Designing Collective Innovation Capability in Local Government

Victorian local governments face escalating complexity - from climate impacts to social and technological change - within systems designed for stability and compliance. Councils must respond within constrained budgets, workforce shortages, and uneven access to skills, particularly in rural areas. Innovation capability is fragmented, with limited mechanisms to share knowledge or scale solutions, leading to duplication and reactive responses. The challenge was to design a scalable, sector-wide program that builds anticipatory-capability and collective-intelligence, enabling councils to share innovative solutions to shared-problems and move from reactive-service-delivery to proactive, future-ready governance, within existing constraints of resourcing, structure, and varying innovation maturity across the sector.

The program responds by designing a sector-wide system for collective intelligence and capability building. Central to this is the MAVlab Innovation Associates Network, a distributed community of practitioners enabling real-time knowledge sharing, peer learning, and cross-council collaboration. This is complemented by Innovation talks, Design Sprints and the MAVlab Innovation-Awards program, which captures and codifies innovation practice through a growing case study library, photo archive, and film festival, making practice visible and scalable. Growing the network and embedding participation into existing workflows has been organic. A key challenge was engaging a time-poor sector, addressed by delivering immediate, practical-value and lightweight, accessible-formats.

The program strengthens the capability of Victorian local government to respond to complex challenges more effectively and efficiently by fostering collaboration, trust, and innovation-culture in a community founded in care-and-reciprocity. >200 innovation leaders participate in the MIA Network, sharing tools, policies and delivery models to reduce duplication, risk and help combat fear-to-innovate. Knowledge (frameworks, data, project-learnings, design-feedback) is reused across councils. The Case-Study-Library is a high‑traffic resource (av. 2000 unique visitors/months) referenced nationally and internationally. Councils report increased confidence to test new approaches. This new service elevates the credibility of public-sector-innovation and establishes a scalable, optimistic-model for change across local-government.

The MIA Network is a distributed model identifying innovation practitioners across councils, connected through lightweight, high-frequency engagement formats. This enables real-time knowledge exchange, rapid problem-solving, and peer-to-peer learning at scale, shifting innovation from isolated projects to a coordinated, sector-wide capability.The MAVlab Innovation Awards program appears as celebration and annual convening for the network. It is also knowledge infrastructure, generating a structured case study library alongside a professional film festival and photography give projects legitimacy with executives, councillors and external partners, not only attracting council engagement but sector investment. Risk distribution: Sharing both outcomes and delivery processes de‑risks innovation by providing precedent, evidence and trusted reference points. Iterative design: The service has evolved annually based on participant feedback, with formats and platforms continuously refined. A core focus of the program is to cultivate a culture of continuous learning, shared intelligence, and adaptive innovation across the sector. This is designed with low barrier to entry, grounded in genuine caring relationships based in trust and respect - enabling candid discussion and collaboration.MAVlab has not only created a container where innovation can thrive, but also an optimistic, practical model for what is possible within councils.