OPM’s blog articles

Creating innovation

What if you could get a group of public servants in a room and help them to innovate? Better still, what if you could have a lot of fun doing it? OPM is experimenting with the idea that we can do both these things. By combining the latest evidence with a range of creativity techniques, we think we can help people in local government develop and implement new responses to social challenges.

The idea that public services need to become more innovative is rapidly approaching the status of a new orthodoxy. Whitehall-sponsored conferences invite the Cabinet Secretary to talk about the need for a new culture of experimentation to replace the old one of control. Leading edge local authorities are embracing this new culture by setting up social innovation laboratories or inviting design companies to help renew their services.

There is a large amount of research and policy work going into developing more innovation in the public sector. This is undoubtedly a good thing. But our understanding of what actually drives innovation in public services remains patchy. Research on this topic tends to fall back on organizational or structural solutions, rather than asking how the process of creating a new idea actually works. Numerous studies argue for particular kinds of culture, space to think, devolution to the front-line or cross-cutting structures.

But there has been no work to pull this together into a coherent and evidence-based package of support. Just as importantly, much of the research makes the strange assumption that public sector staff will spontaneously innovate if embedded in the right framework of rules and values. This attitude leaves an important gap in the debate about innovation – it treats the actual moment of creativity as a black box. The truth is that creativity can be facilitated and managed, leading to useful innovations.

Innovation is not some ‘magic dust’ that only the very creative possess. Research actually suggests that most new ideas come from at or near the frontline, where public servants meet the people they serve. And it happens when local government staff cross traditional boundaries, working with empowered citizens, other agencies and providers in the private and voluntary sectors.

The problem is that most local government officers spend their days meeting tough delivery targets and don’t get the time and stimulation they need to ‘think big’. According to the Audit Commission, some 60 per cent of councils think it is essential or very important to take time out from day-to-day work to be creative, but only a quarter report that they have this opportunity.

The lack of time for reflection means that may potential local government innovators spend their time making incremental improvements in their current services rather than stepping back and asking more radical questions.

There are a wealth of techniques that can help people get into creative mode – from Edward de Bono’s six hats model to imaginative techniques like working back from outcomes, or re-expressing the problem in different language. Exposing and questioning the constraints you are working under can help. And so can hearing from people in other fields who have tackled similar problems in the past.

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