced migration, and AI-induced unemployment demand new institutional responses, especially in the Global South.
The bad news? Many institutions now struggle with public distrust, being seen as too wasteful and inefficient, unresponsive and ineffective, and sometimes corrupt and outdated.
The good news? Fresh methods and models inspired by innovations in government, business, and civil society are now available that can help us rethink institutions — making them more public results oriented, agile, transparent, and fit for purpose. And ready for the future.
“The world remains restless
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
under the yoke
of a dictatorship of no alternatives.”
Who is this Playbook for?
The Playbook is designed for people shaping institutions—whether building something new or transforming what already exists. It supports:
- Public leaders and policymakers designing institutions that respond to today’s challenges.
- Development partners and funders supporting institutional change in complex environments.
- Innovation teams and reform committees working to (re)build institutions.
Researchers and advisors who analyze, shape, and guide institutional transformations.
What will you get using it?
The Playbook for Institutional Innovation is a practical guide to designing, testing, and evolving institutions. It’s action-oriented,helping institutional designers move from ideas to implementation. It provides:
- A structured approach to institutional design and innovation.
- Guiding principles to shape resilient and effective institutions.
- Tools and insights based on selected institutional innovations.
Some cases to explore
Case: The climate convergence: Extreme heat as a catalyst for cross-sector innovation
Many cities have recently created new teams and roles dedicated to heat resilience, such as the role of Chief Heat Officers (CHOs) in cities including Athens, Freetown (Sierra Leone), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Los Angeles.
Case: Redefining data sovereignty: Māori Data Governance in the digital age
The Māori Data Governance initiative is a rare example of reimagining governance as a way to assert cultural integrity and self-determination.
Case: Mobilising the collective intelligence of nature: Internet of Animals
The ICARUS initiative uses collaborative animal tracking data to reveal where species thrive or decline. By combining insights across projects, it uncovers crucial patterns in migration, habitat use, and biodiversity loss.
Some guiding principles for institutional innovation
1 — HARNESS SHARED INTELLIGENCE
Combine intelligence, data and knowledge to better understand and act on key tasks, wherever possible sharing intelligence as widely as possible.
2 — BREAK DOWN THE SILOS
Recognise that complex problem-solving doesn’t fit into traditional structures, and require whole-of-government and whole-of-society ‘mesh’ approaches tying in multiple tiers of government and connecting public and private sectors.
3 — EMPOWER CITIZENS AS CO-CREATORS
Involve the public beneficiaries in shaping decisions and ‘co-producing’ services.
4 — PRIORITISE SIMPLICITY
Ensure that new rules and processes are as simple as possible, focusing on ‘minimum necessary bureaucracy’ and the lightest possible load on the public and businesses.
5 — EMBRACE NON-HUMANS AS COLLEAGUES
Incorporate AI agents and other non-human beings as partners in decisions, from very routine tasks to strategic choices, made possible by rapid evolution of technologies and recognition of rights of other entities such as animals and ecosystems.
6 — LEARN, ADAPT OR PERISH
Build in capacities to quickly adapt and change in the face of deep uncertainty in an unstable world.
Thinking laterally and creatively
At each moment in their journey we hope to encourage teams to think more creatively and imaginatively about the options. There is no good reason why the next generation of public institutions should look the same as ones from 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
Institutions have traditionally followed hierarchical, rigid structures, very often silo-ed—pyramids of authority designed for predictability and control. But today’s complex challenges, from climate change to data governance and societal inclusion, demand more agile, adaptive, collaborative, and resilient forms. Also, rigidity often creates breeding grounds for waste and inefficiency.
The Playbook helps teams explore institutional forms in new ways, moving beyond the conventional, offering fresh possibilities for how institutions can be designed and how they function.
Traditional hierarchical public agencies are often too rigid to deal with fast-changing complex problems—which require agility, systems thinking, silo-breaking, waste-busting, and awareness of how to engage the public and build trust.
Here, for example, are three radically different ways of running organisations at quite large scale that can serve as prompts for creative thinking:
AirBnb is one of many digital platforms that serve as a marketplace to link millions of sellers and consumers, rather than directly producing goods or services or owning assets.
Buurtzorg is a healthcare organisation with a nurse-led model of holistic care that revolutionised community care in the Netherlands with a 40% cost savings, employing around 20,000 staff.
