Vaughn Tan: “To innovate in public policy, Chile should try out many small ideas rather than immediately opting for large-scale solutions.”

Maintaining the effectiveness of public policies in changing contexts has become one of the main challenges for governments and organizations around the world. The need to adapt interventions as they unfold, respond to new implementation conditions, and adjust initial assumptions without losing impact are among the challenges institutions face when implementing public policies and social programs.

These very issues were addressed at the Congress on Innovation in Public Challenges, organized by the Catholic University’s Innovation Lab, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Luksic Foundation, which brought together more than 600 national and international experts, government officials, academics, public innovation teams, and representatives from foundations and civil society, to reflect on innovation, evaluation, and adaptation of public policies.

The Singapore-based scholar and author of “The Uncertainty Mindset” (The Mindset for Thriving in Uncertainty), Vaughn Tan, was one of the conference’s keynote speakers. He shared his experience studying how high-performing companies—particularly cutting-edge culinary teams—build the capacity to operate under conditions of real uncertainty, “not just calculable risk.”

“One of the most effective ways to drive innovation in Chile is not to try to do something completely new and on a large scale right from the start. That’s usually difficult, costly, and risky,” the expert explained. He added: “What works best is conducting many small experiments, testing different ideas quickly and at low cost.” He emphasized that this approach makes it possible to learn, adjust course, and discover what works, “without assuming that you have all the answers from the start.”

Regarding the challenges he identified in Chile—“as in any other country”—one is the size of the government and the associated bureaucracy. “Large bureaucracies are slow to change and slow down processes and innovation,” he explained. In his view, the challenge is for the bureaucracy itself to recognize when it is hindering change and to actively promote its own streamlining.

Macarena Cea, general manager of the Luksic Foundation, participated in the panel discussion “Design and Implementation of Evidence-Based Social Services,” where she presented the experience of the Aspiraciones program, which aims to support high school seniors in their transition to higher education by providing information and guidance.

The initiative, which reaches more than 60,000 12th-grade students in technical and vocational education and aims to encourage access to higher education, has gradually evolved based on experience in the field. It has shifted from in-person support provided by professionals—and, in some pilot programs, by volunteers and teachers—to an online format, with the goal of improving its implementation and expanding its reach without compromising quality.

“Just as the most innovative organizations learn to adapt in the face of uncertainty, social programs must do the same. The challenge is not only to design good solutions, but also to build the capacity to adapt them as contexts change and lessons are learned during implementation, while maintaining their quality and always striving for a greater impact on people’s quality of life,” Cea explained.

Also participating in the panel were Trinidad Rodríguez from the MACEP program, Mónica Cortés Hidalgo from IAMU, and Jorge Farah from the IPS-Chile Atiende virtual care centers, and the discussion focused on how to distinguish between a program’s structural elements—such as its theory of change and quality standards—and those components that must be adapted during implementation, allowing the program to remain effective in a changing context.

The full conference proceedings are available at the link.