In other words, Co-production empowers citizens to become active participants in the delivery of public services. Exciting stuff!

 Below are my top three “aha” moments of Co-production:

 1. The Timing is Right
The added pressure of recent economic hardships has catalyzed innovative grassroots co-production solutions that not only function better than the status quo but also save time and money. Among my favourite examples is Youth Court of DC, a youth reintegration program where Peer Jurors interrogate and sentence first time juvenile offenders in the District of Columbia, USA. As individuals who were once in the same position as the offenders, Peer Jurors are empathetic and able to connect with Offenders in a way that governments alone could not. This innovative program has reduced the recidivism rate from 30-40% down to 10%. Such co-production bright spots show us that it is possible to adapt to the growing economic and social pressures while improving service and saving resources.

2. New Media Advantage
New media creates opportunities for co-production in the public sector by creating faster and more direct communication with individuals and communities. As we saw in Barack Obama’s 2008 US Presidential election campaign, facebook, youtube and blogs are incredibly powerful tools in connecting, relaying information and mobilizing citizens. These tools are already widely used by citizens and many are free. Directly engaging with citizens is at the core of co-production; thus incorporating new media tools into public service is a great starting point.

 3. Mutuality
Co-production works best when both civil servant and beneficiaries/citizens become equal partners in the delivery of the service. The benefits of this mutuality go beyond getting added “buy-in” from both parties. By operating in this way, both civil servants and citizens receive timelier information and are able to build a relationship based on transparency, trust and respect. Citizens are empowered to reach out in their community, identify issues early, prevent escalation and help each other, ultimately relieving strain on the public service system and creating more self sufficient and robust communities.

 The timing is right for Co-production; we have the tools and we know where to start.

 Satsuko VanAntwerp is an International MBA Candidate at Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada who worked at MindLab during an exchange semester at Copenhagen Business School. As an Associate at Venture Deli, a firm that builds and capitalizes social ventures, Satsuko brings a strong background in social entrepreneurship. She also runs a blog, thinkthrice.ca, exploring ideas for social innovation and systemic change.

The reason that innovation then is expensive begins with the hiring process. According to Vaughn, innovative groups do not form if people are hired through a process where the seemingly best candidate for the job impresses in tests and interviews and thus selected accordingly. Rather Vaughn suggested that people enter the group through a process he calls “negotiated joining”, meaning simply that the candidate is given responsibility and works with the group for a lengthy period of time (like 2-3 months) before actually getting hired. This helps defining roles, clarifying mutual expectations and loosens up the work flows because it requires a flexible mentality and approach to the work. This is an expensive process, but pays off well according to Vaughn. Indeed, some of the worlds top restaurants work in this way.

Since this is expensive but easy, where comes the hard part? During the talk, I became increasingly aware of Vaughn’s emphasis that really innovative organisations have a tactical rather than strategic approach to their work processes. Tactical manoeuvring means that you as an organization constantly respond to how the world changes – and that means that decision making in the organization must be rapid and not constrained by bureaucratic structures. However, besides an organisational culture that allows this to happen, Vaughn also emphasised that all levels of management must endorse this for innovation to lead to success. This is what the top restaurants of the world have understood and it is reflected in their hiring processes.

I think Vaughn’s observations resonate well with our own experiences with public innovation. Setting up the team, identifying problems and developing insights is not the hard part. The difficulties enter when you need your insights to bloom within organisations, when large organisational change is necessary in order to achieve results, and when innovation carries risks to organisation and managers. This is not to say that it is impossible – indeed a well defined strategy can set a direction that may handle this. Incidentally, here at MindLab we have revised our own strategy to improve and foreground our work with organisational change. These are, however, baby steps in a complex process that requires much thought and skill along the way. We all know the societal challenges ahead, but which public organisation will be the first Noma of government?

What to make of it?

On the one hand, Britain is clearly endowed with extremely smart, engaged and capable public servants and not-for profit and business leaders. They are asking all the right and difficult questions about how a big society vision could be made practical and workable. They are searching for innovative solutions that can help, and they are extremely open to outside input. Even better, in many pockets around the country, it seems that innovative models for new forms of collaboration, engaging citizens and communities, are already up and running. From time banks, were citizens can earn credits for voluntary work and “cash” them for other services, to diversifying service provision to ngos and businesses, and to a growth in service design projects run by the likes of Participle, ThinkPublic and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, new approaches are flourishing. Most want to make the big society work.

On the other hand, one senses confusion and frustration. Implementing a major vision for society alongside almost unprecedented cuts to public services is a tough call. As one panel participant said at the Guardian’s public services summit, communities should be seen partners with the state, not as alternatives to it. Following this line of thought made me think that devolving power, finance and responsibility to local governments implies that the local level must become more, not less, of a partner with central government. However, when the new UK local government bill not just devolves power, but also requires an amazingly detailed level of transparency of public expenditure and reporting of it (public bodies must publish all expenditure items above £500 online, and the salaries of senior officials), one can’t help but think: Does central government really trust the local level to be able to step up to the challenge? Are central government departments prepared to let go, perhaps limiting themselves to demanding better outcomes, at less cost, in return? Are national politicians prepared to, in their own words, stop tinkering? If not, can the Big Society become a success?

