News from the world

What can public sector managers learn from Steve Jobs?

By Christian Bason December 21st 2011

This blog has previously been published in the Danish magazine “Monday Morning”.

I have always thought that there are limits to what public sector managers can learn from their private sector colleagues, but after reading the new biography of the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder and CEO, I have come to think differently.

In mid-September, I had the unusual experience of seeing a roomful of French central administration department heads being taught innovation by an American computer company. The occasion was a summit meeting on public innovation held by “Bercy”, as the French Ministry of Finance is popularly known. In that context, an Apple European director was invited to talk about the secret behind the California firm’s incredible ability to constantly innovate.

Think about it: The French central administration elite deigning to hear about the experiences of a private American company? The financial crisis must really be hurting the French public sector!

Nonetheless, the assembled appeared to listen attentively to the presentation. At one point the Apple director emphasised the company’s ambition that every new product be “magical and transformative”. In other words, customers must have a totally exceptional impression of what Apple does for them. During the ensuing plenary discussion among the French managers, the man next to me (a British consultant, the only other foreign participant) leaned forward and pointedly said: “Imagine if your services, too, were perceived that way: magical and transformative”.

The room fell silent. One could sense the managers’ pondering. Magical and transformative social assistance? Magical and transformative foreign service? Magical and transformative postal service?

And yet… Well, why not? It’s one thing if a teenager is willing to spend a month’s paper route money on an iPad 2 because it is so delicious (in Apple terminology) that one wants to lick it, but whether it should be magical and transformative to be treated at hospital, go to elementary school or be helped by the job centre is another matter. After all, our public institutions are responsible for a range of more fundamental and at times vital functions. Why isn’t the ambition so high as to make it a transformative experience to be in contact with the institutions that literally matter so much in our lives?

Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, died shortly after the French conference, and shortly thereafter came Walter Isaacson’s biography of the man. I read it as soon as I could get hold of a copy, with a hidden personal agenda: Would there be other insights from his life or from Apple that could teach us something about innovation in the public sector? There were. Let me give three examples:

First of all, Steve Jobs always put himself in the customer’s place. He was never satisfied with what Apple’s hoards of engineers, designers and developers suggested. There was always something that could be done better to create a better user experience. Luckily, Steve Jobs was in many ways an archetype of the company’s target group: a culturally radical music lover. He insisted that computers and technology should be understandable and usable by ordinary people in everyday situations. That is why he was the first to commercialise the graphical user interface that we today take for a given in all computers, but which Apple still does best. And that is why he insisted that the company’s latest transformative technology, the iPad, should not have a pointer. The most intuitive thing is obviously to use our fingers to navigate the screen.

Secondly, the visionary Jobs made Apple employees tremendously proud of their work. One of his best-known sayings came when, at a company retreat, he invited his staff to join him in “making a dent in the universe”. Not a small ambition, yet one that you could say has been realised by what is today the world’s most valuable company, whose products are found in the hands of millions of people the world over. How many public sector managers have such an ambition?

Thirdly, Steve Jobs created a design-driven organisation. That is, Apple’s very organisational DNA – management structure, development processes, IT infrastructure, work methods, production, logistics and marketing – are put together with the sole goal of ensuring that the customer has a fully integrated experience of Apple’s stores, products, packaging and services such as iTunes and App Store. A central concept in this context is that Apples chief designer, Jonathan Ive, reports directly to the CEO. This means that it is design that guides the business’s decisions; not technology, not the financials, not marketing. The design is, at the end of the day, what the customer experiences. As design and innovation guru Roberto Verganti – a great Jobs admirer – so precisely said, good design is “the creation of meaning”. Apple’s organisation is highly geared to creating a meaningful experience for the user. A magical and transformative experience.

Could a public service organisation hire a “head designer” to report directly to the chief executive? Might it have a chief executive who is personally, deeply engaged in every detail of the concrete service provision, in citizens’ experiences and in inspiring employees to do things they wouldn’t think possible?

