Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector: Transforming Public Organizations

1. Collaborative Innovationin the Public Sector: A new role for public managersand public organizations Jacob Torfing Roskilde University and CLIPS 10 May, 2012

2. Public innovation • Many perceive the public sector as ossified bureaucracy characterized by stalemate and inertia • However, the public sector is far more dynamic and innovative than its reputation • Just think of the significant transformations we have witnessed the last 30-40years

3. Globalization is constructed as a competitive game that nations, regions and localities can win or lose, depending on their capacity for innovation The public sector is caught in a cross-fire between rising expectations and limited resources There is a growing number of wicked problems that cannot be solved by standard solutions Public innovation can: generate growth enhance service quality save money break policy deadlocks Growing demand for public innovation

4. A new innovation agenda • Public innovation is often episodic and accidental: • New technological possibilities • Crises and scandals • Local experimentation • New employees or managers • As such, it fails to enhance the organizational capacity for innovation • Need to turn public innovation into a permanent, systematic and pervasive activity

5. Innovation is a open ended search process through which problems are defined and new and creative ideas are developed, selected, realized and spread Successful innovation is when innovation leads to a desirable result in the eyes of multiple stakeholders Defining innovation

6. Celebrating innovation heroes • There has been a tendency to focus upon and celebrate different innovation heroes: • Elected politicians • Public Managers • Private contractors • Public employees • Users

7. Collaborative innovation • However, new research shows that all phases of the innovation cycle are strengthened through collaboration • Collaboration is defined as the constructive management of differences • Collaborative innovation ensures that it is the ability to foster innovation rather than organizational boundaries that determine who contribute to public innovation

8. Collaborative innovation strategies • Cultivation strategy: • Create spaces permitting employees to collaborate across organizational boundaries to develop and test new ideas • Replication strategy: • Collaborate with other public authorities to identify, adjust and try out their most successful innovations • Partnership strategy: • Test new ideas in collaboration with public or private partners that are subjected to other rules • Network strategy: • Facilitate mutual learning and joint ownership through sustained interaction between public and private stakeholders

9. Hands-on innovation management Innovation management Catalyst Convener Facilitator Actors Interaction Collaboration Innovation Barriers: Lack of tradition, bad experience, or demotivating uncertainty Barriers: mental silos, lack of trust, or conflict of interest Barriers: tunnel view, risk aversion, or low degree of institutionalization

10. Three roles of innovation managers • Convener: • Create momentum, secure political support and integrity, set the team, distribute roles, clarify the process, define milestones and deadlines, and align expectations • Facilitator: • Provide administrative support, enhance trust, develop common frames of reference, solve or mediate conflicts and remove barriers for collaboration • Catalyst: • Provide new perspectives, construct threats, create incentives, bring new knowledge into play, change the venue and mode of interaction, spur transformative learning and manage risk

11. The need for a cultural revolution • Hands-on innovation management must be supplemented by a more long-term hands-off innovation management: • Active use of the HR function • Ensure diversity and develop boundary spanners • Recruit and nurture creative talents • Enhance collaboration, trust and influence • Create innovation culture • Combat the zero error culture, the tyranny of bureaucratic rules and the constraining auditing regime • Create flat and flexible organisations • Drill holes in the public silos and create open, borderless organizations

12. A new vision for public administration • New Public Management has led to many good things, but tends to generate an increasing amount of frustration • New Public Governance offers a new and promising vision for public sector development