Public Sector Innovation
Special Issue of Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice
Volume 12 Issue 2 August 2010
iv+110 pages ISBN 978-1-921314-33-4
Editor:
Jason Potts
School of Economics, The University of Queensland
Please contact the Guest Editor with an Abstract of your paper in advance: j.potts@uq.edu.au.
Please follow journal Author Guidelines and submit your manuscript by the above deadline to: editorial@innovation-enterprise.com.
The public sector is by far the dominant service provider in the modern economy (particularly with respect to health, education, infrastructure, social insurance, culture, defence, security and justice). Yet its innovation record is often weak and its innovation practices are regularly dysfunctional. Still, despite the vast literatures on public economics and management, there still remains a deficit of analysis of public sector innovation.
This special issue seeks to redress that lacuna with a particular focus on:
- Public sector innovation incentives
- Public sector innovation practices and outcomes; and
- Public sector innovation models and solutions.
This special issue of IMPP thus invites contributions from scholars of innovation and the public sector on the analysis of public sector innovation issues, on theoretical, empirical or case study analysis of innovations in public sector services, and on proposals for improvement. Submissions are invited on reports of innovation policy experiments, critiques of innovation policy practise, or comparisons of public versus private sector innovation.
Public sector innovation matters for two broad reasons. First, the public sector is a significant component - often a third or more - of all economic activity, a ratio that applies at regional and national levels. The innovation performance of this 'sector' is thus significant in respect of the evolutionary capabilities of the entire economy. The opportunity costs of 'sub-prime innovation' in the public sector are thus cumulatively significant. Investment in the development of innovation in this sector is thus an unambiguous although widely unrealised public good.
Second, in an evolving economy where the activities, technologies and industries are continually changing, so too must policy adapt and change simply to keep up: an evolving economy requires evolving policy. Public policy innovation is thus not an added special benefit to regular service, but a basic criterion for the public sector to maintain position and relevance with the business and economic evolution of the private sector and the socio-cultural transformations that it drives. In the absence of this, the public sector becomes an increasingly entropic drag on the private sector through the accumulation of dysfunctional regulatory and policy settings. Public sector innovation is thus necessary to keep pace with, in the words of Will Baumol, 'the free market innovation machine'.
These two reasons then give rise to a third consideration: namely the role of experimentation and its implications in public sector innovation practise. It is widely recognised that a major difficulty in public sector innovation is that the incentives to try new ideas are weak or even perverse, both from within the career paths of the public sector, and without in terms of public willingness to accept policy experiments. This is an issue we aim to explore in this special issue.
The following issues will be considered for inclusion:
- Measurement and metrics of innovation in the public sector. Both in terms of reporting, discussion and critique of existing metrics, or proposals for new metrics.
- Analysis of interactions and collaborations between public and private sector innovation. On the costs and benefits of such conjoined innovation and its pitfalls and prospects.
- Analysis of innovation at different levels of public sector innovation - eg local, regional, or national. Differences and comparisons between.
- Public sector innovation in relation to innovation systems.
- Analysis of incentives to innovate in the public sector. Career analysis and sectoral analysis. Strategic game theoretic contributions are in particular invited. Ethnographic analysis or other case studies also invited.
- Analysis of innovation in particular sectors (eg health, education, defence, etc) and relation between innovation across sectors.
- Public policy experiments. Both in terms of analysis of theory and models, and analysis of instantiations and outcomes.
- Analysis of both gains and failure in public policy innovation. Including where public policy innovation has succeeded and where it has failed, and why.
- The range and scope of importation of private sector models of innovation. On the logic and extent that best-practise models can be applied to the public sector. Role of 'innovation consultants' and potential gains from such knowledge transfers.
- Analysis of risk perceptions and risk aversion in public policy innovation. Analysis of extent and nature of risk version and the implications of such on innovation management and practice.
- Open government models and the role of public feedback in the innovation process. Analysis of new technologies in respect of open innovation and examples of experiments.
Papers selected for this special issue will illuminate the following concerns:
- Does public sector innovation matter?
- What incentives are necessary for public sector innovation?
- How can public sector innovation learn from private sector innovation?
- What are the principles that should guide public sector innovation?
- How do we evaluate public sector innovation? Where it has been successful, or not, and why has it been successful, or not?
- How do we identify where innovation matters most in the public sector? Where should 'innovation resources' be focused?
- How, ultimately, should innovation theory and analysis affect policy thinking and propositions, both in general and in particular?
Who should submit? Plainly, a main target is innovation scholars with a focus on public sector concerns, or with public sector relevant data, who might examine public sector innovation from without. But an equal target is the opposite, namely public sector insiders (current or past) with data and analytic capabilities who might seek to examine innovation experiments from within. Yet this issue also aims to develop analysis in the many analytical dimensions that compose this space, of which there are many. Thus an open call is made to all interesting analysis of innovation in the public sector.
Some relevant literature
Albury D (2005) Fostering Innovation in Public Services, Public Money and Management 25: 51-56.
Bhatta G (2003) Don't just do something, stand there! - Revisiting the issue of risks in innovation in the public sector, The Innovation Journal 8(2).
Burtless G (1995) The case for randomized field trials in economic and policy research, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9: 63-84.
Dodgson M, Gann D and Salter A (2005) Think, Play, Do. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Gallouj F and Weinstein O (1997) Innovation in services, Research Policy 26: 537-556.
Golden O (1990) Innovation in public sector human service programs: The implications of innovation by 'groping along', Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 9: 219-248.
Hartley J (2005) Innovation in Governance and Public Services: Past and Present, Public Money and Management 25: 27-34.
Leigh A (2003) Randomized policy trials, Agenda 10: 341-354.
Metcalfe JS and Miles I (2000) Innovation Systems in the Services Sector: Measurement and case study analysis. Kluwer, Boston, Dordrecht.
Mulgan G and Albury D (2003) Innovation in the Public Sector, Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office UK.
Newman J, Raine J and Skelcher C (2001) Transforming local government: Innovation and modernization, Public Money and Management 21: 61-70.
OECD (2001) Innovation and Productivity in Services. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Osbourne S (1998) Naming the beast: defining and classifying service innovations in social policy, Human Relations 51: 1133-1154.
Parsons W (2006) Innovation in the public sector: Spare tyres and fourth plinths, The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal 11(2): Article 1.
Potts J (2008) The innovation deficit in public services: The curious problem of too much efficiency and not enough waste and failure, Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice (forthcoming).
Pelikan P, Wegner G (2003) The Evolutionary Analysis of Economic Policy. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham.
Walker R (2003) Evidence on the management of public services innovation, Public Money and Management 23: 93-102.
Walker R (2006) Innovation type and diffusion: An empirical analysis of local government, Public Administration 84: 311-335.
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