Learning for Impact

What is Creative Inquiry?

Creative Inquiry is the process of pursuing new intellectual, creative, and practical pathways that generate knowledge while creating meaningful impact in society.

At the Asian School of Governance, we believe that the world's most pressing challenges, including climate change, food security, health, energy, governance, and artificial intelligence, cannot be solved through traditional classroom learning alone. They require curiosity, interdisciplinary collaboration, experimentation, and sustained engagement with communities and institutions.

Creative Inquiry places learners at the center of discovery. Rather than simply receiving knowledge, students, faculty, government leaders, and community partners work together to investigate important questions, prototype solutions, test new ideas, and improve them through evidence and reflection.

The goal is not only to understand the world, but also to help improve it.

Our Philosophy

The Office of Creative Inquiry believes that learning is most powerful when people create together.

Knowledge grows through inquiry.

Innovation grows through experimentation.

Leadership grows through practice.

Impact grows through collaboration.

Faculty become mentors and co-creators instead of simply lecturers. Students become researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and public problem-solvers. Communities become partners and co-educators whose lived experiences enrich both scholarship and practice.

Creative Inquiry transforms education from the transfer of knowledge into the co-creation of solutions.

From Curiosity to Impact

Every Creative Inquiry journey begins with curiosity.

A student notices an unmet community need.

A faculty member asks an important research question.

A mayor seeks a better way to deliver public services.

A community imagines a different future.

These questions become the starting point for interdisciplinary inquiry, bringing together people from different backgrounds to explore possibilities, generate evidence, prototype ideas, and implement solutions.

Creative Inquiry is more than research, service-learning, or innovation. It is an integrated approach that connects learning, discovery, action, and reflection.

Learning Through Real-World Challenges

Creative Inquiry is organized around authentic societal challenges rather than hypothetical classroom exercises.

Learners work alongside local governments, communities, universities, civil society organizations, entrepreneurs, investors, and development partners to address complex public challenges.

Projects may include:

• Designing new public policies

• Developing AI-enabled governance tools

• Strengthening local innovation ecosystems

• Improving health and education systems

• Advancing climate adaptation and the energy transition

• Supporting food security and livelihoods

• Documenting Indigenous knowledge

• Prototyping social enterprises

• Creating new models of community development

Learning occurs by engaging directly with real-world challenges.

The Social Lab Approach

The Office of Creative Inquiry organizes much of its work through Social Labs.

Social Labs are multi-year innovation platforms that bring together diverse stakeholders to address complex public challenges through continuous experimentation, learning, and collaboration.

Unlike traditional academic projects that often conclude at the end of a semester, Social Labs provide continuity across multiple years. Successive cohorts of faculty, students, researchers, practitioners, and community partners build upon previous work. This cumulative approach creates stronger partnerships, richer datasets, deeper research, and increasingly sophisticated solutions.

Social Labs transform individual academic projects into long-term innovation ecosystems.

Additional Social Labs are continually developed in collaboration with universities, governments, and communities across Asia and beyond.

A Different Role for Faculty

Faculty members are mentors, conveners, researchers, designers, facilitators, and innovation leaders.

Through Creative Inquiry, faculty help learners ask better questions, connect across disciplines, engage communities respectfully, and transform promising ideas into meaningful impact.

Teaching, research, extension, and innovation become mutually reinforcing activities that advance both scholarship and societal impact.

A Different Role for Students

Students are active participants in creating knowledge.

They become investigators, designers, collaborators, entrepreneurs, analysts, and civic leaders.

Creative Inquiry encourages students to take ownership of their learning by working on projects that matter to real communities and real institutions.

Through these experiences, students strengthen both disciplinary expertise and the adaptive capabilities needed to lead in an increasingly complex world.

AI as a Partner in Inquiry

Artificial intelligence is transforming how knowledge is created.

The Office of Creative Inquiry encourages the responsible use of AI throughout the inquiry process. AI can support literature reviews, systems mapping, scenario development, data analysis, policy design, simulation, communication, and creative exploration.

AI does not replace human creativity, judgment, ethics, or leadership. Instead, it expands our capacity to explore ideas, synthesize knowledge, and accelerate learning.

The future belongs to people who know how to ask powerful questions and collaborate effectively with both humans and intelligent technologies.

Inquiry to Impact

Creative Inquiry is ultimately about creating positive change.

The Office of Creative Inquiry supports initiatives that move beyond academic outputs toward measurable improvements in communities, institutions, public policy, and sustainable development.

Impact may include:

• New knowledge

• Innovative teaching methods

• Improved public policies

• Stronger institutions

• Social enterprises

• Community innovations

• Technological solutions

• Leadership development

• Interdisciplinary collaborations

• Scalable models for societal transformation

Success is measured not only by what we discover, but also by what we help create.

Our Invitation

The world's greatest challenges cannot be solved by one discipline, one institution, or one sector acting alone.

The Office of Creative Inquiry invites faculty, students, public leaders, communities, universities, entrepreneurs, and development partners to become co-creators of a more just, resilient, innovative, and sustainable future.

Together, we learn.

Together, we create.

Together, we lead change.

The Co-Creation Labs at the Asian School of Governance are transformative platforms designed to address Asia's most pressing challenges through innovative, inclusive, and interdisciplinary approaches. These labs serve as dynamic hubs for experimentation, bringing together diverse stakeholders—governments, private sector actors, academia, civil society, and communities—to co-create and test solutions to complex societal issues.

Guided by systems thinking and methodologies like Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), the Co-Creation Labs foster learning and collaboration. These labs empower stakeholders to pilot and scale solutions that address structural challenges, advance equity, and accelerate the achievement of sustainable development goals across Asia and beyond.