Context

The Edge of Government (EOG) is a global initiative led by the UAE’s Prime Minister’s Office that identifies, curates, and showcases pioneering public innovation projects from around the world. Each year, EOG surveys the international landscape in search of unconventional, under-the-radar, and high-impact government-linked innovations that challenge traditional assumptions about how public policy is designed and delivered. 

The Challenge

In 2025, we were invited by the Prime Minister’s Office, through the Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation, to contribute to the EOG Horizon Scanning Research Project.

We were asked to conduct an extensive regional scan and identify 10 unique government innovation cases that matched EOG’s distinctive criteria—initiatives operating below the radar yet fundamentally reimagining how public policy is designed, implemented, or governed across diverse sectors.

In Latin America, innovation often happens quietly—in local governments, community partnerships, or experimental programs that aren’t widely documented or known until they have reached a more significant scale. Many high-impact initiatives operate in complex political environments, rely on cross-sector collaboration, or evolve within community-led processes that are not always visible from a traditional policy lens.

Uncovering truly pioneering cases required more than mapping the landscape; it meant understanding the region’s unique innovation dynamics and recognizing where real, transformative change was taking place.

Services: Innovation
Sectors: All sectors
2025

Our Approach

We approached this work through a systems-thinking lens, looking beyond documented sources to understand the networks, relationships, and local dynamics that shape how innovation emerges in Latin America.

We engaged with a wide range of actors—from policymakers and urbanists to community leaders, creatives, and sports collectives—to surface initiatives that operate quietly or outside traditional policy channels. This revealed patterns and emerging regional trends. To avoid limiting the scan to formal innovation labs or government agencies, we expanded our search to the spaces where innovation often grows in the region: collaborations between governments and public institutions, community-led initiatives, cross-sector partnerships, and grassroots movements. This gave us insight into the conditions that enabled each initiative to emerge and the relationships that sustained their work.

Solution

We consolidated our findings into a curated longlist of innovations emerging across Latin America’s diverse ecosystems, refining it into a shortlist. Through direct conversations and deeper analysis with each innovator, we shaped the cases into clear narratives that made visible their purpose, partnerships, and systemic impact. 

The Impact

This work allowed us to connect with hundreds of innovators across the region. Although the shortlist ended up being 10 cases, we found many many more who’s praises we believe should be sung from the rooftops!

What We Learned

This project deepened our understanding of how public innovation emerges in Latin America and where it differs from global trends. We observed a landscape where innovation often grows from community-led efforts, cross-sector partnerships, and informal networks rather than formal government labs or structured programs. We also saw how political instability, institutional fragmentation, and resource constraints shape how innovators work—and how these same factors drive creativity, adaptability, and systems-level experimentation.

The process revealed strong opportunities for regional visibility, collaboration, and shared learning. Latin America’s innovation ecosystem is interconnected, creative, and full of under-recognized practices that deserve greater global attention.