Naturally, we in the public sector can never create as elegant and coherent solutions and experiences as does Apple, given the necessity to balance conflicting political requirements, considerations and pressures in a social and institutional world that is all too complex and unpredictable. Nonetheless, I believe we are duty-bound to try, especially since our “business” does not concern something as banal as electronic products, but rather the lives and welfare of people. In this, Steve Job’s insistence that we all deserve a better experience can serve as a pretty relevant guideline.

Small adjustments, massive outcomes

By Jakob Schjørring October 21st 2011

Is the radical innovation of public services the Holy Grail for us working with public innovation? Experiences from UK Cabinet Office suggests that it is not always the case.

MindLab has for many years insisted that the road towards spotting the great potentials for innovation often passes through an interest for the little details in the everyday lives of businesses and citizens. Last week, I was offered yet a perspective on why insisting on this may pay off. David Halpern visited MindLab and presented his work on “nudging” that the UK Cabinet Office has commenced at their Behavioural Insight Unit.

What is nudging?

To make a long story short, Behavioural Insight Unit works on finding specific suggestions to how we can increase the probability that people voluntarily do what we want them to do; importantly without forcing specific patterns of behaviour on them e.g. through rules and regulation. It is this kind of “guiding the individual’s choice”, which is the core of nudging.

Behavioural Insight Unit works with nine ways that people can be nudged, which is collected in the acronym MINDSPACE. Read more here.

The devil is in the detail

What I found most interesting in Halpern’s presentation was that all his examples were on a very basic practical level. And I think that there is a tendency amongst us working with innovation to overlook the basic practical perspective.

An American insurance company had for example moved the signature box from last to first page of their insurance policy documents. The fact that the customers signed on page one made them more honest when they stated their yearly mileage, even though it made their car insurance more costly.

In the UK all applicants for a drivers licence must concurrently consider whether they want to join the NHS Organ Donation Register. The initiative is only three months old, but the number of registered potential donors has already skyrocketed due to this simple solution.

When guests reserve a table on a restaurant is it common that the waiters asks if the guest will call back and cancel her reservation if she is unable to make it. Here research has shown that once that the guest has said ‘yes’ to that question, the probability increases significantly that the guest actually does call back and cancel if the waiter waits for three seconds before saying “thank you”. The small hesitation simply creates a greater sense of obligation with the guest.

An agenda for government executives?

When Halpern showed us his examples I could not resist asking him how he would get government executives to show interest in something as ordinary as pauses during a telephone call and the placement of signature boxes. He simply answered that a good business case can make any executive to listen.

This appeal to focus not just on radical and complex new solutions is hereby passed on. I personally think that Halpern’s approach is extremely suitable with regards to debureaucratization and directing citizens and businesses to choose digital over analogue solutions. Perhaps somebody already knows any other examples of small adjustments with massive outcomes?

Strategic design in Helsinki

By Runa Sabroe June 17th 2011

Finnish design is more than Marimekko’s colourful flower universe and Aalto’s strict functionalism. Finland is in many ways a spearhead nation when it comes to strategic design. MindLab has visited Helsinki.

“Why wait if you can do it now and do it yourself?” asks Kalevi Ekman, director of Aalto Design Factory, Helsinki, when MindLab comes by to visit. Design Factory is a product of the fusion of the design school, the technical university and business school and has existed for just over two years. They work with design here and teach design in all its forms.

At Design Factory, most people seem to do their best to live up to Ekman’s motto. For example, when MindLab visits the walls are getting painted from white to black and red. A larger group of international students are having their lunch the same place. No one seems to take notice of paint buckets, high ladders and painting equipment used to the significant refurbishment. As a physical proof that the place is always changing.

Or when some of the students develop a new videolink-equipment and place it in the common room/kitchen/coffee lounge, connects it to the new sister organisation in Shanghai and declares that it should be streaming sound and video 24/7. That should solve the potential problem with enormous physical distances between the two organisations!

Design Factory seems to be a living proof of what design can do. The whole place stems with a spirit where you localise a problem and without much hesitation use design methods to develop solutions in one format or another, with the purpose to improve them and perhaps give them yet another format. Maybe this is where the basis of successful development lies. This basic passion and will to experiment is what the place builds on.