The International Solar Alliance is a global intergovernmental organisation with 100+ signatory countries dedicated to advancing solar power adoption for a carbon-neutral future
Cases of institutional innovation: from Global South to the North
We can learn from innovations in many sectors and places. We have analysed a sample of recent public institutional innovations across the globe, especially in the Global South. They provided the ground for the development of the many of the components of this publication.
Some cases to explore
Case: Time use policies: Rethinking institutional fabric around transversal issues
Barcelona recognised that unequal access to time was a structural problem—and began treating time as a citizenship right. Over two decades, this shift has shaped pioneering time-use policies that influence urban planning, labour, and public services.
Case: Rewiring economy and governance for shared prosperity through Blockchain solutions
AltFinLab utilises decentralized technologies across topics such as financial inclusion, public service delivery, digital identity, and climate resilience.
Case: New institutions for care: Rethinking systems for those who sustain society
Bogotá’s Care Blocks are pioneering urban hubs designed to support carers – primarily women – who are traditionally invisible, unpaid, or undervalued.
Case: Orchestrating elderly care: Singapore’s Integration Solution
Singapore transformed its existing care coordination unit into the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) – a dedicated institution with a comprehensive mandate to integrate services across Singapore’s entire healthcare ecosystem.
Institutional innovation journeys
Metaphors
Whether building something new or transforming existing structures, we invite institutional entrepreneurs to be inspired by two complementary metaphors. One is about architecture, which brings a sense of building things to last. The other is a more organic, ‘softer’ gardening metaphor, which represents ongoing cultivation necessary to create adaptable and context-sensitive institutions.
Architects: institutions can to be built and reformed
Gardeners: institutions can to be cultivated and nurtured
Phases
We propose a common but adaptable journey to support teams navigating complexity, making sense of progress, and ensuring that innovations are grounded and sustainable.
In each phase, we outline fundamental questions about why change is needed, what must evolve, and indicate some approaches on how to design and implement institutional innovations.
The playbook is a living resource, continuously evolving to meet emerging challenges while providing a practical yet inspirational tool for public leaders determined to steer their organisations through reform and renewal.
Phase 1: Mapping the landscape
Phase 2: Exploring the pathways
Phase 3: Laying the foundations
Phase 4: Building and cultivating
Phase 5: Learning and adapting
Phase 1: Mapping the landscape
This phase is about understanding what pressures are triggering the redesign of an existing institution or creation of a new one. It’s a moment of openness, collecting data about problems, opportunities, and purpose, and then (re)positioning the initiative in the larger ecosystem. It’s also an opportunity to be inspired by cases around the world.
A case for inspiration
Chief Heat Officers (CHO): new institutions and roles to tackle the crisis of extreme heat in cities
As heat waves intensify, they expose not only the limitations of traditional silo institutions struggling to manage heat-related risks across departments but also the gaps in necessary responsibilities. Cities such as Athens, Freetown, Dhaka, and Los Angeles learned from each other and introduced CHOs to coordinate efforts and embed heat resilience into public governance.
Approaches for breakthrough thinking
Scanning
Looking for parallel innovations around the world, relevant evidence about what does and doesn’t work; the key facts and data about the problem and its causes.
Reframing
Sometimes it’s better to widen the problem or need being addressed; at other times a sharper focus may be useful. The first ‘framing’ of the problems may not be the best one.
Causes diagram
It’s vital to understand the root causes of the problems including the direct and underlying symptoms. Otherwise, a blind copy-and-paste may result in dangerous consequences.
Crucial questions to answer in this phase
How can (re)framing the problems open new opportunities?
Extreme urban heat, for example, is not just a standalone issue; it intertwines with public health, infrastructure resilience, and social equity. So, the problem, even if it has originated from one traditional silo, must be reframed as a multidisciplinary one.
Which institutional voids and overlaps are most critical?
It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to solve a multidisciplinary problem such as extreme heat within a context in which no single existing institution is accountable for it. Thus, the only logical solution is to create a new institution (CHO) to act as a coordinator for this new agenda.
Which possibilities of purpose could be good mobilisers for political support, both with a capital ‘P’ and a small ‘p’?
The CHO’s role has a clear purpose: to lead and coordinate city-wide efforts in combating extreme heat. This involves operationalizing Political will (with a big ‘P’), aligning policy objectives (with a small ‘p’), and advocating for appropriate changes.
