From Discovery to Delivery: an innovation strategy for the Bailiwick
Some quotations to use
“A vision without action remains a dream, Action without vision leads to chaos, But vision
with action, can change the world”
Nelson Mandela
“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and
happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.”
Thomas Jefferson
Document Control
Version
V1
V2
V3
Date
15/12/15
5/1/16
6/1/16
Author
J Buckland
J Buckland
J Buckland
V4
30/1/16
J Buckland
Changes
First draft
Internal and external Feedback from V2
Internal and external feedback objectives
addressed.
Further comments from FE and D Haughey
(To do – reference external sources / Comms to format etc)
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Contents Page
Executive Summary (Foreword?)
Introduction
Why is innovation critical to the Public Sector?
What do we mean by innovation?
A Framework for Increasing Public Service Innovation
Embedding the Double Diamond
Increasing Innovation Activity
Measuring Impact on Performance
Wider Organisational Sources of Innovation
Our Approach to Innovation
Resourcing our Innovation Strategy
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Executive Summary (Foreword?)
From Discovery to Delivery is designed to enable continuing longer term transformation in
the provision of our public services, The Public Sector has to become more innovative if it is
to tackle today's complex problems and meet society's expectations in an uncertain and
changing world.
Internal and external stakeholders need to be aligned through an influence agenda and change
management. The objective of this strategy is to embed a culture of innovation across the Public
Sector and develop the skills and competencies of our staff to increase innovation activity using
an innovation tool kit. We propose working with a strategic partner to accomplish this. Our
community of innovation experts will be deployed as part of multi-disciplinary teams to
support projects within our operational transformational programme.
Our Innovation Framework for developing a culture of innovation and creative thinking
within the Public Sector was evolved by Nesta to provide wider organisational conditions for
innovation. Originally formed in the UK as the National Endowment for Science, Technology
and the Arts, Nesta is an innovation charity with a mission to help people and organisations
bring great ideas to life.
The Civil Service will, where appropriate, adopt the 'Double Diamond' process developed by
the UK Design Council to map the divergent and convergent stages of a design process. We
will ensure that the Senior Leadership and Management team is familiar with the Double
Diamond design process and cascade the model across the public service making use of trained
lead specialists.
As part of the innovation activity we will work collaboratively with our stakeholders and share
our initiatives and successes both internally and externally. We will monitor the impact of our
activities and use benchmarks to ensure that benefits are realised. We will embrace the wider
organisational sources of innovation by mobilising the best available knowledge and insights
to guide decisions – we will not simply rely on advisers and Civil Servants.
The use of social finance to help transform public services will be investigated. We will
strengthen the social compact with the third sector and work in partnership with our
community to deliver services.
Our operational approach to innovation will be based on Nesta's Innovation Spiral which
comprises seven stages taking ideas from inception to impact through systemic change.
In order to resource our innovation strategy we will invest in our staff to develop our in-house
innovation capabilities and this will be reflected in our People Plan so that the strategy is
sustainable.
Staff will be given the space, to become more innovative within our organisation. We will
invest wisely to support innovation in our transformational organisational programmes.
Our objective is to embed a culture of innovation and continuous improvement and for our
senior leaders and managers to demonstrate the following key behaviours:
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Be inspirational about our work and the future by showing our pride in and passion for
public service, communicating purpose and direction with clarity and enthusiasm, valuing and
modelling professional excellence and expertise and reward innovation and initiative, ensuring
we learn from what has not worked as well as what has.
Be confident in our engagement with each other and the public by being straightforward,
truthful and candid in our communications, surfacing tensions and resolving ambiguities,
provide clear, honest feedback, supporting our teams to succeed and be team players, and will
not tolerate uncollaborative behaviour which protects silos and departmentalism of the past.
Empower our teams to deliver by giving our teams the space and authority to deliver their
clearly set objectives, by being visible, approachable, and welcome challenge, however
uncomfortable, championing both difference and external experience, recognising the value
they bring and most importantly invest in the capabilities of our people, to be effective now
and in the future
We will only be successful if our behaviours and actions and align with these words and our
innovation strategy is fully implemented and aligned with the Customer Focus, Value for Money,
Performance Management and People Plans.
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Introduction
A major achievement during the 2012-16 political term of the States of Guernsey has been
the successful execution of the Financial Transformation Programme (FTP). The
programme was intended originally to be a “States Transformation Programme” but the focus
was narrowed to financial transformation. The programme was aimed at making the States of
Guernsey more efficient and helping us to provide value for money to the residents of the
Bailliwick.