To use design as a strategic tool is the headline of Sitra’s new design unit, Design Lab, which MindLab also visited. Sitra is well placed in a Helsinki high rise, with a view where you feel that you can see all nooks and crannies of the city. As a manifestation of Design Lab’s goal of using design methods to rethink the system and through this develop new solutions. Here you literally see everything from the top.

Sitra is an independent funding organization and was actually a present to the people of Finland on the 50^th anniversary of independence and has thus existed since 1967, but it is a novelty that they engage in strategic design.

Bryan Boyer is a member of the design team and tells us that they work with using design, not to give physical form to objects, but to create a better platform for decision making. For example, Design Lab has been taking up some of Finland’s serious challenges, like the increasing old age burden. The design team gathers twenty experts on the topic for up to one week and demands prototypes of new solutions by the end of the meeting. Not finalized new solutions, but provisional and qualified suggestions.

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Making the big society work: Is trust the missing ingredient?

By Christian Bason February 11th 2011

During my recent three intensive days in London, presenting at the Department for Communities and Local Government, at the Overseas Development Institute, and at The Guardian’s Public Services Summit 2011, the hot topic was the Coalition Government’s vision for a Big Society. In the face of some first setbacks, such as the withdrawal of one of the pilot cities, Liverpool, will the vision prove resilient enough? And more fundamentally, how to make the grand idea a reality while public service budgets are cut so massively?

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?

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Global impressions – Part I

By Christian Bason January 12th 2011

How can we in government change our thinking and current practices to tackle a much more turbulent and difficult economic environment? How might we connect in more meaningful ways with citizens, businesses and communities to bring about real change? How do we, ultimately, get more and better services for less? These are some of the key questions currently facing public sector leaders. During the global launch of my book “Leading public sector innovation: Co-creating for a better society” I’ve had the opportunity to connect with government colleagues in several countries to discuss where public services are heading. Here are some first impressions.

In London, the point of departure is that public services have become financially unsustainable, and that radical new and more cost-efficient delivery models must be found. “Ouch!” was how The Economist, in their editorial, characterized the austerity measures introduced by the Coalition Government, starting with a harsh emergency budget in June 2010.

Ouch!

Following subsequent historic budgetary cuts of nearly 20 percent over the next four years, the UK discussion is now focusing on, amongst other things, a major devolution of power, and of how a ‘Big Society’ model might enable everyone — ordinary citizens, community organisations, third sector organisations and business — to engage in co-production of what was formerly known as ‘pure’ public services. In that context, the RSA Public Services 2020 Commission has proposed the compelling vision “From social security to social productivity”. At a major Summit at the RSA in November, members of the Commission emphasized how three shifts are necessary to secure the UK welfare state for the future: A shift in power from (formal) government organisations to (informal) actors; a shift in finance to new models of co-finance and/or individual investments, and a shift in culture to a more democratic and socially responsible society. See my own, and other’s, contribution to the RSA Journal on how the vision of a Big Society could be realised.

In London there was also the opportunity to engage with the Innovation Unit, and discuss their excellent work on radical efficiency. Radical efficiency is a comprehensive approach , based on study of more than 100 cases across a number of countries, of how to deliver radically different, better and lower cost public services. Read The Innovation Unit’s blog about the book launch session co-hosted with the Institute for Government.

In Paris, the discussion is more about how to build the political momentum and courage to actually embrace more fundamental change. In France, irrespective of the fact that the country’s economic challenges are pretty much as significant as elsewhere, it is apparently more legitimate to focus on better and potentially more costly public services, than on how we could really achieve more with less. However when I shared the Innovation Unit’s point in that perhaps it really is a question of “more for more”, because radical efficiency is largely achieved by leveraging more resources, just from outside of government, it caught the French’s attention! Visit the site of French innovation lab La 27e Region to see how service design is being applied in fields such as education, regional development and sustainability.

