This paper explores an initiative by a Swedish governmental agency to create a temporary arena for collaboration between management consultancies, researchers and representatives from the public sector. This temporary arena, a pilot effort hereafter called the Lab, was intended to support consultancies to develop and offer services to strengthen public organizations' capacity for innovation and change, by utilizing research-based knowledge about the conditions for innovation, development and change in the public sector. In other words, the governmental agency hoped that scientific research and knowledge could be transferred to consultancies so that they in turn could package their learnings into high quality services to be sold to the public sector, in particular local and regional authorities. The Lab was in this sense a pilot in trying to find ways to increase the practical application of available research and experience-based knowledge in the field amongst consultancies. A multilateral and interprofessional – and complex - constellation was set up in the Lab around the consultancies: process leaders; consultancies; researchers of innovation in public sector; local government representatives; and observers from the governmental agency. Over a period of approximately one year the participants of the Lab met in different constellations, particularly in common workshops. During the Lab period, the researchers (the three authors of the paper) applied a ’split vision approach’ by both acting as knowledge support and also collecting data by documenting the process through meeting notes and personal diaries. The purpose of the paper is to contribute to increased knowledge on the conditions for interprofessional collaboration and learning in arenas where different forms of knowledge meet. The following questions are investigated: What characterized the conditions for learning in the Lab in terms of enabling and constraining conditions? What intersections of professional knowledge were key to the outcome of the Lab? These questions are discussed and problematized through analytical entries based on theories on workplace learning and forms of knowledge. The conclusion is that is was hard to create a common ground for the different forms of knowledge and professional practices that met in the Lab. Despite the lab-metaphor, the Lab did not turn out as an expansive learning environment as was intended from the beginning – at least not in relation to the goals of the program. Some aspects that will need more attention in future intitiatives mixing these types of actors was the shortage of time in general, the limited time for reflection; unclear roles (not sufficient trust); and a low degree of teamwork.