Design-led innovation in government

What does it feel like to start a new business and encounter government red tape and bureaucracy? What will it take to design a digital platform to help the unemployed rapidly find a voluntary mentor to coach them in finding a job? How can education reform be made tangible enough to spur real change in schools across an entire nation? And, not least, how do you systematically prototype, test, and scale up public sector policy and service responses to such challenges? These are some of the questions that the Danish government’s innovation unit, MindLab, has taken on during the last decade. Based in Copenhagen and part of the ministries of Business and Growth, Employment, and Children and Education, MindLab was established in 2002. A small team of ethnographers, designers, and public policy specialists accepted the mission of involving citizens and business in co-designing new public solutions.