Cities increasingly use experimentation to tackle complex sustainability challenges. Experimentation allows actors to test new interventions in real-world contexts, creating opportunities for learning-by-doing. Yet, whether this learning translates into actual organizational change remains unclear. Recent research examines this relationship through four city logistics experiments in Bergen (Norway) and Groningen (Netherlands), offering insights into the dynamics between experimentation, learning, and change.
Learning versus Change
Across all cases, the experiments generated cognitive and normative learning. Actors acquired new knowledge about logistics solutions, their benefits, and their limitations. However, learning alone did not automatically lead to change. Organizational reconfiguration required persistent relational work, the continuous effort to maintain trust, align interests, and sustain collaboration across organizations. Without this, experimental insights remained isolated and failed to influence practices or policies.
Groningen: Relational Work as a Driver
In Groningen, relational work was central. A Sounding Board created ongoing interaction among industry, municipality, and university actors. This platform built trust and facilitated shared understandings, culminating in a covenant on urban logistics signed by multiple stakeholders. These agreements translated learning into concrete actions: mobilizing resources, negotiating policy measures, and even fostering cooperation between competitors to share infrastructure. The municipality complemented regulation with enabling policies, creating predictability for businesses to adapt procurement and logistics practices.
The case of parcel lockers illustrates this process. Joint experimentation, combined with iterative negotiation, enabled stakeholders to co-develop solutions. Industry actors adjusted business models and invested in shared infrastructure—clear evidence of organizational change.
Bergen: The Limits of Learning
By contrast, Bergen demonstrated the fragility of experimental learning when not anchored in relational work. Top-down governance, limited stakeholder engagement, and ambiguous national legislation constrained trust-building. Passenger mobility priorities overshadowed freight, and some policy changes were even reversed. While cognitive and normative learning persisted, they were insufficient to reconfigure organizational practices or sustain momentum.
Broader Lessons
These findings highlight that experimentation does not occur on a clean slate but within broader governance and political contexts. National policies and local political priorities shape what experiments can achieve. In Groningen, national climate policy reinforced local ambitions, though it also created tensions for smaller firms. In Bergen, weak national anchoring undermined local progress.
Conclusion
Experiments can spark valuable learning, but learning is not the same as change. Transformative impact depends on relational work: building and maintaining trust, negotiating interests, and embedding lessons into organizational routines. Without this, even promising experiments risk stalling or reversing. For cities embracing experimental governance, the challenge lies not only in designing interventions but also in creating arenas where relational work can flourish.