COVID reshaped every department—including your innovation department. Find out how some organizations adapted to the remote work age by creating the virtual innovation lab, and how you can create your own by downloading this complimentary infographic.
Government innovators face specific challenges: regulations, compliance issues, cooperation with numerous other branches of government...but they also access some of the most technical and influential trends of our time.
Numerous organizations run crowdsourced innovation programs, because companies can find better new ideas and take action on those ideas faster. This process allows companies to set a challenge and gather ideas from hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of participants.
The Food and Drug Administration in the US has a lot of responsibility to protect and advocate for consumers. And one department in the FDA, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs, including biological therapeutics and generic drugs.
Last month, leaders in public sector innovation gathered to discuss ways of crowdsourcing new solutions to longstanding problems at IdeaScale’s Open Nation DC. Speakers from a range of agencies as diverse as the FDA and the US Coast Guard presented best practices on creating actionable change in government.
Around the world there are dozens of very important elections coming up between now and 2020. Political leaderships in almost all corners of the world are trying extremely hard to remain in power while coping with varying levels of panic. All political leaderships are desperately seeking a miracle to wash off the decade’s long downward spirals; the increased erosion of the Middle Classes, the droughts of prosperity and the harvesting of fruitless fields.
Numerous leaders and community organizers have been talking about public service lately, especially in the US - mostly encouraging the public to take place in ongoing dialogues and to volunteer in their communities in order to create positive change at local and national levels.
Extending the principles of open innovation to the public sector is a particularly important transition. Public bodies are significant spenders on products and services and yet are often distant from the most dynamic processes in our economy. Dennis Hilgers and Frank Piller look at the wider benefits of an open public service in an extended web article downloadable on Innovation Management. The authors raise some of the most important issues below.
We are all very familiar with traditional examples of collaboration and co-creation that produce commercial benefits for companies – Nike, P&G, Electrolux, Unilever, Frito-Lay, etc. But what about social benefits; can emerging platforms of collaboration and co-creation also produce social benefits? Can they channel the energy of everyday citizens into constructive activities that usher change in a more peaceful and civil manner than what we are witnessing across Egypt today? In my opinion, the answer is a definite yes.
Public sector innovation is a necessity, if we are to reduce public spending and address changing demographics. The public sector is lagging behind the private sector in transforming ideas into innovation, which made me question whether we are pursuing the wrong approach. This is not to say that I am questioning the abilities of people working in the public sector, but merely provoking a dialogue with the reader. You are all invited to join in!
Since 2009 we have been suffering a serious global economic crisis and the situations in most small countries, including Denmark, has been very difficult due to growing unemployment and unsustainable public finance deficits. This crisis has occurred at a time of structural problems related to an ageing population. InnovationManagement interviewed Bengt-Åke Lundvall, Professor in the Department of Business Studies at Aalborg University, on the role of innovation and innovation policy in this context.
Creating new solutions with people, not for them, can help drive radical innovation in the public sector. By focusing on citizens’ own experiences and resources, co-creation can help identify truly valuable services. Public managers should embrace co-creation to deliver better services and outcomes at less cost.
The Dutch Innovation Platform, a think-tank established by the Dutch Government, recently released a report Nederland 2020, Back in the top 5 outlining the steps the Netherlands needs to take to regain its former position in the top 5 of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). In this article Rob Blaaboer, contributing editor from the Netherlands, suggests a way to reach the New Dutch economy, i.e. innovative, international and involving, and how to get back in the top 5.
President Obama ‘crowdsourced’ a part of his political agenda with his change.gov initiative, which embraced the conversation and allowed users to identify topics that were important to them and vote on their relative importance. The addition of social media tools and philosophy to the mix resulted in a perfectly ordered list of the political issues that mattered most to US citizens.
Most Western European countries are struggling with fundamental, long term issues, e.g. an ageing workforce; downward pressure on public sector budgets and increasing demands from citizens, to which Danish learning could be applied.