Starting in 2009, the FTP helped to close the deficit position by improving efficiency within
the States. We aimed to achieve a vision of “An environment where islanders can be
confident that the right public services are efficiently and effectively delivered and
represent value for money.”
Whilst the FTP has enabled government to be much more focused than before on the
importance of budgeting and striving to live within a given allocation, with a few exceptions,
there has been no substantial transformation in the delivery of services. This is what the Public
Service Reform now needs to focus on. It needs to ask: what services does government need to
supply? Then to challenge whether delivery can or should be provided in a different way,
possibly involving wider organisational change. That might, for example, involve government
commissioning and paying the third sector to provide support services.
From Discovery to Delivering will assist with the successful transformation in the delivery of
public services for the Bailiwick's Public Sector. This strategy will need to be followed by
specific action plans and initiatives to achieve innovation efficiently across the Public Sector,
while countering the drawbacks of any 'silo effects'iexhibited in future amongst the
Committees.
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Why is innovation critical to the Public Sector?
In order to respond effectively to the projected change in demographics and demands for
services, governments and other public service organisations need to consider innovating the
processes and practices of public policy itself. There is a consistent and urgent need for
actively bringing creative processes into policy making and focusing more on creating
valuable outcomes for our community. Innovation introduces a different way of knowing,
exploring and planning into governance and the Public Service must be ready to support the
Islands’ Government to do this. Public sector innovation needs to be able to morph relatively
seamlessly through short-, medium- and long-term perspectives.
In the private sector the “innovate or fail” reality is well understood. Many of the world’s most
successful and venerated companies are also amongst the most innovative. Whilst innovation
already takes place within our Public Sector, it is often triggered by something that suddenly
becomes possible, or necessary. It can be triggered by a crisis – cost pressures or political
demands. It can be driven by existing technology that has expired or new technologies that
need to be trialled and innovation can exploit opportunities that are identified. The Public
Sector can be guilty of being reactive rather than proactive and waiting for outside pressures to
trigger innovation. We need to create a more proactive and systemic approach to
innovation to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to better meet the needs of the
public we serve.
This does not mean we believe all new services, processes or systems have to be entirely novel
to be innovative: innovation can just as easily, and in all likelihood more frequently, result in
substantial improvements to existing functions or ways of delivering services that significantly
improve the quality of outcomes or the efficiency with which they are delivered. However, this
does not mean that we have always to look internally for the development of novel services or
processes in order to be innovative; where suitable we will also adopt and implement
innovations created outside the organisation.
The Public Sector has to become more innovative if it is to tackle today's complex
problems and meet society's changing expectations. But becoming truly innovative
requires deep and broad changes to organisational culture and operations. We will draw
on best practice and lessons learnt elsewhere to create a government where innovation is
encouraged and nurturedii. Implementation of innovation within the Public Sector requires
the alignment of internal and external stakeholders through an influence agendaiii and change
management.
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What do we mean by innovation?
We believe innovation in the public sector is about the creation and implementation of new
policies, processes, products, services, methods of delivery and use of assets and resources
which result in significant improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness or quality of
outcomes.
Public sector innovation involves creating, developing and implementing practical ideas that
achieve a public benefit. These ideas have to improve current services; they have to be taken
up and used (rather than simply generated ideas); and they have to be useful. By this definition
innovation overlaps with, but is different from, creativity and entrepreneurship. In short we
define innovation for our purposes as:
“The systematic search for and implementation of ideas that lead to better outcomes.”
The key elements of what we want to achieve are:
Systematic search – a focused approach to understanding what opportunities and challenges
which can inform the idea generation stage;
Implementation – the ideas, have to be implemented otherwise they remain simply dreams
and aspirations; and
Better outcomes – for our community whom we serve with the purpose of improving their
well-being.
There are many types of innovation activity which can enhance our community’s well-being
through delivering better outcomes such as:
Service innovation (the introduction of a new service or an improvement to the quality
of an existing service);
Service delivery innovation (new or altered ways of supplying public services);
Administrative and organisational innovation (changes in organisational structures and
routines);
Conceptual innovation (the development of new views and challenge existing
assumptions);
Policy innovation (changes to thinking or behavioural intentions); and
Systemic innovation (new or improved ways of interacting with other organisations and
sources of knowledge).