In Brussels — from the European perspective — the thought leaders at the Lisbon Council reinforced the point out that what is needed now is political leadership. See for instance Executive Director Ann Mettler’s passionate call for European action, “If not now, then when?”. During our book launch session there, the conversation with key policymakers at member state and EU level emphasized that the problem isn’t for politicians to get reelected in spite of new austerity measures. The track record from countries like Greece and the UK so far shows that the public at large does understand that such measures are necessary. The key problem for politicians is to find the radical new solutions necessary in a world without abundant funding for public services. This is where, of course, the message of co-creating for public services enters. Read about Lisbon Council’s work in innovation and see my Brussels presentation here.

Lisbon Council book launch: Panel session

So, public services in the Western world are under increasing pressure, the hunt for better models of service creation and delivery is on, and new models and approaches are emerging fast. The twin messages of innovation and co-creation seem to make sense in those contexts, but in different ways. How about other parts of the world? Watch this space for Part Two about trends and solutions in Australia and Japan…

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Must innovation labs be value-driven?

By Christian Bason October 25th 2009

On Oktober 12-13, 20 leaders of innovation labs gathered with academics and policy experts from the European Commission to formulate a vision for labs in Europe by 2020. The challenge was to show how innovation labs might help solve complex social, environmental and economic challenges through sustainable, human-centered and democratized innovation. See Stepháne Vincents photos from the event, which was held at MindLab, here.

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.

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What could design do for government?

By Christian Bason August 25th 2009

INDEX seeks to improve life. So does government.

Copenhagen this week is dominated by design. On the beautiful Kgs. Nytorv square, world class designs are on display in transparent plastic bubbles. This Friday, a select few of them will win the prestigious biannual INDEX:Award in categories like body, home, work and play.

Now, that’s all very well. But there isn’t an INDEX: prize category for government.

What if there was? Could design also change the way government works? For INDEX: the slogan is “design to improve life”. Believe it or not, but most government agencies are created to improve how society works and how life in society is lived.

What if design thinking characterised the very way government develops new services and policies? At MindLab we are increasingly learning how design can dramatically improve the process of shaping future visions for society, both in the abstract and the very practical. From climate change strategies to how we meet individual citizens at a job centre, the design process offers us a new way of realising desirable outcomes.

What could be the contribution of design to government? Here are some suggestions:

See everything as an experiment.

Challenge the status quo.

Value the citizen.

Be concrete.

Co-create.

Visualise.

Iterate.

Could these seven principles transform how government works? Perhaps. When a network of 25 design experts and practitioners meet in Copenhagen this coming weekend for another design event, the Co’creation summit, to write a manifesto for the future of design, my guess is that some of these principles will be part of the package. For many of the participants, this will not be very surprising. But if public managers really, really took design to heart, it could be the beginning of a revolution.

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Why should government care about social innovation?

By Christian Bason July 25th 2009

Returning from the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) summer school, which was held in Lisbon on July 14-17, I am feeling energized and confident that social innovators hold the key to many of the new ideas and solutions that our societies so desparately need. From health care to education to climate change, their efforts create real value to citizens, every day.

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?

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Speech by Bill Moggridge

By Rasmus Kolding June 25th 2009

Bill Moggridge of IDEO gave a speech at MindLab last week, and this is the full video. Please share and enjoy!

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Should we aim to create urbanity in public governance?

By Jesper Christiansen June 25th 2009

How to think about change in the public sector: thoughts from the CBS-conference ’Contemporary Issues in Public Management’

The urban city is often presented as a place of significant segmentality which makes self-presentation a complex matter with varied ways of making one known to others. It is not only a place with segregation of roles in different groups and networks. It also segregates moral judgements. In the city people can, at least situationally, slip out of their existing social settings and participate in different groups and partnerships with different expectations and values (see Hannerz 1980). In this respect, urbanity provides an interesting frame of thought when trying to grasp the concept of change in the public sector.

The public welfare sector is often seen as a problematic and unlikely place for significant change and innovation. The way forward is by many claimed to be based on the creation of new partnerships which are able to combine and take advantage of different competences in close interaction and cooperation. This is thought of both in terms of public-private innovation partnerships and public-public partnerships between different public actors.

In both cases, the new organizational setting aims to develop new possible solutions which the different actors otherwise wouldn’t be able to develop. And in both cases, the goal is to enhance what Professor Garth M. Britton at the CBS-conference ’Contemporary Issues in Public Management’ called ‘change capability’. He understood this as an individual’s or organizational group’s “capability to change capabilities”.

