ESF project 4895: Meer werk maken van innovatie voor werkgelegenheid en arbeidsmarkt
ANALYSIS FICHE OF LITERATURE
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Innovation in the public sector
AUTHOR : Geoff MULGAN and David ALBURY
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): academic
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE):
ORIENTATION OF LITERATURE (check with X):
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innovation in general:
innovation by / within the public sector: X
innovation oriented towards citizens:
innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF:
LESSONS LEARNT REGARDING:
A. How to define innovation e.g. in types
“New ideas that work”
To be more precise: “Successful innovation is the creation and implementation of new
processes, products, services and methods of delivery which result in significant
improvements in outcomes efficiency, effectiveness or quality”.
Types:
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Incremental: relatively minor changes to existing services or processes (e.g. using ICT to
handle school finances)
Radical: development of new services or fundamentally new ways of organizing or
delivering a service
Systemic or transformative: major innovations, often driven by the emergence of new
technologies: transforming sectors, giving rise to new workforce structures, new types of
organization, new relationship between organizations
Systemic innovations, driven by changes in mindset or new policies: they entail
constructing different relationships between users and services, new institutions and
relationship between institutions, new funding regimes, major alterations in governance
and responsibilities among the public, managers and professionals
Also relevant distinction:
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Top down innovation: driven through the delivery system by prescription
Bottom-up innovation: originating in an organization or network within the delivery
system
B. How to formulate an innovation strategy (in terms of scope, types of innovation,
requirements)
C. How to organize innovation as a process in different stages?
Framework to help understand how to foster innovation:
Generating possibilities: how can we stimulate and support ideas for innovation?
Incubating and prototyping: what mechanisms are there for developing promising ideas and
managing attendant risks?
Replicating and scaling up: how can we promote the rapid an d effective diffusion of
successful innovation?
Analyzing and learning: how should we evaluate what works and what doesn’t to promote
continuous learning and improvement?
D. How to define outputs of innovation e.g. in terms of idea, concept, prototype…?
E. How to make decisions regarding progress of an innovation?
F. What roles exist for different actors in the innovation process? What competences are
required for these roles?
For generating possibilities: can be stimulated by giving intensive attention to the views of
users, frontline staff and middle managers, by ensuring a strong diversity of staff (different
background and way of thinking), by constantly scanning the horizon and margins & learning
from others.
Formal creativity techniques help organizations and individuals to suspend judgment, linear,
rational thought and their proven knowledge to generate the unexpected. There’s a wide
range of methods for doing this, including fiction, role playing, imagined worlds, systematic
inventive thinking and the six hats techniques of Edward de Bono.
For incubating, prototyping and managing risks: the public sector requires high quality risk
management and safe spaces in which to test and develop promising ideas within defined
parameters.
G. How to organize interaction with external stakeholders (open innovation)?
Networks of peers play a critical role in learning from and supporting continuous innovation:
the formation of real time learning communities around specific innovations or clusters of
innovations – combining on-line discussion groups, face-to-face conferences and meetings,
and research.
H. Specific tools that are explained (list briefly for each tool in what stage, by which role, why,
how it is to be used).
a) Tool 1: