A major challenge for local governments that seek innovation is that valuable projects often stay isolated and lack a unified strategy for scaling or integrating them into regular government functions. The Laboratory for Public Management Innovation (inLAB), launched by the Municipality of Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2025, has become an example of how to address this challenge.
Within the inLAB initiative, part of the municipality’s Public Innovation Management, public workers can team up to propose and test innovations in public management. By bringing together diverse municipal staff to co-design and prototype solutions, inLAB transforms scattered internal ideas into a unified strategy for public sector innovation. It offers a reference for cities seeking to break down departmental silos and design scalable, collaborative solutions to urban challenges.
Credit: the Municipality of Montevideo
Main goal and participation
inLAB helps public workers test, adjust, and try again from the beginning, without waiting for the perfect solution before they act.
The program is open to any employee of the Municipality of Montevideo, regardless of their position or area. Participants do not have to be innovation specialists. Teams are intentionally formed by mixing different profiles so that each problem is examined from multiple angles.
Public teams are given access to tables of specialists in territory, technology, and methodology, a digital fabrication laboratory to build their prototypes, and daily talks with leaders in public innovation.
A 5-step process
The laboratory’s methodology follows five structured steps:
- Explore: analyze the problem in depth to understand the stakeholders, norms, and process behind.
- Redefine: clarify the issue, intentionally leaving behind the first impression.
- Generate: brainstorm several solution alternatives.
- Prototype: build a tangible prototype.
- Validate: test the solution with the actual end-users, adjusting it as needed.
“Innovating from the public sector is accepting uncertainty as a necessary condition to design better cities.”
Andrea Apolaro Lemo, Public Innovation Manager of Montevideo
Credit: the Municipality of Montevideo
Results
The initiative has seen immense engagement, with 334 registrations, 119 proposals, and 13 projects currently underway—addressing everything from citizen services to waste management.