The institutionalization of public sector innovation

Policy labs as arenas for boundary spanning: inside the digital transformation in Germany

“…Digitalization labs may indeed bring forward if not demand the inclusion of external expertise from tech companies or consultancies engaged in digitalization and organizational development. These external actors also raise issues of accountability (see below), which is also raised by management scholars studying policy labs (McGann, Wells, and Blomkamp 2019;Hjelmar 2021). The public administration study of policy design may find inspiration for a stronger recognition of temporary organizational arrangements that are formally tasked with a limited mandate, which yet contribute to the legitimacy of governmental action more broadly.…”

“…Digitalization labs are very similar to policy (innovation) labs, which proliferated across many countries over the last decade (Williamson 2015a(Williamson , 2015bTõnurist, Kattel, and Lember 2017;McGann, Wells, and Blomkamp 2019;Hjelmar 2021). These labs are regarded as suitable vehicles to support policy design and service delivery, partly because they explicitly neglect existing formal authorities in bureaucratic decision making (McGann, Blomkamp, and Lewis 2018;McGann, Wells, and Blomkamp 2019;Peters 2020).…”

Regional ‘innovation systems’ vis-à-vis ‘innovation support systems’ – Is clarification needed?

“…From the year 2000, when it is used almost 700 times, the yearly occurrence in the literature increases continually, with the exception of 2012 and 2014, to more than 8000 times in publications since 2018. At this point in time, the term ‘innovation system’ is used also to include the need of public organizations to innovate their activities and services (Bason, 2018; De Vries et al, 2016; Hjelmar, 2019), as well as phenomena framed as ‘social innovation’ (Herrero de Egaña Muñoz-Cobo, 2018; Pue et al, 2016; Raupeliene et al, 2015).…”

A Comparative Analysis of Municipal Public Innovation: Evidence from Romania and United States

“…While this view rather favors two types of innovation, namely process innovation and product/service innovation, the recent literature further proposes categories like governance innovation and conceptual innovation [33]. In all cases, dealing with the disruptive nature of innovation, as opposed to the also needed continuous change [15], seems to be more challenging in the public domain, perceived, at least conventionally, as having a risk-averse culture [34,35]: "innovation does not thrive in a risk-averse culture in which error is frowned upon and even penalized" [36].…”

“…A subtler caveat from experts signals the specificity of public sector innovation in terms of comprehension area: not only the black and white view of unique new ideas, but also new contexts of application for existing ideas [37]. The novelty of the institutional public contexts also brings forward positive aspects for supporting innovation: government intervention and structured innovation programs, as opposed to unpredictable innovation or innovation by chance, common in private environments [36]. This view also accommodates the importance of rules and procedures, and thus of a certain level of bureaucracy that does not inhibit creativity and flexibility, coined under the term "green tape" [38].…”