Public innovation: an analysis of gaps and strategic opportunities

In Chile, the problem is not a lack of instruments, capabilities, or discourse on public innovation. It is a problem of architecture, governance and purpose. That is the central conclusion of Innovación pública: análisis de brechas y oportunidades estratégicas (Public innovation: an analysis of gaps and strategic opportunities), the technical report Juan Felipe López prepared for Chile’s National Council of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation for Development (Consejo CTCI), as an input to the update of the 2026 National CTCI Strategy.

The report combines a comparative analysis of international approaches with a diagnosis of the capabilities, regulatory frameworks and instruments that exist in Chile today. It drew on a workshop with public innovation experts, held in November 2025, and interviews with people who have designed, implemented and evaluated innovation initiatives within the State. Its premise is clear: public innovation is a systemic function of the State, not a collection of isolated projects.

From efficiency to public value

The report starts from a shift in paradigm. Public management has gradually moved away from a logic of efficiency towards the creation of public value, where success is measured by socially valuable outcomes and democratic legitimacy, not just by the cost or speed of processes. From that perspective, it proposes understanding innovation through three axes that must be managed together, because weakness in one drags down the others. The first is mission: the “what for”, meaning the priority public problems and the goals that guide action. The second is the institutional axis: the “with what” and the “how”, that is, the structures, rules, capabilities and funding that sustain innovation over time. And the third is experimentation: the “where and with whom” learning happens, through prototypes, pilots and evaluation, understood as a form of experimental democracy.

The international analysis also carries a warning. The experience of the past decade shows that many public innovation labs relied on individual leaders or short-term funding, and eventually disappeared. This is what has been called “laboratorism”: innovation confined to isolated units that fail to transform the core of the State. The lesson is direct: without institutionalisation, innovation dissolves.

What Chile has, and what it lacks

Chile has valuable assets. Among them are the Public Innovators Network, which brings together more than 30,000 people, the Public Innovation Index, ANID’s Public Challenges programme and ChileCompra’s innovation procurement policy. But they operate in a fragmented way. The report identifies structural gaps that prevent innovation from working as a system: pilots that fail to scale because of rigid budgets, data scattered across ministries, digitalisation moving faster than ethical frameworks for artificial intelligence, co-creation processes that are sometimes merely symbolic, and the absence of a legal framework that protects experimentation within the State. On top of this, a “zero error” culture inhibits learning and collaboration.

Five directions for strengthening public innovation

Rather than creating new institutions, the report proposes bringing order and strategic purpose to what already exists, through five directions:

• Building a shared vision of the value of innovating. Innovation needs a common narrative that recognises it as a strategic function of the State, not a side effort. Innovating is also a way of caring for the State and its relationship with society.
• Restoring its relevance and purpose. Innovation should focus on the State’s critical problems, those that affect its legitimacy and its capacity to act. When it is confined to the margins, it becomes expendable and easy to cut.
• Developing capabilities through people. Innovation cannot be demanded of teams that work in fear of making mistakes and without recognition. The capabilities to innovate are, above all, capabilities to build trust, both within organisations and between them.
• Connecting an ecosystem of innovation, science and technology. The State should not only be a user of knowledge, but a co-producer of innovation, working with academia, the private sector and civil society around shared public challenges.
• Governing data and digital infrastructure for public value. Data and digital infrastructure are strategic public goods. Governing them with trust, interoperability and ethics does not hold innovation back; it is a condition for its legitimacy.

Who takes care of the state of the State?

The report returns to a question Juan Felipe has been raising since his time at the Laboratorio de Gobierno: who takes care of the “state of the State”? The answer, it suggests, does not lie with one person or a single unit, but with a collective function of institutional care, able to preserve and renew the State’s capacity to create public value and sustain citizens’ trust. Along these lines, it proposes reviving an idea left pending when the Laboratorio was created: moving towards a national public innovation policy that recognises innovation as a strategic, protected and shared function of the State.