Innovation in partnerships

I've seen several articles on innovation lately that caught my eye. The first was in The Guardian Extreme Makeover and was looking at the idea of social innovation and how social innovation can be used to transform the public sector. But Geoff Mulgan, Director of the Young Foundation, says:

...there are strong disincentives to innovate in both the public and voluntary sectors. It is well known that the penalties for failed innovations are often high while the rewards for successful ones are slim.
...
And all new ideas threaten existing vested interests. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that ineffective models survive far longer than they should - for instance, in fields as various as criminal justice (where recidivism rates remain ridiculously high) and education (where levels of truancy and the number of people not currently in employment, education or training have remained stubbornly high for a decade or more).

Despite the difficulties, he thinks that future challenges in the public realm will require more than iterative improvement, they'll require real innovation. He calls for a shift in how we look at and fund innovation.

There have also been a series of articles recently out of the Harvard School of Government on public sector and in particular local government innovation.

Robert O'Neill, Jr. is optimistic and highlights several examples of innovation in American cities. He says the key has been:

One of the most significant factors determining the success of local government is how it relates to those it serves. I believe that the working capital of innovation is citizen trust.

and

Strong political and managerial leadership and competency also play a major role in determining a local government’s level of innovation. Having leaders who can create meaning and a compelling vision within the strategy of change, support and protect a culture of innovation, and focus on results and accountability are important prerequisites. Being able to synthesize information to create a persuasive case for change and to execute strategies designed to move an organization forward are at the heart of what makes a transformational leader.

But what about the passionate innovator at lower levels of an organisation? What kind of hurdles must they face? In another of the Harvard series of articles, John D Donahue says:

Public managers aiming to innovate need to outperform their private-sector counterparts in two ways. First, they have to develop really, really good ideas. A proposed innovation must offer benefits that are big enough, widespread enough, and (not least) certain enough for supporters to outnumber skeptics by the requisite wide margin. Second, public managers have to promote their ideas with exceptional deftness and determination. Public-sector innovators rarely have the luxury of ignoring objections or failing to mobilize latent constituencies.

That's of course within single organisations. When working across agencies, there are even more constituencies to mobilise and more applecarts to upset.

But Donahue also argues that when innovation occurs in the public sector - often greater value is created than from similar levels of innovation in the private sector. So again, innovation within a single agency must be great, but even better when it reaches across the public realm to meet new needs or meet old needs better and more efficiently. There are great challenges in innovating across partnerships, but also great rewards - most of all the potential to really make the difference in people's lives.

This innovation and the difference it really made to real people is captured in a series of case studies called The innovation forum: beyond excellence (link to a pdf) which came out not too long ago. It's a beautifully written piece by Charlie Leadbeater which examines three projects that have changed the shape of future service delivery through influencing government thinking and direction on target-setting largely through agencies working together and innovating and achieving more than they could have on their own. And there's more, too, from the Innovation Forum on IDeA Knowledge.


Back to main page