Innovation in the public sector

How innovative are our local councils?

Text books tend to look to  the private sector for examples of innovation.  The public sector usually only gets mentioned when its large-scale technology-based projects misfire. Recent examples include the NHS patient records system and the national identity card scheme.

In reality, there is quite a lot of council innovation taking place.  The Beacon scheme, for example, is an award scheme that celebrates innovative practice by councils.  This particular scheme highlights key differences between public and private sector innovation.  Firstly, in the public sector, innovators are encouraged to share their knowledge with others.  Councils awarded beacon status are expected to devote time to diffuse their innovation throughout the sector. A second distinguishing feature of public sector practice is the complex mixture of process and product innovation present in service improvement.

To take one example.  Staffordshire Moorlands established a project to improvel access to its services in rural areas.  This innovation comprised of some new products (eg information kiosks, e-bus) and some new processes (eg a joint visiting service along with the Pensions Agency and the County Council Social Servces Department).

Most local authority innovation is what Christensen  calls 'sustaining technology'. These innovations "improve the performance of established products, along dimensions of performance the mainstream customers in major markets have historically valued." (Christensen, 1997, pp. XV).  In a future blog we shall consider an example of council innovation which might be considered to be a 'disruptive' technology.

Notes 

The image at the top of this blog represents Warhol's Light Bulbs - source http://www.flickr.com/photos/zetson/3036254720/ 

If music be the food of love, play on!

Forty years ago this week, on 31st Jan 1969, the Beatles gave their final live performance on the roof of the Apple building at 3 Savile Row, London (1). For those walking by in the streets below, taking a break from the office, on a shopping trip, or sightseeing, this must have been the ultimate free music download.

Musicians, like many others involved in the creative industries, often feel that they are driven by artistic desire, playing for love, rather than being motivated to be enterprising. It was interesting then to read an article in last Friday’s Times (2) which illustrates the innovative way in which some musicians are tackling the commercialization of their music product.

To finance their music, a new band would have traditionally approached the AR departments of the large music companies. But nowadays, faced by falling record sales and the credit crunch, music labels are not signing the number of acts that they once did.  Sellaband is a Web 2.0 website which introduces a new business model for commercializing music. Bands post their music on the site and fans are given the option to invest in them. When sufficient investors have come forward to support the music of a particular artist, the company behind the site will produce and promote the record. The band and the investing public also receive a share in any profits generated. However, not everyone is convinced that this new business model will succeed.

In a second example mentioned in the Times' article, duo Honey Ryder recognized that aspiring musicians need more than just good music, they also need a business plan. Honey Ryder took theirs to the annual music industry conference in Cannes last week looking for 100 investors to buy shares in their business.

So was Shakespeare correct when he wrote “If music be the food of love, play on” ? (3)  May be, but as the examples above illustrate, today's musicians also need to use their creative skills to explore new ways of financing their artistic endeavors.

Footnotes:

(1) It was at this performance, after playing the song Get Back, that John Lennon famously uttered the comment: "I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition!"

(2) Sherwin A (2009) Forget autographs, what about shares in a favourite pop star? The Times, 23rd January 2009

(3) Twelfth Night

The first internet wedding

It's Valentine's Day this week so we need a story that links love and innovation.

How about the first internet wedding? It happened in 1848. At that time, the world was getting used to a disruptive innovation. This was the telegraph. The continents were becoming joined together for the first time by cables laid under the oceans to form a networked society. Before the telegraph, information travelled over land at the speed of a horse, perhaps 40 miles a day. So news from London would probably take four days to reach Leeds. The telegraph enabled information to be transmitted from one place to another in a matter of minutes. The network gradually extended across Europe, over to North America, on to India, Australia and beyond. The world must have felt like a global village, with information travelling so quickly from any place on the network to any other place, however near or far. The diffusion of this innovation is described more fully in The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage (384.109 STA in the library).

In this book, Standage tells the story of a wedding that was conducted using this Victorian internet. The bride was the daughter of a Boston businessman who had fallen in love with one of the clerks at her father's business. Her father was unhappy with their relationship and wanted her to marry someone more 'appropriate'. To prevent the marriage, he sent the clerk to England on business. Of course, at this time transatlantic travel was undertaken by ship. Its first port of call was New York.

The enterprising young woman sent a message to her intended, asking him to go to the New York telegraph office, accompanied by a magistrate, at an agreed time. She was in the Boston telegraph office at that same time. The magistrate then conducted the marriage ceremony over the wires, with the bride and groom being assisted by the telegraph operators who translated their vows into Morse code.

It is hard to believe, but the marriage was deemed to be legal.

We sometimes state that innovation is socially shaped. The artefact alone is not the innovation. Here is an example of an artefact (the telegraph) that was devised for one social purpose being adapted to be used for a completely different purpose.

Some of our students are exhibiting a similar degree of creativity in their studies on the Innovation & Enterprsie module. These students are taking the product being developed in their project module and showing how they now might use it as the artefactual basis of an entirely different innovation.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A beacon to us all - is innovation always good for us?

Today Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, apologised for the mistakes the company had made during the build and implementation of its social advertising system called Beacon.

He explained that the company had set out to build something that was easy to use : "our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends."

In his blog, Zuckerman stressed that Beacon is a product which helps Facebook users to share additional information with others. It is interesting that he omits to mention its intended use for raising adverting revenue!

How does Beacon work? It tracks Facebook users' purchases online at sites registered with the system and then advertises these purchases to members of their social network. Follow this link to read how one Facebook user found out about purchases made by her husband from her PC.

Most commentators have picked up on the privacy issue related to this story. Our interest, in this blog, is to note its lessons for students of innovation.

These include:

1. Organisations should make sure that their investment appraisal evalaution techniques extend beyond a consideration of technical issues and a cost benefit analysis. This company might have incuded some appraisal of the likely impact on its users and the consequent reputational damage it might suffer.

2. Innovation does not always benefit all stakeholders or wider society. It might affect people in society who are not even directly users of the innovative product or service.

This leaves us considering the question: "At what point does an innovation, that turns into a disaster from the shareholder perspective, become known as a bad idea rather than an innovation at all?

photo: courtesey of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Do we need another blogger?

According to a recent report on the BBC website, a new blog is created every second.

So why do we need another?

Perhaps we are already inundated with general blogs. But this one has been set up a specific purpose. It is primarily aimed at students studying on undergraduate and postgraduate innovation and enterprise courses. Over the coming months, this blog will give us the space to reflect more fully on aspects of innovation that have been introduced during the innovation course. We also plan to discuss some topical stories, drawing upon theoretical concepts introduced on the course to aid our understanding of the issues.

So, there we are. Another blog has been created. I hope you find something of interest in some of our postings.