Promoting Innovation and Learning through Change Laboratory: An Example from Finnish Health Care

The objective of this article is to introduce Change Laboratory as a new method for promoting innovation and learning in organizations and at work. Change Laboratory represents an example of the social process of innovation during which new ideas are developed and put into action within an organization. We suggest that successful social processes of innovation can be promoted through expansive learning in Change Laboratories. Change Laboratory is based on cultural-historical activity theory and provides a set of instruments for innovating through expansive learning. In this article, we illustrate a process of learning on a case example from Finnish health care. The case shows how Change Laboratory was applied to develop a surgical unit of a university hospital in Northern Finland. The social process of innovation involved the development of a new organizational and leadership model. In conclusion, we suggest that organizations can improve their capacity to innovate through expansive learning in Change Laboratory interventions. In order to understand the process of innovation the contradictions and their transformations need to be understood in the scrutinized activity.