Email"Yes, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. But it requires that you eat it in a different way."
That could be a way of phrasing the core argument of the new book, Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a better society, which was published this week.
In the book I argue that, in spite of significant barriers, governments around the globe are showing how to systematically apply the practices and tools of innovation to create new public value.
Real-world cases show that radical cost savings of 20% or more are possible while also increasing citizen satisfaction and generating better outcomes.
In order to make such 'paradigmatic' innovation much more likely, however, leaders in government must build a public sector innovation ecosystem.
The ecosystem is crafted through four simultaneous shifts in how public organisations create new societal solutions, from new modes of healthcare delivery to cheaper and better care for the elderly:
• A shift from random innovation to a conscious and systematic approach to public sector renewal
• A shift from managing human resources to building innovation capacity at all levels of government
• A shift from running tasks and projects to orchestrating processes of co-creation, creating new solutions with people, not for them
• And finally, a shift from administrating public organisations to courageously leading innovation across and beyond the public sector.
Executing these shifts within government is the essence of leading public sector innovation, and requires a new mode of thinking and acting by those charged with creating new public policies and services.
Probably the most powerful, but also the most difficult, shift is to a process of co-creation. Public managers and staff have tended to focus overly on 'best practices' and on 'evidence' to guide them, and not enough on 'best process', which helps answer questions such as: "In what way should we work if we are to maximise the probability that we will find better and more effective solutions to the challenges we face?"
Co-creation is the process of creating new solutions with people, not for them. It is inspired by part design thinking, part ethnographic research, and part public policy and profession. For instance, co-creation could mean redesigning healthcare services and how patients subjectively experience them, by involving patients themselves through observation studies, interviews, workshops, and interactive 'prototyping' and testing of new service solutions and approaches.
Or it could mean creating a new national strategy for combating climate change through collaborative workshops that cut across multiple government departments, involving private firms, third sector organisations, and citizens, tackling climate change both at a systems level and at an individual one.
Co-creation generates more and better ideas that will work in practice, and it creates the ownership needed for all key stakeholders to see them through.
Embracing co-creation to identify more powerful government responses to 'wicked' social problems is to recognise that ultimately, citizens are experts in their own lives. It is only by connecting with their experiences, motivations and engaging their resources that decision-makers can create the future public sector we need. At this critical time, what is the alternative?
Christian Bason is director of MindLab, a cross-ministerial innovation unit in Denmark, and author of Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a better society, available here
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