Measuring Public Innovation:
Toward a common statistical approach
Nordic project on the development of
Public Innovation Metrics
Carter Bloch
Brainstorming session on measuring innovation in
Education, June 11 2009, Paris
København – Århus
www.damvad.dk
Background for project – funding support
• Project initiated by: Danish Ministry of Science,
Technology and Innovation
• Other Nordic contributors:
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Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe)
Research Council of Norway
Innovation Norway
VINNOVA
SALAR (Swedish Assoc. of municipalities and
regions)
– Finnish Ministry of Enterprise and Employment
Participants
• Denmark:
– DAMVAD (Carter Bloch, Torben Vad, Mark Riis, Lydia
Jørgensen)
– CFA (Peter S. Mortensen, Ebbe Graversen)
– Statistics Denmark (Jens Brodersen)
– Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation,
Denmark (Thomas Alslev Christensen, Jesper Rasch and Hanne
Frosch)
• Norway:
– NIFU-STEP (Johan Hauknes, Stig Slipersæter)
– Statistics Norway (Frank Foyn, Lars Wilhelmsen)
• Finland: Statistics Finland (Mikael Åkerblom)
• Sweden: Statistics Sweden (Roger Björkbacka, Per Annerstedt)
• Iceland: RANNIS (Thorvald Finnbjørnsson)
• Collaboration with UK (NESTA; DIUS)
• Hope to collaborate with other countries within NESTI Task Force
• Eurostat Pilot studies (Denmark and Finland have applied)
Background for project
• National interest in Public sector innovation in
Nordic (and other) countries
– Demographic changes necessitate innovation
– Competition with private service providers
– Better quality services to citizens
• However lack of systematic data on public sector
innovation.
– Hinders efforts to better understand and to
promote public sector innovation
Main objectives
• Develop framework and questionnaire for
collecting internationally comparable data on
innovation in the public sector
– Conceptual framework
– Survey methodology
– Studies of user needs
– Respondent interviews and testing
Main objectives
• Primary focus: ’generic’ survey instrument that
can be applied across govt levels and public
sector activities
• Goal: include main public sector activities, all
three levels of govt, front-line service delivery
institutions (hospital wings, schools, etc)
• Examine option of additional sector-specific
modules
• Examine how innovation data can be used
together with output data (often from other
sources).
– Project website: www.mepin.eu
Time line for project work
• Started in November 2008
• Nov-Feb, 2009: Background work
• March-Aug, 2009:
– Meetings with user groups,
– interview respondents, cognitive testing
– conceptual framework/indicators and survey
methodology.
– Pilot questionnaire.
• Fall 2009:
– Small-scale testing of questionnaire
– Deliverables on first stage of work
– Workshop for preliminary results (November).
• 2010:
– Pilot test studies
Implications for Indicators - Overview
• Innovations – definition and types
– Oslo Manual as starting point
• Unsuccessful innovations
• Innovation outputs (qualitative only)
• Innovation input (Oslo Manual as starting point, though quant
measures likely more difficult for public sector)
• The Innovation Process
– Innovation capability (what do organisations do to structure and
promote their innovation activities – and how able and ready are they?)
– Linkages (by type of partner; more than just cooperation)
– Drivers and barriers to innovation (actors and factors)
• ’Cross-cutting themes’ to be covered: ICT, HR, Procurement
Implications for Indicators/pilot questionnaire
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Innovations – definition and types
– Oslo Manual, Product-process-organisational seems like a suitable
starting point. However, a number of questions on whether these types
can be distinguished
• Marketing innovations?
– Perception by many that changes mandated by policy directives, rules,
cuts are not automatically innovations
– Ask for examples – disseminate examples
Unsuccessful innovations
– Innovation projects that have been abandoned, Implemented
innovations that have failed
– Ask for examples
– Give reasons why not implemented or why a failure
– Impacts of these unsuccessful innovation projects (learning effects vs. nomore-experiments attitude)
Innovation inputs
• Oslo Manual as a starting point (activities y/n; resources)
• Questioned: validity/reliability and interest in quantitative estimates
• How to collect? OM ”approach”?
– Estimates based primarily on budgets/accounts of innov.- projects?
– Estimates also based on loose estimates?
– Separation between R&D and non R&D (in-house; extramural)?
respondents may be seeing def of R&D for the very first time…
• Additional questions related to procurement here?
The Innovation Process
• We ask about innovation inputs and outputs;
other questions essentially are collecting data on
the innovation process:
– Innovation capability (what do organisations do to
structure and promote their innovation activities – and
how able and ready are they?)
– Linkages
– Drivers and barriers (actors and factors)
Innovation capability
some potential example ‘questions’
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Innovation strategy
Specific goals, targets for innovation activities
Development department
Activities organised in innovation projects
Individuals charged with supporting the development and
implementation of innovative ideas
Procedures for reviewing/assessing innovative ideas for
further development and implementation
Regular evaluation of innovation strategy, innovation
processes
Systematic procedure for gathering external knowledge
Part of staff work time explicitly devoted to innovation
Innovation-related training/courses for mgmt, staff
Staff incentives for generating innovative ideas
Linkages
Interest in linkages appears to go beyond ”Cooperation: Y/N”
This suggests asking small set of interaction-related questions
by type of partner (potential examples):
• Businesses
– Innovation cooperation
– Collaboration in provision of services
– Outsourcing
– Use of external innovation specialists
• Users
– Innovation cooperation
– Analysing user needs
– Meetings/hearings with users
– Gather information on users through daily operations
• Other public institutions
– Innovation cooperation with public research inst.
– Innovation cooperation with other public inst.
Drivers and Barriers
• Can this be formulated as one question;
ie where respondent can mark whether each impact is
positive (a driver) or negative (a barrier)?
• Split the drivers/barriers in actors and factors?
• Long lists of potential drivers/barriers available
from former ad-hoc surveys.
Other areas that can potentially be treated as
cross cutting themes
• ICT
• HR
• Procurement practices