{"id":44561,"date":"2025-02-13T13:50:53","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T12:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oecd-opsi.org\/?p=44561"},"modified":"2025-02-13T13:53:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T12:53:18","slug":"the-greening-lab-in-lyon-a-mission-oriented-approach-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oecd-opsi.org\/blog\/the-greening-lab-in-lyon-a-mission-oriented-approach-in-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greening Lab in Lyon: A mission-oriented approach in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An interview with Patrick Vincent, Public Innovation Director at the Open Innovation Lab of the Metropole of Lyon (ERASME<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Metropole of Lyon, France\u2019s second-largest public administration, has long fostered socio-environmental transitions through investments in soft mobility, urban climate resilience, sustainable food systems, and local solidarity. Yet, when tackling complex “wicked” problems, it often encounters what Patrick Vincent, Public Innovation Director at ERASME, described in our interview as \u201cdiminishing returns on investments and a ceiling for impact.\u201d This recognition led them to pioneer a fundamentally different way of working through their Lab, aimed at addressing deeply rooted socio-technical habits and bridging diverse stakeholder cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To enable transformative, whole system change, the Metropole’s Lab acts as a \u201cthink tank\u201d and a “do tank”. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and action, and break silos within the administration to foster collective action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A concrete example: The Greening Lab<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, the Metropole of Lyon had a mission: to plant 300,000 trees in 10 years. Rather than treating it as a simple procurement and planting exercise, ERASME launched the innovation\u00a0\u201cGreening Lab\u201d program (2020\u20132024)<\/em>. The Lab was designed based on the recognition that success depended on orchestrating a complex web of factors and actors: much of the available land for planting was privately owned, existing maintenance practices were not supporting biodiversity, and construction companies routinely damaged tree roots during other works. To truly transform Lyon into a greener city, an interconnected portfolio of solutions was necessary. Such a portfolio required, in turn, that people collaborated beyond their own \u201csilo\u201d, and the mobilisation of a wider ecosystem of actors \u2013 beyond the public administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The four stages of the ERASME Greening Lab. Source: ERASME<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Greening Lab proceeded in four phases. The first, system framing<\/strong>, involved six months working with a core team of 10 selected public servants to map the interconnections inherent in addressing the challenge, using systems thinking. Following this, a three-day intensive prototyping<\/strong> workshop engaged 100 stakeholders \u2013 including public servants and entrepreneurs \u2013 to prototype solutions. Third, a 12-month phase of incubation and<\/strong> experimentation<\/strong> allowed entrepreneurs to test solutions in practice. <\/strong>Finally, in the valuation <\/strong>phase, the solutions tested in the previous phase were valuated to identify the most effective interventions to scale up, and to generate learnings for future needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven interconnected initiatives were scaled up as a result of the Greening Lab, such as financing models for private landowners and educational programmes linking schools and elderly care homes to the tree-planting process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of the \u201cindirect\u201d interventions developed by the Greening Lab. Source: ERASME<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the lessons learnt from the Greening Lab include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n