The occasion was that on March 15th, the Copenhagen-based think tank Monday Morning launched its ambitious “The Entrepreneurs of Welfare” report on how innovation happens in Danish government. More than 2400 people from government, business and the third sector (myself included) have contributed to the study, which emphasizes that what everyone wants in order to create change is ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’. OK…?

More interestingly, although the report shows that new welfare solutions are certainly bubbling up to the surface everywhere in Denmark’s public landscape, the depressing fact is that very few of the innovations are goundbreaking or transformative. Further, the solutions often happen randomly, carried through by a few lonely entrepreneurs and in spite of the multitude of barriers we all know characterise new thinking in government.  My answer: Seems like we need more systematic and strategic innovation.

What is then systematic innovation? ‘Systematic’ is about conscious, explicit, with purpose. And ‘innovation’ is about divergence and variance. Maybe even risk.  So… could we systematically, purposefully, stimulate the variance that drives innovation?

Does a homogenous welfare state like Denmark not need to strengthen the ability of institutions to experiment with their own unique models of service delivery — and arrive at what they believe is the best way of creating value to citizens? If yes, we might need to forget the ‘one size fits’ all model, and start accepting a greater divergence of delivery models. Should we encourage more privately-run day care institutions, schools and hospitals? Should we strengthen the opportunities for NGO (third sector) actors to contribute with their skills, expertise and commitment in care for handicapped or for tackling environmental challenges?

Should governments’ role be less of running the core operations of the welfare state in search of ever-higher homogeneity, but rather to encourage vastly different delivery models,  only measuring them on their results? What might be required of our systems,  organisations and (not least) funding if we were to accept that innovation is driven by variance,  not homogeneity? Could ‘systematic’ innovation also be about government consciously encouraging and managing diversity? What might that mean to equality, and to what we define as the welfare state? And more importantly: What level of energy and passion might be released if we embraced diversity and rewarded success?

Lots of topics were discussed, drawing on insights from the practical work taking place at diverse organisations like NESTA Lab and the Innovation Unit of the UK, la 27e Region of France, and Medialab Prado of Spain. One of the most fascinating aspects of the conversation was the question whether innovation labs are value-driven? Because if a particularly strong sense of mission and purpose is crucial for labs to be effective, what does that mean for the potential of labs, and what are the implications for how to create, lead and grow them? To shape relevant future policy, might we first have to better understand how values are selected and cultivated in a ‘lab’ enviornment?

The discussion made me think back to early 2007, when we started on the journey towards the second generation of MindLab. One of the first things we did in our newly assembled core team was, in fact, to formulate a set of common values. Through a creative process, we arrived at the following five value statements, which have proven to be, in fact, central to our daily work:

Challenge. We challenge traditional thinking and bureaucracy

Communication. Our communication is inspiring and straitforward

Cooperation. We challenge each other’s thinking

Atmosphere. We drink black tea and green coffee

Results. We experiment with the objective in mind.

We often refer to these values when making key decisions: Who to join the team, which projects to take on, how to relate to the barriers we encounter, how to treat each other, who to collaborate with externally. (Ohh, and what kind of coffee to drink!).

Our values are, in many respects, of greater operational importance than our strategy.

So, yes, MindLab is value-driven. And perhaphs innovation labs have to be, in order to maintain a strong sense of purpose and direction in the midst of a chaotic, complex and difficult reality.

I would therefore like to extend an invitation to our fellow innovation labs around the globe to join the conversation here on MindBlog:

What are your values, and what do they do for you?

Because perhaps by understanding the role of values better, we can also learn how to create effective innovation labs that can help shape the future we desire.

See the video and the pictures below.

MindLab presents at SIX Summer School

However, to most people in government, at least in Denmark, social innovation is still a broad and vague term that doesn’t elicit much enthusiasm or even recognition. In a welfare state where every third person in employment works for the government, there isn’t a lot of consideration of potential social solutions coming from outside government…

So why should government care? Following my conversations with fellow innovators at the Lisbon event, I would suggest at least three pressing reasons:

First, bureaucrats aren’t smarter than anyone else. So, to get the best ideas to tackle wicked social problems (or, in SIX terms, “Fixing the Future”), we need everyone to contribute — not least savvy social entrepreneurs.

Second, social innovators are close to the citizens. One of our key challenges here at MindLab is to get citizens and businesses involved directly in the public sector innovation process. To most social innovators, a deep understanding of the underlying, implicit or explicit needs of citizens is at the very heart of their work. For government to remain legitimate and relevant, it has to support those that make a difference in people’s lives at the local level.

Third, a critical challenge for any innovator, whether in government or beyond, is to not only get the ideas but turn them into practice. Social innovators possess the skills and dedication to get their visions implemented, and not only can government learn from that, government can benefit from creating mutually positive alliances and partnerships with organisations whose ideas have already stood the hard test of meeting reality — but who may need the power and scale of government to make the solutions available to many more.

Social innovators at work

Even if we succeed convincing our colleagues in government of these benefits, I still see a major challenge that must be overcome: How do we empower government to not just understand, but also to support and strengthen social innovators? Perhaps part of the solution is that government itself must become more innovative. That was at least MindLabs message at the SIX event. What do you think?