The objective of this strategy is to embed a culture of innovation across the public service
and develop the skills and competencies of our staff to increase innovation activity which
lead to better outcomes. To do this we need to ensure that the systematic search for and
implementation of new ideas that lead to better outcomes becomes “business as usual” within
the public sector.
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A Framework for Increasing Public Service Innovation
Our Framework, which is based on work by NESTA, for developing a culture of innovation
and creative thinking within the public sector is based on four core components and is
illustrated below:
Increasing Innovation Capability
We need to establish an organisational environment that values innovation, actively encourages
it and views it as a normal and required part of the continuous improvement of public services.
If the Public Sector is to become an organisation with innovative culture then the senior
leadership and management has to be fully supportive of this innovation strategy in both words
and behaviour.
At the same time our senior leadership and management has to recognise the importance of
innovation and release staff to develop their capabilities by attending innovation training
courses and spend time on innovation activity within their day to day activities.
The Civil Service senior and middle management must demonstrate eight critical
competencies to foster innovation across the service:
Provide adequate and appropriate resources: we must provide materials, tools, and
time adequate for our staff to solve problems or generate new service methods or internal
processes.
Provide a diverse and changing physical and social work environment: we must
create a diverse and interesting physical and social work environment and adapt and
improve practices to stay current.
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Challenge staff: we must give our staff difficult problems to solve and ambitious goals to
reach, whilst also supporting them and giving them the training and skills to handle these
challenges.
Encourage broadening of experience: we must provide our people with training in topic
areas well outside their current areas of expertise.
Encourage idea capturing: we must encourage our staff to preserve their new ideas and
provides tools that make it easy for them to capture learning and ideas.
Manage teams appropriately: we must create diverse teams with changing
memberships and uses shifting, brainstorming, and other techniques to maximize creative
output.
Model the core competencies of creative expression: We must show others that we, as
leaders and managers, practice one or more of the core competencies of creative
expression.
Provide positive feedback and recognition: we must reward our people for contributing
new and valuable ideas.
Our objective is to embed a culture of innovation and continuous improvement and for our
senior leaders and managers to demonstrate the following key behaviours:
Be inspirational about our work and the future by showing our pride in and passion for
public service, communicating purpose and direction with clarity and enthusiasm, valuing and
modelling professional excellence and expertise and reward innovation and initiative, ensuring
we learn from what has not worked as well as what has.
Be confident in our engagement with each other and the public by being straightforward,
truthful and candid in our communications, surfacing tensions and resolving ambiguities,
provide clear, honest feedback, supporting our teams to succeed and be team players, and will
not tolerate uncollaborative behaviour which protects silos and departmentalism of the past.
Empower our teams to deliver by giving our teams the space and authority to deliver their
clearly set objectives, by being visible, approachable, and welcome challenge, however
uncomfortable, championing both difference and external experience, recognising the value
they bring and most importantly invest in the capabilities of our people, to be effective now
and in the future
We will only be successful if our behaviours and actions and align with these words.
Leadership is a key driver of innovation and must help to take staff on a journey to understand
the need for and the benefits thereof. We must also be prepared to take risks by allowing
colleagues to experiment and supporting collaboration between people with different skills and
from different backgrounds. We must also recognise that innovation is not simply the
preserve of senior management and that we should recognise that there will be thought
leaders / innovation leaders at all levels in the organisation.
We know that we will fail with some initiatives as if we do not we are not truly innovating.
The secret to our success in the future is that, if and when we fail, we must “fail fast” and “fail
frugally” by getting to those failures early in the lifecycle of an idea and by prototyping
wherever possible. We also have to “fail forwards” and develop momentum and learn from our
experiences.
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We must also embrace digital technology and harness its potential to deliver better outcomes.
We will need to encourage a digitally disruptive approach to rethinking the delivery of public
services and internal processes. The Smart Guernsey initiative is another key enabler
within the Service Guernsey public sector reform programme which we will ensure works
in partnership with our innovation strategy. We must also make full use of the Digital
Greenhouse.
There are strong interdependencies between the innovation strategy and the People Plan
within Service Guernsey as we have to develop our staff so that they are able to develop
their skills using the innovation toolbox.
With the reform of the machinery of government, following the approval of the States Review
Committee’s third Policy Letter, we will develop centres of innovation excellence within
each of the new Principal Committees and the Policy and Resources Committee. These
will comprise innovation experts whom we will train using both internal and external resources
to enhance our knowledge through the creation of an innovation team working as a community
across the public service. We will develop a strategic partnership with a leading specialist
innovation consultancy to support our capacity building.