Phase 2: Exploring the pathways
Moving from the ‘why’ to the ‘what’—the form, structure, and dynamics of an institution. This phase is about shaping possibilities, exploring various institutional forms based on existing cases and even simulating or prototyping an institution.
A case for inspiration
NISE3 in Bangladesh: Helping young people navigate skills & jobs
With the rapid expansion of industrial automation and AI, the training providers in Bangladesh continue to peddle obsolete skills, employers have to train and retrain on the job at huge expense, and the government stands by helplessly while job seekers waste precious years. This recognition forces the policymakers, employers, trainers, and job seekers to collaborate, find disruptive institutional forms, and share data continuously.
A more detailed description of the case will soon be available on the Istanbul Innovation Days website.
Approaches for breakthrough thinking
Imagining through metaphors
It’s sometimes useful to think of different organisational metaphors: not pyramids but flotillas, networks, meshes, platforms or organic metaphors like mycelium.
Inverting roles and structures
To open up possibilities within a system or domain, turn a common theme upside down (e.g. employers becoming job seekers) and get surprised by unconventional options, and go beyond the current mandates and limitations.
Crucial questions to answer in this phase
Which organisational forms could help achieve innovative solutions to your problems?
A platform bridging the government, private employers, public and private training organisations, and job seekers offers a potential answer: National Institute for Skills, Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship (NISE3).
How do you identify potential resistors and craft win-win incentives for them?
In the case of Bangladesh, policymakers, businesses and training organisations were brought under a single national mission while many training providers resisted with fear of not being able to keep pace with the change.
How can you simulate an institution before full-scale implementation?
Instead of building a new institution, PMO and ICT Ministry worked together in Bangladesh to develop a shared data platform to continuously analyze job trends and skills requirements from businesses to equip the training providers.
Phase 3: Laying the foundations
The focus of this phase is on the how, translating more speculative institutional models into action. It involves key strategic decisions regarding people, services, structure and outreach. It’s a moment in which formalisation of proto-institutions takes place.
A case for inspiration
Aadhaar and UIDAI: New approaches to identity & services
One of India’s key pillars of poverty alleviation—its massive social safety net programs—faced widespread corruption and inefficiency, leading to significant leakage of public funds. Biometric verification through a Unique ID was proposed as a solution, but it required an institutional framework. This led to the creation of UIDAI, which not only enabled direct benefit transfers through digital payments but also streamlined public service delivery across multiple agencies. The initiative not only improved efficiency but also expanded access, fostered inclusion, and strengthened trust in government services, laying the foundation for Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
Approaches for breakthrough thinking
Value mapping
Explicitly articulate and align personal and organisational level values. These often invisible elements guide the organisation in the most fundamental ways.
Legitimacy Lens
Building the legitimacy for a new or reformed institution is not a one-time effort but needs constant maintenance. This toolkit provides the guidance necessary to transition from advocacy to institution building.
Crucial questions to answer in this phase
How to translate your purpose into core skills and values needed to build an enduring institution in this domain?
India’s social safety net required simplification of the complex ID process, a scalable infrastructure and combination of new skills: technological, political and communication skills.
Which design offerings could help you obtain in the short term the necessary legitimacy to achieve longer term results?
Unique ID Authority of India (UIDAI) was established with one key service: very fast deduplication of unique ID of every citizen and resident requested by thousands of organisations for over a billion people.
Which legal structures can secure funding sources in the present while remaining flexible for forthcoming changes?
UIDAI was created by the Parliament as a statutory body funded by the federal government, a private-sector-like independent decision-making structure because existing agencies were constrained by legacy structures and lacked the requisite technical, operational, and bureaucratic agility.
How can public outreach build trust?
UIDAI reached out especially to marginalised beneficiaries contributing to digital literacy. This strategy helped to overcome resistance from powerful ministries, such as Home, concerned about control and privacy, and vested interest groups which lost rent-seeking opportunities.
Phase 4: Building and cultivating
This is the boring phase of institutional development, when things take tangible shape at scale. The focus in on activating the institution and keeping it running and thriving, with dynamic operations that are responsive, purpose-driven and sustainable, performing the everyday balance among time, money and human (and AI) resources.
A case for inspiration
Rwanda Space Agency (RSA): using space to help the economy grow
When Rwanda launched its national space agency in 2020, many questioned how a small country could justify investing in space. But rather than a prestige project, the RSA positioned space technology as a tool for economic development, agriculture, and disaster response. With a lean, partnership-driven business model, RSA collaborated with international players on practical applications like precision agriculture and broadband expansion, making the agency financially viable.
