Tricky Transfer: The Challenge of Adopting Innovations from Other Cities

Pre-register for the simulation

Local leaders often look for solutions from elsewhere to tackle issues in their own cites. Doing this well requires not only identifying promising innovations but also determining the conditions under which they will work in a new context.

Tricky Transfer is a role-play simulation exercise designed to help participants understand what it takes to adopt approaches to solving local problems.

Based on the research literature on public innovation, the simulation provides participants an opportunity to negotiate the transfer of a successful city program from its “origin” city to a “receiving” city. Through the exercise, participants uncover the organizational and political dynamics that often derail replication efforts and practice strategies for aligning people, context, and purpose.

The simulation introduces three key diagnostics for any adoption effort:

• Innovation awareness: Do we truly understand the core idea, and can we distinguish between the innovation’s essential and nice-to-have features?
• Situation awareness: How does our local context differ from the context in which the innovation was developed and implemented? To what extent do those differences matter?
• Organization awareness: Are our people, structures, and support systems ready to adopt the innovation? Are there competing commitments or unaddressed concerns?

By surfacing hidden assumptions, stakeholder tensions, and contextual mismatches, Tricky Transfer equips current and aspiring city leaders with practical tools for managing innovation and replication processes effectively. This simulation is designed to help participants build the confidence and skills needed to translate strong ideas from peer cities into meaningful local impact.

Simulation is forthcoming in 2026.