Today, complex problems are beginning to be rethought from the perspective of the people and the scenarios where they are generated. The public sector, the private sector, academia, and citizens are increasingly aware of the importance of synergy in the resolution of these challenges. Laboratories have become collaborative scenarios to generate proper solutions to complex problems. These labs are synergy spaces capable of gathering different stakeholders from distinct disciplines under experimentation methodologies that allow heterogeneous solution perspectives. The purpose of this literature review is to conceptualize Public and Social Innovation Labs as centers of ideation and creation of solutions to problems, to identify possible barriers and/or challenges they face and to recognize the methodologies they integrate in the development of their exercise to highlight their differences and similarities. Contributing to their understanding and accelerating the implementation processes. The methodology used in this review was that of Tranfield (Tranfield et al., 2003). The information was obtained from the Web of Science multidisciplinary database. NVIVO information coding software was used, and analytical matrices were generated to synthesize the findings of the review exercise. The results show that both public and social laboratories frame their processes in collaborative work and in the incorporation of methodologies related to experimentation. One of the differences between the two laboratories is related to the type of problems they solve and the funding that supports them. While social laboratories solve problems linked to issues of social interest such as poverty and inequality, public laboratories address problems that require institutional commitment and, therefore, are highly dependent on governmental entities to fulfill their purposes. The limitations of this review consist of an asymmetry in the information, as Policy labs have been investigated more in the literature than other public sector laboratories.