Approaches for breakthrough thinking
Co-creation
Actively involve citizens, experts, partners in the design, implementation, and refinement of institutions. Enable stakeholders to become collaborators and co-owners of the process.
Missions
Set ambitious, purpose-driven frameworks to align diverse actors around shared societal challenges. Go beyond isolated projects or policies to create systemic change, focusing on long-term outcomes rather than short-term outputs.
Crucial questions to answer in this phase
How will the institution run day-to-day processes and stay flexible as it grows?
The Rwanda Space Agency adopted a lean partnership-driven model, leveraging international collaborations (launched RwaSat-1 with Japan), bringing external expertise rather than building all capabilities in-house.
How can procurement & partnerships enhance the organisation’s ability to achieve long term outcomes?
For example, the RSA operates under a PPP model, with clear performance metrics tied to practical development outcomes.
How should governance structures balance oversight and innovation?
A civilian oversight board, including international experts, monitors the agency’s activities and ensures alignment with national development goals.
Which channels expand civic and business engagement?
Develop participatory processes and channels to involve citizens and stakeholders. The RSA provides quarterly public reports and an open data policy that makes non-sensitive satellite data freely available to researchers and businesses. This approach has helped build public support and attract international partnerships.
Phase 5: Learning and adapting
This phase ensures that the institution continues to serve its purpose effectively while adapting to evolving needs, contexts, and societal expectations by learning from successes, failures and surprises. This involves the right processes for transforming individual learning into organisational learning, using AI-enabled tools. However, the action of adapting the institution still rests on human shoulders.
A case for inspiration
Kyiv Digital: learning and reinventing for public service delivery in a time of war
Originally designed as a city services app, Kyiv Digital rapidly adapted into a multi-agency survival tool during wartime, demonstrating institutional resilience and real-time learning. Kyiv Digital highlights how institutions can transform under pressure, learn very quickly, and adapt to changing needs, balancing agility, technological integration, and public trust.
Approaches for breakthrough thinking
Sensemaking
Used to identify patterns, gaps, redundancies, and opportunities within the institutional portfolio to drive better resource allocation, coherence, and adaptive learning.
Red teams
An external team brought in to interrogate what’s working and what’s not. They can be used in any of the later phases and are often vital for spotting patterns and recommending shifts in approach.
Communities of practice
Embed institutions in peer-learning networks to exchange insights and scale adaptation across geographies and institutions.
Crucial questions to answer in this phase
How is the institution capable to keep learning and evolving to become or stay relevant?
Kyiv Digital continuously evolved by embedding real-time feedback loops, agile development cycles, and external knowledge exchange, ensuring rapid adaptation to citizen needs.
What are the essential learnings? What gets to be conserved when you transform your institution?
Despite its rapid transformation, Kyiv Digital preserved legitimacy and accessibility while adapting, maintaining the core elements that make them reliable in crises.
How do key stakeholders and the public perceive the institution? Which key learnings are part of this perception?
The Kyiv Digital team monitored public perception through user-driven features, responding to real-time feedback (e.g. crowdsourced business data) and building trust as a reliable communication channel amid misinformation.
Conclusion
It is sometimes said that we shape our buildings and they then shape us. The same is true of institutions — we shape them and they then shape us, which is why it’s so vital to shape them well.
Developed as a collaboration between the UNDP, Demos Helsinki, and TIAL, this playbook is a living resource. Your experiences enrich it overtime.
Some cases to explore
Case: Direct budgeting: How indigenous communities built their own institutional foundations
The right to direct budgeting for Indigenous communities in Mexico represents reimagining of governance that challenges conventional economic and institutional structures.
Deep dive: Institutions for alternative economic models and finance
Around the world, new approaches are emerging that rethink economic development.
Deep dive: Institutions for Generative Shared Intelligence
To remain effective in an era of uncertainty, governments must embrace this shift – not as an add-on, but as a foundational principle of governance.
Deep dive: Institutions for governance for a living planet
To bridge the human-nature divide, governance worldwide is embracing biocentric, reciprocal, and multi-species approaches.
Deep dive: Institutions that resist categorisation
In an era of accelerating crises, the traditional architecture of security is proving inadequate.
Deep dive: Institutions for technology, power, and participation
Diverse organizations signal how more inclusive forms of the digital space are possible.
