The canton of Schaffhausen has embedded strategic design in its digitalization strategy and created a central player in the form of the horizontal specialist unit Digital Administration Schaffhausen (DVSH). But how can employees in the specialist areas of a hierarchical and process-driven organization be motivated to contribute actively and independently to the transformation? In his work, the author, who represents the DVSH, combines design thinking interventions with an innovative spatial concept and tests it using the example of the social welfare office. The newly created “exploratory space” offers employees in an otherwise rigid environment the freedom to work creatively, collaboratively, and with an open mind. As a physical and metaphorical space, it promotes psychological safety and enables new solutions to be developed and sustainable transformation to take place.