Mapping the organizational design of policy innovation labs: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Policy innovation labs vary considerably in how they organize their work, yet the literature lacks a comprehensive, integrated framework to arrange and explain these organizational design choices. This article addresses that gap by conducting a systematic literature review, from which we identified the elements constituting a lab’s organizational design. Our findings reveal that organizational choices for designing innovation labs revolve around five broad dimensions (sense of purpose, organizational culture, structure, instruments, and strategy), each comprising further subdimensions. This mapping provides conceptual categories about the organizational design of innovation labs that help researchers to further investigate whether certain organizational configurations may shape lab legitimacy, performance, or innovation capacity. These findings also provide practical guidance on organizational design for public managers and lab designers aiming to establish or redesign policy innovation labs.