Innovation in governance involves arranging existing elements in new ways to reach a policy objective (Papin 2019). These elements can include rules, procedures, structures, mechanisms or instruments.

Innovations can take many forms, including:

• Establishing new institutions with unique operational features;
• Reforming existing institutions by recombining elements from other domains;
• Introducing novel procedures for participation, decision-making, or resource mobilization.

GGI distinguishes innovation from invention (Morin et al 2022, Papin 2019). An invention is a completely unprecedented governance feature. An innovation involves the application, recombination, or new arrangement of existing features to address a governance challenge.

In complex systems like global governance, true inventions are rare. Instead, innovation more often emerges through borrowing and adapting models across contexts (Papin 2019).

GGI studies both innovations and inventions to understand how institutional breakthroughs occur and how new governance ideas spread. Importantly, innovations do not need to be fully original or successful; what matters is that they introduce new ways to organize authority, coordinate actors, design institutions, create rules, or mobilize resources in response to global challenges.