Our innovation experts will develop their knowledge and skills (through an internal innovation
wiki, coaching and training) so that we create an innovation culture across the public service.
Staff across the service will work in a matrix structure and assist the development and
implementation of the operational transformational programmes within the Public Service
Reform agenda. Staff will acquire expertise in a range of areas suited to their areas of interest
and aptitude so that we are able to develop a broad base of expertise across the service thereby
ensuring resilience.
We will provide training for our staff to develop our in-house capabilities and
competencies to use our innovation tool kit.
We will work with a strategic partner to develop our innovation capabilities.
We will deploy our innovation leaders as part of multi-disciplinary teams to support
projects within our operational transformational programmes.
One particular tool within our tool kit warrants specific reference within our Innovation
Strategy as it is so closely aligned with the Customer Focused element of the Service Guernsey
programme: the “Double Diamond” service design model and this is described below.
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Embedding the Double Diamond
We recognise that it is important to bring in the right inputs, from open data to citizen
experience not only to guide decision making but also to help shape innovation within the
government. The States needs to know what is happening and what to do, often in real time.
Too often we have lacked reliable intelligence. Too often inputs to government around the
world are dominated by media comment, public opinion and official statistics and lobbying by
well-connected powerful institutions. We will therefore, as part of our innovation strategy,
listen better and tease out “unarticulated needs” which are sometimes not revealed
through traditional consultations.
The Civil Service will as part of the Innovation Strategy adopt, where appropriate, the “Double
Diamond” design process developed by the UK Design Council. The Double Diamond
process maps the divergent and convergent stages of a design process and proceeds from
a general problem statement to a specific problem statement via an iterative process, as
shown below.
The Double Diamond comprises four iterative stages which will allow us to:
Discover
Open up and question what it is the improvement/innovation project that we should focus
on. This is the “Discover phase” for “Research” where we will explore and understand
service-users’ needs which is one of the four key themes within Service Guernsey and the
Public Reform Framework. The Discover phase is concerned with identifying initial
ideas or inspirations but with the primary objective of establishing User Needs and
understanding the User Experience (UX). This phase is divergent and exploratory – it’s a
search for new questions. Through observation and enquiry we reveal customer behaviour
and business drivers.
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This stage comprises, for example, selections from the following activities:
Market Research, User Research, Design Research, Technology Research,
Mind Mapping,
Interviews & Insights Gathering,
Ethnographic Studies,
Observation & Shadowing,
Empathic Modelling,
Evolving Symbiotic Envelopes,
Guided Evolution,
Trimming,
Information Management, and
Scenario Development, both top-down and bottom-up.
Define
The next stage requires us to focus on the important issues to tackle in a project, based on
what has been discovered. This is the “Define phase”, where we define problems and begin
to interpret them. From a place of some understanding, we begin to synthesise knowledge
into “Insights”.
The Definition phase involves the interpretation and alignment of findings to project
objectives and is likely to involve the following activities:
Information Analysis,
Synthesis & Identification,
Project Refinement,
Project Management and
Project Sign-off.
Develop
We will then open up again to explore different ways of tackling the problem by designing
things. This is the “Develop phase” using “Ideation” where we design and test potential
solutions. Having correctly defined the problem we wish to address, it’s time to explore
the best potential solutions. We know what to achieve, and by exploring and validating
options, we find the best ways to succeed. This is a divergent and iterative activity. Details
and requirements have not been defined – instead, the right solution is discovered. This
requires that the Design-Led concepts and proposals are prototyped and assessed. During
this stage there is further divergent thinking with:
Ideation,
Multi-Disciplinary Working,
Visual Management & Progress,
Testing & Prototyping and
Review and Improvement.
Deliver
Finally, we focus again on producing practical, working solutions and implementing them.
This is the “Deliver phase”, where we concentrate on the final specification and production
of the service in the form of “Prototypes”. This will comprise specific stages for:
Final Testing & Approval,
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Production,
Launch of Outcome(s),
Evaluation and
Further Feedback. This is critically important and reinforces our desire to build in
feedback loops and monitor the performance of the systems and policies that we have
introduced and to accept a state of “perpetual beta” in what we do.
Understanding the phases of the Double Diamond and how they interrelate is important.
Without correctly defining the problem any initiative is seeking to address and
understanding what our customers, both internal and external, require, we will do one of
two things, we will design services or solutions that either meet no one’s needs or simply
are designed for ourselves.