Central to his argument was that he saw public value as the basic strategic driver for the partnerships aiming to change the public sector. He argued for an understanding of the relevant units and linkages between them in terms of values, operational and administrative capability, and the authorizing environment. As he puts it: “The interrelationships between formal and informal actors in chains of public value creation (complex and fluid) are a fundamental source of adaptability and change capabilities”.

One of the issues of these interrelationships is the question of agenda and experience of the actors involved. Going into a partnership which has a new, defined purpose gives possibilities in terms of generating new roles and identifications in the particular partnership. However, this process is difficult if existing professional agendas are strictly maintained in the partnership and the individual thus feel a strong obligation to keep certain ideas about for instance work practice. In other words, the interrelationships of one individual can collide with each other when he or she has to take different agendas into account.

This issue was among other things the concern of Adina Dudau who in her presentation at the CBS-conference focused on the interactive identities in welfare partnerships. Her argument evolved around negotiation when public or public-private actors cooperate about the change of welfare issues as it depends on one or more of the interdependent levels of motivation. The catalysts and obstacles of the partnership are to be found in the ‘complex whole’ consisting of individuals, professions and organisations. The most productive and innovative partnership, she argued, occurred when the partnership worked as a new established organization and a ‘cross professional identity’ was created. In comparison, longer standing organizations tended to be more resistant to change.

So that creates a dilemma. On one side you want to draw upon the existing experience of the different actors, but on the other you want to have them forget where they came from in order to abolish existing ties and make worth of their experience in the new organizational setting.

This leads us back to the concept of urbanity. For the urban individual it is legitimate and accepted when he or she separates his or her engagement in different networks and groups without making one known to the other. Whether you are a representative of a company or a public unit you are in the same way participating in different types of network with different levels of importance to your main work place. The difference is that here you are often obliged to keep your main role which make your participation on other networks a complex matter.

To think urban living into innovation partnerships is interesting because it leads to following questions: what if the individual participating in a welfare innovation partnership wasn’t confronted with his or her particular role in that partnership? What if the only parameter of moral judgement was the one inside the partnership? What if innovation in the public sector becomes a matter of temporary roles in new established organizations and cross-professional identities instead a matter of doubt in terms of confronting the new establishment with one’s existing organizational setting?

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Larry’s three laws: Lessons from Stanford’s Center for Design Research

By Christian Bason June 25th 2009

“We are dogmatic about prototypes.” So says Larry Leifer, a university professor and the Founding Director ofStanford University’s Center for Design Research. Over the past 25 years his institution has produced more than 40 design research Ph.Ds, all of whom are closely cooperating with some of the world’s leading companies to solve specific problems. When you visit the Center for Design Research, as I recently had the chance to do, you are struck by how down-to-earth and practically focused the work of the institution is. The design school is linked to Stanford’s engineering area, and the engineers’ feel for technology and practical problem-solving is contagious. Many of the students have obtained a Masters degree in technology before coming to the design school. A peek into the school’s biggest room reveals 4-5 groups of students working dedicatedly on projects for companies like BMW, Panasonic and SAP. Flat screens are ubiquitous, the walls are all covered with whiteboards, and large notices describing case studies and project descriptions hang beneath the ceiling. Lego bricks lie scattered on the shelves, and in one corner of the room sits the entire dashboard from a German passenger car. On the other hand, there are no partitions separating the various workgroups, and no bookshelf stands more than waist-high.

: Work environment at Stanford’s Center for Design Research

“We believe that in a knowledge environment, we ought to be able to see each other,” says Larry Leifer. He says that over the years he has become known for “Larry’s three laws”, which describe the work of the design school:

#1: Design is a social and technical activity
#2: Preserve ambiguity
#3: All designers redesign.

What is the significance of the three laws? From MindLab’s perspective they also make sense when you apply them to the public sector’s development processes. Let’s try to reinterpret them:

#1: Public sector innovation involves the generation of a deep understanding of the social reality we want to modify, as well as finding solutions – including technological ones – that are capable of bringing about positive change. Only a minority of public-sector innovators would disagree with that assertion. Maybe we are just not good enough at being at the leading edge with regard to the latest technological advances. For instance, how many public organizations have fully exploited the potential that mobile technology offers?

