Bridging Ideas, Building Futures: A Knowledge Partnership between UNGP Asia Pacific and the Bhutan Innovation Lab

The UNGP Asia Pacific x BIL Knowledge Partnership Series

The teams from UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific and Bhutan Innovation Lab that joined the workshop. Photo: UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific

When you hear about Bhutan, you might think of their unique Gross National Happiness philosophy or recall their picturesque mountain monastery landscapes nestled in the Himalayas. But did you know that it is also the smallest Land-Locked Developing Country in the world with a population of less than 1 million people? Small though it may be, Bhutan is a rapidly developing nation with ambitious goals for its future — a fact supported by the establishment of its first ever public innovation lab. With the vital role that the Bhutan Innovation Lab plays as an ‘agent of change’ in the country, they sought to have a hands-on learning experience with UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific to build their capacity to develop future-ready solutions.

Bhutan’s Development Journey and the Formation of the Bhutan Innovation Lab

Bhutan achieved an important milestone in December 2023 by graduating from the Least Developed Country (LDC) category with a real GDP of USD 2.2 billion. This was particularly significant as Bhutan faces compounded development challenges being a Land-Locked Developing Country (LLDC). Guided by its philosophy of Gross National Happiness, Bhutan continues to make economic progress while measuring success with a holistic approach of wellbeing and economic development.

While Bhutan’s land-locked status remains one of its biggest challenges, they also face pressing issues such as climate change, food security, rising youth unemployment, and emigration of its working population. These complex and interconnected challenges require Bhutan to respond with agility and innovation. The Bhutan Innovation Lab (BIL) serves as a critical platform to strengthen the nation’s policy infrastructure and foster an ecosystem that is resilient, future-ready, and capable of driving transformative solutions.

The country’s commitment to embracing innovative solutions was demonstrated with the formation of the Bhutan Innovation Lab (BIL) in 2024. Anchored in the Prime Minister’s Office, and in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), BIL is a flagship initiative to redesign the country’s policy architecture with innovative policymaking approaches, accelerating inclusive development.

The aim of the Bhutan Innovation Lab

As a dedicated national platform for reimagining policymaking and governance, driving systemic reforms, and creating evidence-based, citizen-centred solutions, the lab embodies the far-sighted vision of His Majesty The King for an enlightened, entrepreneurial bureaucracy. The lab is a direct institutional response to Bhutan’s 21st Century Economic Roadmap, which targets tenfold inclusive economic growth by 2050. Its formation represents a decisive shift away from traditional, siloed policy processes that can no longer deliver the systems-level change required to meet these national goals.

Since its establishment, BIL has successfully developed a policy initiative tackling systemic challenges in Bhutan’s hospital appointment process. While this experience highlighted the potential of the lab’s capacity, their reflections indicated a need to enhance their knowledge and skill set for implementing innovative approaches to improve public service delivery, and policy development and implementation.

A Knowledge Partnership for Building Future-Fit Capacities

Recognizing the need to enhance their knowledge and skill set, BIL sought out expertise from UN Global Pulse (UNGP) Asia Pacific, which led to the start of a new knowledge partnership. Following initial discussions to decide how BIL and UNGP could mutually support each other, it was decided that a foundational, week-long workshop would be hosted in Jakarta in August 2025.

Knowledge partnerships are essential for driving innovation and fostering a culture of learning within organizations. The exchange of knowledge and experiences improves decision-making, increases productivity, and enhances overall organizational capabilities. For BIL, these benefits are strategic. As Bhutan embarks on transformative innovations in pursuit of its ambitious national goals, BIL plays a critical role in helping to achieve them. As BIL grows in scope and ambition, there is a pressing need to strengthen its capabilities in skill sets that are vital for designing resilient, inclusive, and adaptive policies in uncertain environments.

For over 13 years, the Asia Pacific hub has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and insights from over a decade of successes and challenges in experimentation and innovation across the region. Sharing these learnings and building innovative capabilities, both within the UN family and with its partners, is a central tenet of the hub’s work, and it’s what made our partnership with BIL particularly relevant and important.

Driving Innovation and Unlocking Potential Through Partnerships

The Bhutan Innovation Lab team holding policy blueprint roleplaying cards. Photo: UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific

At the heart of this partnership was the foundational, week-long workshop, designed with Bhutan’s economic roadmap in mind. To ensure the knowledge exchange addressed the needs of the BIL team, the sessions were framed around challenges the lab has already addressed, such as health and tourism, and those currently in the pipeline, including Bhutan’s drug policy. Within this context, the hub focused on introducing four key capabilities: strategic foresight, service design, policy blueprinting, and data innovation, while exploring the innovation ecosystem as a whole.

This collaboration was more than just a capacity-building initiative — it was a shared investment in shaping how organizations learn, adapt, and deliver impact in an increasingly complex and multifaceted reality.

Working at the intersection of innovation and the human sciences, UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific aims to strengthen the ability of the UN family and those it serves, to anticipate, respond and adapt to the challenges of today and tomorrow. Collaborating with BIL is central to the Asia Pacific hub’s commitment as a thought leader, and the sharing of learnings and best practices from such a long-established lab helps BIL further the agenda of innovation and co-creation in Bhutan.

Strengthening the team’s capacity to design resilient, adaptive, and citizen-centered solutions not only increases their ability to reimagine policymaking into practice, but also strengthens their positioning as a national platform for innovative governance. Being equipped with concrete tools for experimentation, foresight, and systems thinking directly reinforces their vision of building a future-ready policy ecosystem. This is particularly beneficial for Bhutan as an LLDC, as it helps the country foster forward-looking capabilities, enabling them to explore new solutions and forge new partnerships that can unlock their full potential.

This knowledge partnership not only lays the foundation for sustainable collaboration between UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific and BIL, it also serves as a gateway for collaboration with other institutions across regional and global innovation ecosystems for greater collective impact.

This blog is part of The Knowledge Partnership Series: Capacity Building with the Bhutan Innovation Lab. The series explores the collaboration between UNGP Asia Pacific and the Bhutan Innovation Lab in August 2025 including an introduction to the knowledge partnership, experimentation with service design, and policy blueprinting.

Authors: Andini Kamayana (Communications Officer — UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific), Marita Dewi (Communication & Partnerships Senior Assistant — UN Global Pulse Asia Pacific), Sonam Tashi (Senior Policy Analyst — Bhutan Innovation Lab/Office of the Prime Minister of Bhutan), Tshering Choden (Head of Exploration, Data and Statistics — UNDP and the Strategy Lead, Bhutan Innovation lab)