- Discuss the various ways in which innovation landscape can be viewed in the public sector. Be sure to discuss the three dimensions summarized in Table 2.2 on page 47 in Bason (2010).
Also discuss how modern work organization can be a powerful enabler of innovation through people and culture based capacity building, risk and diversity management, skills, and incentives.
Three dimensions of the innovation landscape are what triggers innovation, how new is it and in what way, and what is the value. Each of these dimensions has its own components. First, the triggers for innovation are research, technology, efficiency demands, employees, and citizens. Second, the innovation may be incremental or radical, and concern a product, a process, a paradigm, and a position. Lastly, the value of the innovation may be in its productivity, service, results, and democracy. Despite this classification, the real world does not meet any classification. Most often, innovations are caused by several factors at once. For example, citizens and ongoing research. The innovation can also change not only the product or service, but also an organization of delivery, structure of organization and more.
While the majority of civil administrators are not innovators, they may be driven by active citizens. Therefore, the culture of active participation in civil administration may largely impact the quantity and quality of innovations. Modern education can be a powerful driver of innovation if taught for bachelor’s and master’s programs. Public leaders also need to attract attention to innovations in the public sector. An important factor here is the ability and willingness of employees to drive the innovation further. Employee-driven innovations are daily innovations that improve the organization and outcomes of work. Employee-driven innovation can be enhanced by a powerful supportive management. Also, employee-driven innovation is possible when employees are well-prepared, have valuable knowledge and skills, and are open for cooperation. However, every innovation includes risk. It is a risk of failure and misunderstanding, and this risk is a barrier to innovation. The thing is that failure is considered bad in our culture, and everyone tries to avoid it. Eventually, this leads to the unwillingness to innovate to avoid failing. At this point, a diversity of cultural origins of management and employees may be very useful.
Risk management fosters the need to experiment, which eventually steers us to our final destination through the obstacles which might be avoided. In understanding how to deal with, and overcome obstacles, it will be easier to make more approaches which help in achieving more, since without risking, no innovation can be made. Similarly, risking results in the development of risk aversion measures, which are responsible for encouraging the employees to spend most of their time exploring and prototyping new ideas, which may help in improving the general performance of a company, and the outlook of different tasks within the company. Finally, risk is consequently necessary in encouraging proper thinking, which is necessary for coming with new ideas which seek to improve the general performance of a company.
Incentive and risk management go hand in hand, in the sense that through risk experimentation, employees are encouraged to come up with new ideas of developing the performance of the company. In addition, motivating the employees through rewarding them for their performance boosts their working morale, making them willing to come up with new ideas of enabling the company to perform better. In rewarding the employees, the company is able to create a good relationship with them, hence allowing them to come up with new ideas.
The diversity is a clue to understanding any issue from various points of view and help to find non-obvious causes and results. It unlocks innovation through creating an environment whereby ideas from different perspectives are heard. If minorities become a part of a critical mass and leaders value differences, all the employees can find high-ranked people to go to bat for convincing ideas and can therefore persuade those in charge for budgets to organize resources to develop such ideas.
Working culture is significant, as it defines the approaches which employees take while doing their daily activities. Developing an innovation culture in the work place is better for the general performance of the company, as it helps in allowing the office to move forward, and to also change the employees’ mentality, hence making them to come up with new ideas, which might be responsible for steering the company to reach its goals.
Reference
Bason, C. (2017). Leading Public Sector Innovation: co-creating for a better society. Bristol:
Policy Press.