To assist with implementation of the Innovation Strategy we will:
Ensure the Senior Leadership and Management Team is familiar with the Double
Diamond Design Process and cascade the model through the six principal committees
and the Policy and Resources Committee;
Develop Double Diamond specialists in each of the six Principal Committees and the
Policy and Resources Committee through the innovation training programme; and
Provide an introduction to the Double Diamond Design Process to all States Members.
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Increasing Innovation Activity
By developing our innovation capability within our organisation we will be able to increase the
quantity and more importantly the quality of our innovation activity. We believe that
innovation activity can be considered as pipelines of new ideas flowing through the
organisation as they are accessed and identified, selected and developed, implemented and
diffused.
Our innovation toolkit will enable us to identify a sufficient number of different types of new
ideas. Techniques such as Design Thinking and the use of crowdsourcing platforms will
help us to access ideas from front line staff and the public. We will need to become
collaborators with providers and suppliers as well as adopting an external viewpoint to
challenge the way we operate and deliver services.
In selecting the best new ideas for development in order to allocate resources we must work as
part of multidisciplinary teams and also accept failure. This will require a growth mindset
mentality by our senior leadership and politicians which will see failure as a learning
experience from which insights can be derived. Through the use of prototyping we will test
our solutions and proposals wherever possible so that we fail frugally i.e. before we launch a
change in service delivery so that lessons are learnt as early as possible.
When we come to implementing ideas as fully operational solutions we need to ensure that
these are successfully embedded and scaled. Where appropriate we will need to commit to the
necessary training and investment to ensure that these are successful. In implementing our
ideas which lead to better outcomes we will have identified, through a Theory of Change for
example, the benefits of the changes and will monitor how these are realised over time. We
will also accept the concept of permanent impermanence in public service in that our services
and processes can be changed at any time if the environment and circumstances change.
The final element of our innovation activity within our strategy is that we must diffuse what
works by sharing and disseminating successful ideas within and outside the organisation. The
senior leadership team and the innovation team will work together to raise awareness of what
works and what is successful. Success will breed success and we will build on spreading the
awareness and development of the innovation capabilities across the service.
As part of the innovation activity element of our Innovation Strategy we will:
Work collaboratively with our stakeholders;
Share our initiatives and successes both internally and externally; and
Monitor the impact of our activities to ensure that the benefits are realised.
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Measuring Impact on Performance
Measuring innovation in the public sector is notoriously difficult. We are not going to simply
measure innovation activity by the number of new ideas generated or implemented on a
monthly basis and report progress. The focus of any measurement has to be on answering the
“so what?” question. We will therefore measure the impact of our innovation activity as
implied in the “better outcomes” part of our definition of innovation.
By embedding a culture of innovation across the public sector we would expect innovation
activity to be one of many contributors to the continuous improvement of the delivery of public
services in the Bailiwick. We will expect to see improvements in the organisation’s Key
Performance Indicators over time as our capabilities are developed and embedded across our
staff at all levels.
We will also monitor the outcomes of the projects within the four operational transformational
programmes to assess the effectiveness of the contribution both in terms of the benefit
realisation plans and specifically feedback from the Senior Responsible Officers for the
individual projects.
Of critical importance, which again ties in with the Customer Focus theme of Service
Guernsey, we will build customer experience feedback loops into all the operational
transformational programme projects so that we understand the impact of any changes and new
services that we deliver.
In order to measure the impact of our innovation activity on performance we will:
Monitor delivery of changes against the planned objectives of any change or delivery
of new service;
Establish customer experience feedback loops for any changes or the delivery of new
services;
Extend the use of benchmarks where appropriate to demonstrate the better outcomes
(greater use of benchmarks will help to develop insights and opportunities for
innovation); and
Incorporate direct feedback internally on the value and contribution of the innovation
team on projects and programmes.
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Wider Organisational Sources of Innovation
As the challenges government faces become more complex, financial resources become scarcer
and the community’s expectations rise, we will need to embrace ideas and inputs from outside
government to work in partnership with the civil service. We will therefore need to adopt new
tools such as crowdsourcing platforms and shared wikis.
We already have experience of using closed crowds and we have used these not to make
decisions, but using accountable judgement to draw on these inputs for decisions. Crowds are
not wise on their own and require organising and orchestration and through staged processes
can be useful to move towards open-policy making.
Shared wikis involve pooling non-classified intelligence combining qualitative and
quantitative assessments. These have the potential to become a standard tool for government
committees converting occasional surveys or reviews into real-time source of intelligence and
learning and providing the basis infrastructure of knowledge management which is still largely
missing in government.
