In 2014, I was asked to form one of the first innovation labs in the UK, the Northern Ireland Public Sector Innovation Lab. Operating at devolved government level, the aim was to create a safe space for experimentation, creativity and the application of new methodologies aimed at addressing some of the complex, seemingly intractable challenges facing public servants.
We developed expertise in design thinking, behavioural science, policy analysis and systems modelling, bringing fresh thinking into the public sector. The positive impact of these methods cannot be over-emphasised – worldwide there is an abundance of case studies evidencing their value. I left public service convinced beyond doubt of the enormous potential these methodologies have for driving greater public value.
My time at the lab taught me a lot about the challenges of the prevailing ecosystem in which I was attempting to spur innovation and new ways of working. Here’s what I learned.
The system needs innovation, but it’s hard
Innovation has a role to play in every sector. But nowhere is it needed more than in the public sector. And nowhere is it harder to do. The sheer complexity of public services; the range of competing stakeholder interests; the endless pressures and changes in the system; the constraints of limited and diminishing public finances; and the unrelenting rise in public expectation and demand – these all make for an intensely challenging environment. Time, space and opportunity to meaningfully innovate is extremely scarce. Unless and until that space is created and protected, innovation will always get squeezed.
The status quo needs disrupting
Public sector leaders can be deeply risk averse. Often the only innovations that take place are tinkering at the edges driven by crises or complaints. Innovation demands creative and talented people who are disrupters (right-hemisphere thinkers), unafraid to take measured risks and challenge the status quo. But the system tends to draw, retain and reward individuals who follow the rules and protect the status quo (left-hemisphere thinkers). The system needs to recognise and support public entrepreneurs.
The system works against innovation
Another limiting factor is the system immune response to innovation – see Rowan Conway and co’s From design thinking to systems change, which describes the immune response of hierarchical, bureaucratic systems, which works insidiously against innovation. These processes are there to ensure the integrity of services and protect public funds, but they operate as a blunt instrument and innovation can be seen as a variance to the norm. To counteract this, innovation needs to be formally recognised in strategic and business plans, job roles and descriptions and personal objectives so it is understood as an essential part of business.
Innovation labs and service-design teams can add great value, but cannot effect the system-level change needed to reshape how we develop, design/redesign and implement policies, services and processes. Affirmative and deliberate steps are essential to embed these new methodologies.
Will mission-oriented innovation be any different?
I certainly hope so, but there remains the very real risk that the prevailing culture and the system immune response will rob mission-oriented innovation of its potential by dragging the new methodology into the exhausting paraphernalia of bureaucracy so that vast amounts of capacity are diverted to feeding the machine, and much less on the actual missions. One way to avoid this is to a create mission-oriented skunk works, providing space with a high degree of autonomy, unhampered by bureaucracy, in which the missions are the sole focus.
Malcolm Beattie is the former head of the Northern Ireland Public Sector Innovation Lab