🌏 What we learn when we look elsewhere: policy inspiration from across the world
A few years ago, I invited Giulio Quaggiotto — Head of Strategic Innovation at UNDP — to speak at the London Policy & Strategy Network. I’d followed his work for a while, from his time at Nesta and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, and was struck by how much we miss when we only look at innovation from the West.
He reminded us that some of the most creative, participatory, and effective public service innovations are coming not from Silicon Valley or Whitehall — but from Vietnam, Taiwan, and Kenya.
That conversation changed how I see the role of strategy in public services: not just solving problems, but seeing ourselves differently.
🔁 Reverse innovation and what it means for us
The idea of “reverse innovation” — where lessons travel from the Global South to the Global North — challenges assumptions about where progress comes from.
It’s something we’re learning from in Adur & Worthing. From our Kitchen Table programme to our Thriving Together community leadership model, we’re designing for collective intelligence — not just consultation.
✨ Real-world ideas we can adapt
Here are five ideas that stayed with me — and how they might shape what we do next.
1. Invest in the capacity for governance, not just delivery
Rather than importing solutions, we should invest in platforms where people can experiment, collaborate, and learn.
In South Korea, mass testing during Covid was enabled by legal reforms made after failures during SARS. They rebuilt trust and infrastructure together.
Try this: What if you created a public-facing prototyping fund where residents and community groups could test ideas before the council picks them up?
2. Set direction, not instructions
Countries like New Zealand and Vietnam used shared values — not surveillance — to galvanise response. They treated people as partners, not just risks.
In Adur & Worthing, our Mission Control model does this by setting shared missions — then giving teams and communities space to shape how.
3. Repurpose infrastructure and supply chains
In Vietnam, the government repurposed old ATMs into “rice dispensers” and supported farmers to create digital marketplaces. That’s adaptation, not just mitigation.
Try this: What could be reimagined in your community? A disused shopfront as a civic lab? An old kiosk as a warm space or community fridge?
4. Innovate after the people
In Taiwan, the government scaled a citizen-made face mask prototype — what Audrey Tang calls “innovation after the people.”
This flips traditional procurement. Don’t wait to commission. See what’s emerging. Then back it.
In Adur and Worthing, we’re doing this through Go Vocal, where ideas from residents inform what we test and invest in.
5. Use culture to fight disinformation
In Indonesia and Taiwan, they used memes, poetry, and humour to counter fake news. One team even translated whistleblower info into Klingon to avoid censors.
This isn’t just clever — it’s effective. When trust is low, cultural literacy becomes civic infrastructure.
Try this: Work with artists, comedians or storytellers to reimagine how public messages are delivered. See Beautiful Trouble for inspiration.
📚 What this means for us in the UK
Too often, UK innovation work starts with the question: “What’s working in government labs across Europe or North America?”
But what if we looked:
- To India’s Aspirational Districts programme, which uses real-time data and peer learning to reduce inequality.
- To Rwanda’s Imihigo performance contracts, which combine targets with civic accountability.
- To Chile’s Laboratorio de Gobierno, which supports public servants to co-design services with citizens.
Each one reminds us: innovation doesn’t come from novelty. It comes from deep cultural listening.
👣 Try this in your own work
If you work in strategy, participation, delivery or design, here are three small steps:
- Map what innovation you’re ignoring: Whose knowledge is missing? Who isn’t part of the loop?
- Run a “futures” lunch: Bring your team a real example of policy innovation from outside your country. Reflect on what it reveals about your assumptions.
- Back quiet ideas: What’s being prototyped in your communities already? How could you support it to scale?
💬 Final thoughts: perspective is a practice
The most radical thing we can do in strategy might not be to invent something new — but to listen somewhere new.
If we only learn from those who sound like us, we’ll only design for those who look like us. But when we stretch our view of where innovation lives, we stretch our sense of what’s possible.
If you’ve come across public service innovations from outside the usual playbook — I’d love to hear them.
Let’s stop asking “what works here?” and start asking, “what’s working there — and what does it teach us about ourselves?”