#2: Public sector innovation requires being willing to stick with uncertainty and ambiguity well into the development process. In our experience, this kind of divergence is essential for sparking off the understanding of a problem, as well as for generating novel solutions. Sometimes you have to take a detour in order to reach your goal. However, this is an area where public development officials, and their bosses especially, begin to lose their nerve. “When will we reach our target?” “Now is the time for us to bring this to a conclusion.” “Precisely how does this activity help us to solve the problem?” Such doubts are understandable, but sterile. The innovation process requires having confidence that it will hit its mark even when it doesn’t seem as though it will.

#3: Public sector innovation requires iteration: being willing not only to design a possible solution, but also to test and redesign it. At MindLab we believe that the learning process that unfolds through experimenting with partial solutions, obtaining feedback from citizens and businesses, and then refining the solutions, is extremely valuable. It merely requires a willingness to get involved with incomplete measures or initiatives, plus the courage to accept the consequences of the feedback we receive.

So where do the prototypes fit into this picture? Well, a prototype – whether of a dashboard or a public sector service process – makes a solution tangible. And unless it has been made tangible it cannot be tested or developed further. At the same time, the prototype is a tool that demonstrates how it is possible to turn ambiguity into something concrete and turn it into a solution that combines social processes with technological opportunities. It is therefore quite reasonable to be dogmatic about using prototypes. Without them we would be breaking all three of Larry’s laws.

: Larry Leifer talks about design research

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Leadership. The secret formula of a successful public sector?

By Christian Bason April 7th 2009

On the afternoon of Monday, April 6th, in a small and rather dark auditorium at the Copenhagen Business School, Alexander Kroll from the University of Potsdam concluded that the term “leadership” is quite rare in public management. That theme came back to haunt me three times over the rest of that day.

First, it haunted me at the workshop. More precisely, a review Mr. Kroll conducted of more than 1.200 academic articles about New Public Management shows that only six percent of them mentions the word “leadership” at all. Now, that might, or might not, be a problem. As a British professor commented, perhaps the reason leadership didn’t pop up more often is that the review was limited to New Public Management — and many, if not all, academics in fact distinguish between leadership and management. If that was the explanation, we wouldn’t have much of a problem. Leadership could still be a central feature of public administration research.

Fun aside, I did get the feeling that we were dealing with a serious question. The workshop participants spent some time debating the leadership theme, and a Brasilian participant asked whether leadership didn’t have to do with a notion of moral authority rather than (administrative) position. For exactly that reason, leadership in the public sector might be suspect in itself. It is not the role of public employees to lead. Moral authority is the sole domain of politicians, not administrators. A scary thought, I believe. But true?

The second time leadership showed up was during my own presentation in the late afternoon. A U.S. professor asked about MindLab’s experience with successful cross-ministerial collaboration and innovation. What does it take? I humbly apologised for not being able to come up with a better suggestion than … leadership. He agreed and said he couldn’t come up with a better suggestion himself. So, perhaps leadership isn’t dangerous, but rather critical to the success of the public sector?

The third time leadership emerged as a theme that Monday was in the late evening, when I visited the blog of the newly established NESTA Lab, an organization focused on public sector innovation, much like MindLab. On their blog, director Rowena Young describes a lunchtime conversation with her new team about innovation leadership in the public sector, and what it would take to switch more managers on to public sector innovation. They decided on the following recommendation:

Start somewhere. Better to have lost in innovation than never have innovated before.

I couldn’t agree more. And maybe the same applies to leadership. Let’s get the secret out.

: MindLab at the IRSPM conference at the Copenhagen Business School.

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Towards the risk-free society? The shape of government and accountability after the financial crisis

By Christian Bason April 6th 2009

“Public enemy number one”. This was the title of the first slide of political science professor Donald Kettls keynote speech at the IRSPM public management conference in Copenhagen today. The public enemy in question was Sir Fred Goodwin, former head of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and target of public outrage since he decided to keep his pension in spite of the bank’s receiving £45 billion in public bail-out money.

