Innovation in Unexpected Places: Lessons from Local Authorities

Who would have thought that collaboration could be seen as innovative? I’ve come to think of change as a social process and collaboration as one of its foundations. But it’s easy to forget how hard collaboration can be in practice. I saw this first-hand while mentoring Local Authority Project Officers through the Innovate UK Net Zero Living programme. My mentees often ran into silos in their Councils: one team focused on transport, another on community outreach, both essential to shaping a Net Zero transport strategy but rarely connected. In other cases, county councils pursued Net Zero initiatives in isolation, with no shared platform on an issue that crosses county boundaries. For many, simply collaborating was itself an innovative act.

Working with my mentees in the programme reminded me how narrow our idea of innovation often is. We picture groundbreaking inventions, sleek technologies, disruptive ideas. But in local authorities, innovation often looks different. Through these conversations, three characteristics stood out to me: innovation is context-specific, purpose-driven, and process-oriented.

Through the Net Zero Living programme, many of us mentors saw just how dependent innovation is on context. All the Project Officers, working across their 25 local authorities, developed projects that were considered innovative within their local settings.

For one mentee, innovation meant bringing together multiple county councils to collaborate – a new way of working to achieve Net Zero at scale. While cross-departmental collaboration within a single authority is becoming more common, collaboration across county borders remains rare. What is seen as innovative in one place might be entirely routine in another.

During a Systems Change Bootcamp, Project Officers also reflected on the importance of connecting to the unique character and “spirit” of a place, and on working with place-appropriate practices rather than chasing generic best practices. 

For local authorities, innovation is ultimately about improving the lives of people and businesses in their communities. Local authorities play a crucial role in connecting the high level, national Net Zero agenda which still sits strongly in a growth and economy mindset, with things people actually care about: affordable housing, accessible transport, healthcare. Especially when dealing with wicked problems and complex challenges, purpose gives innovation its direction and meaning.

Project Officers were encouraged by the programme to reframe their goals through a regenerative lens, asking what role their projects could play in helping their places thrive while also meeting practical needs for efficiency, resilience, and net positive outcomes. Reflecting on these conversations, I found myself returning to Simon Sinek’s idea of 'start with Why?': tapping into the deeper cause, purpose, and belief behind a project can transform how we communicate and inspire others to join the journey.

Using an outcome frame rather than a problem frame helped project officers to articulate a wider change ambition, shifting the focus from fixing isolated issues to enabling systemic impact. One of my mentees described how their retrofit project aimed to meet the local Net Zero target by 2040, unlock retrofit challenges for businesses, and deliver future-fit buildings for residents. Purpose, in this sense, wasn’t an add-on. It was the anchor that guided strategy, communication, and action.

One of the most common misconceptions about innovation is that it always ends with a shiny new product. In practice, especially in local authorities, innovation is often a process of testing, iterating, and learning.

One of my mentees, for example, set up multiple pilot projects with the understanding that not all would succeed. What mattered was creating space to experiment, reflect, and adjust along the way. For many within local authorities, simply having permission to experiment under the banner of “innovation” was both novel and exciting. My mentee admitted they had expected a big, transformative breakthrough in the retrofit sector, but discovered instead that innovation can be a disciplined, iterative way of working.

Seeing innovation as a process requires a more intentional structure: setting up parallel experiments, creating time to step back, and reflecting collectively on what’s working and what’s not. Approaches like after-action reviews or the 'What? So what? What next?' framework help teams learn and adapt in real time.

A big barrier many mentees encountered was the low appetite for risk and failure in local authorities. Over months of mentoring conversations, we repeatedly heard how the need for certainty, control, and adherence to established hierarchies made innovation difficult.

But working toward a Net Zero future means operating in a complex system where cause and effect aren’t always clear, past experience doesn’t always apply, and multiple actors hold a stake in the outcome. One project decided to frame its intervention as developing a proof of concept. That re-framing helped make it safer for the team working on this project to test, iterate and work in a more emergent way.

Overcoming the fear and putting in place conditions that make it safe to say, “we’re not going to continue this experiment and here is what we’ve learned from it and how we’re taking the lessons forward,” is essential. Seeing failure as a learning step, not an end point, is what allows innovation to take root. Using an Action Inquiry approach to test, pause and learn intentionally can be very helpful.

Looking back, innovation emerged in many places throughout this project. Encouraging local authorities to adopt innovative approaches for Net Zero goals was just one part of the story. Equally innovative was the peer-to-peer learning, mentoring and coaching programme itself. Over 18 months, 25 Local Authority Project Officers received sustained one-to-one and peer group mentoring. This support built trust, confidence, and personal agency, enabling participants to grow as resilient leaders capable of driving place-based Net Zero innovation. Providing spaces for open and honest peer-exchanges allowed Local Authority Project Officers to gain confidence to try new, unknown approaches and make a stronger case internally by being able to share experiences from other places.

For many, it was their first time having structured space in the form of mentoring and coaching sessions to pause, zoom out, and reflect with people outside their immediate project realities.

Innovation isn’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes, it looks like councils collaborating across borders for the first time, embedding systems change into everyday practice, or supporting local officers to learn and experiment. Sometimes, it’s the quiet work of creating space for reflection and connection.

The most powerful innovations often don’t announce themselves as such. They bring people together to work differently and enable accelerated change. And in the context of local authorities, that in itself can be a radical act.

What does innovation look and feel like in your context? Get in touch to share your experiences or speak over a virtual coffee.