Public sector innovation does not happen by itself: problems need to be identified and ideas translated into projects which can be piloted on a small scale and then implemented and diffused. This requires public sector organisations to identify the processes and structures which can support and accelerate the innovation activity at each stage of its lifecycle. While there is a growing body of evidence on innovative practices in the public sector, there is still limited knowledge of what policy tools governments can use to overcome innovation barriers and strengthen organisations’ capacity to innovate (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1. Barriers to innovation across its lifecycle and related policy tools Source: …show more content…
Supporting the creation of ideas often involves providing the right level of incentives and rewards, creating opportunities to share experiences, and ensuring public servants’ mobility to support a broad understanding of issues and the tools to respond to them. For many public sector leaders, the rewards on offer from successful innovation are low, even if the innovation could create huge gains for the public sector and citizens as a whole, while the impact of failure can be significantly higher. This can be a major burden to innovation, given the central importance of senior-level champions for many innovation …show more content…
Budgeting can stimulate innovation through financial incentives, promoting greater flexibility, aligning budgeting and investment frameworks to scale up innovation and diffuse its benefits through the system, and promoting methodologies to ensure return on investment.. Innovation is also likely to emerge from interactions between different bodies, so appropriate frameworks are needed to allow these interactions to happen. Government organisations need opportunities to think about how their interventions interact with those of other bodies, and how they can collaborate more effectively to solve common