: Broken window at former RBS head Fred Goodwin’s home: Public outrage manifesting the new shape of accountability?

RBS is but one of a string of private companies that are now owned partly or fully by government. That puts many companies into the type of public scrutiny that government is used to – and these days, many of them don’t look too pretty in the eyes of the masses. So, while government has been increasingly privatized, private companies are now being governmentalized. The key question then is: If the boundary between public and private is blurring, what is accountability in the post-financial crisis world? Kettl’s short answer was: We don’t know. He then offered several ways forward, only to conclude again: We don’t really know.

One interesting approach, though, is the Obama governments’ pledge to show citizens exactly how the US financial stimulus package is being spent, thus cutting through the accountability issue by aiming at full transparency. At the website www.recovery.gov it is in principle going to be possible to trace every federal dollar spent. According to Donald Kettl, the Obama administration has even considered using Google Earth to allow citizens to see how the government spending trickles all the way down to their neighbourhood.

One pattern that emerged from Kettls tour de force of the future of accountability became strikingly clear, however: Government action seems to be directed at eliminating or at least heavily minimizing risk. Through government interventions around the globe to curb the financial crisis, administrators are trying to shape a new public order which is, if not risk-free, then at least risk-averse. Citizens and businesses should never again be so vulnerable to the whims of financial markets and economic forces. Government should be our friend in times of crisis (and prevent crises from recurring). Such a new order will, however, require a much deeper understanding of risk by government administrators. And even if we upgrade our risk management skills considerably, the risk-free society is likely to be impossible to attain. Because, with Kettls words: “We only know what we want after we see what we get”. In today’s complex world order, we may not know what the risk was before it’s too late. Perhaps the post-financial crisis world will look quite similar to the old one, after all?

: Easter sunlight hits participants at the IRSPM conference in Copenhagen

Categories: News from the world | Research
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Welcome to MindBlog

By Christian Bason February 28th 2009

Today MindLab powers up the dialogue on innovation in the public sector – and you’re invited to take part in the conversation. We will actively use this blog to share experiences, case examples, research results and methods from our collaboration on innovation projects in the three ministries MindLab is a part of: The Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Employment. In addition we will look far beyond the Danish state administration to gather new perspectives on innovation: From other public sector practitioners, from academia, from the private and third sectors and of course, from Denmark and abroad.

We are launching this English variety of the blog in the hope that MindBlog will prove relevant not only for our colleagues in the three ministries, but for everyone with a passion for transforming the public sector and creating value for society.

No matter where you are, we hope you will let yourself be engaged with us and the themes we address.

In short, it is our ambition that MindBlog will be the most valuable place to harvest inspiration and knowledge when you work with public sector innovation. As far as we can see, that place is missing today, even as innovation has become nearly as much of a buzzword in public organisations as it has been for decades in the private sector. Exactly because the term is pretty much everywhere, and thus in risk of losing both content and meaning, we believe it is essential to stimulate a more nuanced and deeper conversation about how to create better social solutions, and turn them into reality.

Meanwhile, two particular perspectives characterise the prism through which we at MindLab see the world – and those two perspectives will also influence this blog:

The first perspective is user-centered innovation: How can we best involve citizens and businesses directly in the innovation process, and what kind of value can it generate? How can users, civil servants and other stakeholders participate in a fruitful interplay, that can trigger new ways of thinking about public services and public policy?

The second perspective is cross-cutting collaboration and alliances: How to promote a sound process for cooperation across departments, sectors, and across public, private and social domains? It is our experience, that to place citizens and businesses at the center of the innovation process automatically forces us to think beyond the traditional “silo” organisation of the public sector we know. That places the two perspectives in a natural relationship to each other.

All of MindLabs staff contributes to the blog. That means that you can expect a broad palette of angles and approaches to innovation, which also represents our different professional backgrounds – from design to anthropology, and from media to political science. We experience it as a strength in our daily work that we hold different perspectives and interests – we hope that you will experience the same. Enjoy your reading. We look forward to hearing from you!

Categories: MindLab encounters | News from the world
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