Tension can add invaluable dimension to innovation. Here’s how.

April 30, 2025

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Friction is virtually unavoidable in city partnerships, as this work is meant to pull upon a diverse set of contributors with an array of experiences, expectations, and priorities. But this tension isn’t always something to defuse or overcome. Instead, it can actually be a vital ingredient that spices up the innovation process and, in doing so, unlocks new levels of resources and solutions. That’s a key takeaway from new research by Tommi Laitio, a former local official in Helsinki and fellow at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. By carefully studying public space-oriented partnerships in cities across the world—and, in his new research brief, focusing on Amsterdam in particular—Laitio finds that friction is not only inevitable but desirable. Critically, he also finds that attempting to “solve” friction can prevent cities from realizing more transformational outcomes.

The innovative potential of friction has long been established in private-sector partnerships. But perceived risk factors have kept many local leaders from embracing it, explains Francisca Rojas, interim executive director and academic director at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation, which published Laitio’s research. “The stakes are higher in city governments,” she says. “But what this new work shows is that friction actually can lead to ideas and outcomes beyond what city leaders could have imagined.”

Here’s a closer look at how local leaders can think—and act—differently to make better use of friction as a force for progress.

Starting from difference, not common ground.

Every civil servant knows that partnerships can be messy. And every innovator knows that crowding in a wide variety of perspectives is essential to developing the best solutions. But when major friction emerges in partnerships, Laitio’s primary insight is that rather than attempting to obscure or reconcile those differences, city leaders will benefit if they look to that friction as an opportunity for creative action.

"Our goal is not to solve differences," he explains. "It’s to make sure outcomes are strengthened by the different experience, values, and expectations partners bring to the table."

This starts with building awareness on teams across city hall—not just that partners will have different opinions and priorities and even different problem frames, but that they may approach a new collaboration with a stark lack of trust in government. In fact, Laitio’s research suggests that the best partners—the ones who add the greatest amount of new resources and the freshest ideas to a new collaboration—may be some of the least willing participants.

That was certainly true in Amsterdam, where city hall’s original plan for a new library, called OBA Next, was to build an ultra-modern facility of the future in one of the city’s commercial hubs. But then an election ushered in new local officials who questioned the very premises of what the facility should offer, as well as where it should be located. Because they wanted to prioritize communities with a long history of underinvestment, plans for the library moved from the commercial core—where the city already had a familiar set of partners—to an outlying neighborhood, called Zuidoost, where people’s (and potential partners’) trust in government was very low.

“This forced the city to rethink its whole approach at engaging partners—especially since they knew, from the outset, that they'd have to include people who were skeptical about the project," Laitio explains.

Transforming flashpoints into opportunities.

Rather than try to reach some kind of rapid consensus with their new partners, the library team embraced the reality that they were starting from a place of real difference. That meant recognizing that friction represented an opportunity to unlock new resources and services, rather than a problem to be solved.

This started with a series of convenings with local youth, city leaders, and local nonprofits, including a neighborhood nonprofit that had been strongly critical of the city's engagement practices. That allowed all actors to air out their differences—whether about the potential location of the library or about the perception of previous overpromising and underdelivering by city hall. Rather than achieve accord, it helped integrate everybody’s insight into the library’s development. The team of partners ultimately made young people the focus of the new library and—despite senior city officials preferring otherwise—decided to place the facility near a subway station in an especially underserved part of the area.

This complex working relationship also sparked the use of place-based innovation activities to strengthen ties with—and add new value for—the neighborhood, Laitio says. “They used classical innovation methods, like experimentation, to start building trust throughout the community, rather than endlessly sitting around a conference table and talking about it.”

For example, to build momentum for the larger library project, the team launched OBA Next Labs, a series of technology-focused skills building programs for youth. They also forged partnerships with new organizations that had never worked with the city before, including an Armenian digital academy that will be providing neighborhood youth with gaming and web-design opportunities. This was never part of the original library plan, but instead a tangible benefit of leaders embracing tension.

Through it all, the city has created unexpected allies—including young people from the previously isolated neighborhood who are now advocating for the library in front of the city council.

As a former civil servant himself, Laitio is not arguing that friction is somehow pleasant to deal with when forging new partnerships. “The fact that we understand that friction is important and we need friction for innovation doesn't make it fun,” he says. But when city leaders lean into differences—and not common ground—as a locus for innovation, they can unlock more than individual new solutions. They can also produce unlikely political coalitions and unearth new resources that propel longer-term change.

"We’re not all in this for the same reason, and that’s natural and OK,” he says of partnerships. “Friction is often frustrating, but if you’re interested in building long-term trust and relationships and actually creating something innovative, starting from difference rather than starting from common ground can be a game-changer."