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I’ll summarize a two-hundred page
book in a few sentences: First, I find much
more interorganizational collaboration in
recent innovations. There is now much
more external evaluation of projects. Not
least, there is more media interest about
public sector innovation than was the
case two decades ago. But I also found
considerable continuity in the process of
innovation: who conceives innovations,
the circumstances of their conception,
and how they are implemented, includ-
ing how innovators overcome resistance
to change.
My methodology is primarily statisti-
cal, analyzing the 127 semifinalists in the
2010 HKS Awards to 217 semifinalists be-
tween 1990 and 1994. These samples are
large enough to use regression analysis
to determine similarities and differences
between the two groups and also to test
hypotheses.
Here are four key recommendations
based on this evidence and analysis:
Prepare to Collaborate
A full 80 percent of the 2010 HKS Awards
applicants involved interorganizational
collaboration, either within the public
sector or between the public sector and
civil society. In addition, the typical inno-
vation had two funding sources. A public
servant trying to develop an innovative
solution to an important policy problem
should look for collaboration from public
sector agencies having jurisdiction over
other pieces of the problem and civil so-
ciety groups having an interest in the out-
come. Look for several funding sources,
develop an organizational structure to
P
ublic sector innovation, once
dismissed as a contradiction in
terms, is now increasingly seen
as an imperative. Last Novem-
ber, the Organisation for Economic Co-op-
eration and Development (OECD) hosted
an international conference on “Innovat-
ing the Public Sector” and announced that
it has been building a database on public
sector innovation. Many federal govern-
ment departments are setting-up innova-
tion labs, and the Privy Council Office has
established an Innovation Hub to support
the labs.
I’ve been writing about innovation for
many years now. In my most recent book,
The Persistence of Innovation in Govern-
ment
(2014) and report,
The Persistence
of Innovation in Government: A Guide for
Innovative Public Servants
(2014), I com-
pared the applications to the Harvard
Kennedy School’s prestigious Innovations
in American Government Awards (HKS
Awards) in the early 1990s and in 2010 to
show how public sector innovation has
both changed and stayed constant over
the last twenty years. I chose to work with
the HKS Awards because its applicant
questionnaire is unparalleled in its com-
prehensiveness and has not changed over
twenty years.
guide the partnership, and seek out senior
leaders committed to working on the prob-
lem and neutral third parties who can me-
diate conflict among partners.
An example of interorganizational col-
laboration is the Northeast Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon emis-
sion reduction program for two hundred
power plants in ten northeastern states
that was the first mandatory cap-and-trade
system in the United States. By 2010, the
program had raised over $700 million in
auction fees, much of which has been rein-
vested in increasing the energy efficiency
of the plants. Global warming is politically
contested, but controversy did not stop
this innovation. Because the George W.
Bush Administration was not taking ac-
tion, Governor George Pataki of New York,
himself a Republican, took the lead in con-
vening his fellow governors. Massachu-
setts participated in the planning phase,
but then-Governor Mitt Romney refused
to sign the agreement, apparently because
it would have conflicted with the “severely
conservative” image he sought to establish
to win the 2012 Republican nomination.
Anticipate obstacles
My research showed a consistent set of
obstacles to public sector innovation over
20 years. More were internal (logistical
issues, shortage of resources, getting dif-
ferent occupations to work together) than
external (public skepticism, political op-
position). The research also showed a set
of responses that had proven to be effec-
tive at overcoming these obstacles. Most
frequently, the best responses involved
persuasion (demonstration projects, social
8
/ Canadian Government Executive
// September 2015
Innovation
Evidence-Based
Advice to Innovative
Public Servants
Sandford
Borins