Presentation to Social Frontiers conference by Jacob Torfing and Eva Sørensen

1. Enhancing Social Innovation
by Rethinking Collaboration, Leadership and
Public Governance
Jacob Torfing and Eva Sørensen
Roskilde University and CLIPS
NESTA, the 15th of November, 2013

2. Focus on public innovation
Since Schumpeter innovation has been
seen as a key driver of economic growth in
the private sector
 By contrast, public innovation has been
described as an oxymoron
 Growing focus on public innovation:

– Innovation systems: enhance competitiveness
by transferring new R&T to private firms
– NPM: innovation in public organizations will
enhance efficiency and facilitate tax cuts
– Social innovation: policy and service innovation
in order to meet unmet social needs

3. Why public innovation?

The Good:
High political and
professional ambitions

The Bad:
Growing number of
wicked problems

The Ugly:
Rising expectations and
limited resources

4. A new innovation agenda
 The
public sector is more dynamic
and innovative than its reputation
 But public innovation is often
episodic and accidental
 As such, it fails to enhance the
organizational capacity for innovation
 Need to turn public innovation into a
permanent, systematic
and pervasive activity

5. Celebrating innovation heroes

Inspired by the private sector, the public
sector has spent a lot of time searching for
its own innovation heroes:
–
–
–
–
–

Elected politicians
Public Managers
Private contractors
Public employees
Users
However, innovation is not the result of
individual action, but rather a team sport

6. Collaborative innovation
All phases in the innovation cycle are
strengthened through collaboration
 Collaboration does not involve the
search for unanimous consent, but is
rather defined as the constructive
management of differences in order to
find joint solutions to common problems
 Collaborative innovation ensures that it is
the ability to foster innovation rather
than organizational boundaries that
determine who contribute to public
innovation


7. Methods of collaborative innovation
1.
2.
3.
4.
Spaces outside but close to service
production that enable employees to
collaborate across organizational
boundaries in order to develop and test
new ideas
Partnerships between public
organizations and private firms that
exploit complementary resources
Networks with relevant and affected
actors who bring new experiences, ideas
and resources to the table
Crowd-sourcing that draws on the
wisdom of large anonymous crowds

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

9. 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

10. The need for a cultural revolution

1.
1.
Hands-on innovation management must be
supplemented by 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 public innovation culture
– Combat the risk aversive, zero-error culture
– Enhance experimentation and fast learning
– Create flatter and more flexible organisations
– Drill holes in the public silos and create open,
borderless organizations

11. Transforming gocvernance,
enhancing innovation
While hierarchy can help to set the
agenda and competition can creative
incentives, collaborative forms of
governance bring together public and
private actors with relevant innovation
assets
 In order to enhance collaborative
innovation, we need to shift the balance
from New Public Management to New
Public Governance
