The Leadership Studio responded to a ‘call to action’ issued by the Scottish Leaders Forum in June 2016, which recognised the growing need for more collaborative leadership in the highly complex world of public sector innovation. In particular, there is limited documented knowledge, evidence and experience regarding the techniques and practices that might facilitate the development of collaborative leadership.

This project asked what types of intervention are effective in developing readiness and capacity for collaborative leadership in the context of complex public issues. It aimed to design a suite of interventions, and then to demonstrate the efficacy of these with a group of Scottish public sector leaders as they work together on a complex problem.

The project was underpinned by a studio pedagogy, which emphasises the co-production of hands-on learning-by-doing in real lived contexts. The objectives were:

• To learn from public practice in other jurisdictions that contrast with Scotland;
• To learn from the cross-fertilization of ideas in academic and practice domains;
• To learn from, and within, a team of Scottish public-sector leaders as their collaborative leadership develops in response to a complex challenge;
• To disseminate these learnings across Scotland and internationally through publications and follow-up events.