These new tools will change the role of senior policy makers and instead of simply being
regarded as experts, charged with drafting policy papers and Policy Letters, they will
increasingly become centres of networks for innovation built around public policyiv.
Our leaders and managers must become good at mobilising inputs and intelligence instead of
relying on formal consultations, which is one of the least efficient models of intelligence
collection, and the use of off-island consultants, which is one of the most expensive models
and not always appropriate. We need to adopt a paradigm shift and embrace our
community within policy making.
One of the key means of increasing the availability of the fundamental underpinning
capabilities that can sustainably influence innovation activity is in relation to its funding.
Recognising the constraints of the States’ finances and its commitment to innovation, it is
appropriate to consider how various social finance models could assist with the implementation
of transformational programmes. Therefore we must give serious consideration to
investigating the potential use of social finance to help transform the delivery of these
services.
We will embrace the wider organisational sources of innovation by:
Mobilising the best available knowledge and insights to guide decisions – we will not
simply rely on advisers and civil servants;
Investigating the use of social finance to help transform public services; and
Strengthen the social compact with the third sector and work in partnership with
our community to deliver services.
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Our Approach to Innovation
Our approach to innovation is based on NESTA’s innovation spiral which comprises seven
stages that take ideas from discovery to delivery. The spiral illustrates that these stages are not
always sequential (some innovations jump straight into ‘practice’ or even ‘scaling’), and there
are feedback loops between them. They can also be thought of as overlapping spaces, with
distinct cultures and skills. Our virtual innovation team as a whole will need to have the
capabilities and competencies to be able to contribute at the various stages and we will not be
developing individual members of staff to be experts in all the tools and techniques, instead we
will deploy the team as and when necessary. The NESTA spiral provides a useful framework
for thinking about the different kinds of support that innovators and innovations need in order
to grow and aligns closely with the Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver elements of the
Double Diamond model.
1) Exploring Opportunities and Challenges. In this stage we include all the factors which
highlight the need for innovation and are based on developing insights and perspectives on
the current situation from the customers’ and citizens’ perspectives. This resonates with
the “what is” element of the Design Thinking approach. This stage involves diagnosing the
problem and framing the question in such a way that the root causes of the problem, not just its
symptoms, will be tackled. Framing the right question is halfway to finding the right solution.
This means going beyond symptoms to identifying the causes of a particular problem.
2) Generating Ideas. This is the stage of idea generation and contrary to popular belief is not
the first stage of innovation, but follows the correct problem definition. This can involve formal
methods – such as design or creativity methods to widen the menu of options available. Many
of the methods help to draw in insights and experiences from a wide range of sources. We will
seek to be more inclusive and work with our community to help generate ideas rather
than develop these behind closed doors.
3) Developing and Testing. This is where ideas get tested in practice. This can be done through
simply trying things out, or through more formal pilots, prototypes and randomised controlled
trials. The process of refining and testing ideas is particularly important in public services
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because it is through iteration, and trial and error, that coalitions gather strength (for example,
linking users to professionals) and conflicts are resolved. It’s also through these processes
that measures of success come to be agreed upon.
4) Making the Case. We will apply our business case model to demonstrate the justification
for any policy development and service design proposals. We recognise that organisations
need tools to model the return on investment (ROI) from innovation projects, but we
equally recognise that an accounting mindset may kill creativity. Difficulty in measuring
Return On Investment is the second biggest barrier to innovation within UK organisations and
the rigour around ROI has to be introduced at the appropriate stage and not prematurely. To
help develop the business cases we will incorporate a Theory of Change approach focusing
on what outcomes and benefits the innovation is intended to achieve. This will inform the
benefit register against which performance can be monitored. Feedback loops from end users
will also be identified in the business case.
5) Delivering and Implementing. This is when the idea becomes everyday practice. It
involves sharpening ideas (and often streamlining them), and the sustainability of the
innovation. This may require identifying budgets, teams and other resources such as legislation
are in place. A key part of this stage is the monitoring of the changes in order to ensure
that the benefits identified in making the case are realised.
6) Growing, Scaling and Diffusing. Growing and Scaling may not be pertinent in all cases
for our public services due to the scale of the public service in the Bailiwick. This stage will
consider the range of strategies for growing and spreading an innovation – from
organisational growth, through licensing and franchising to federations and looser
diffusion. Emulation and inspiration also play a critical role in spreading an idea or practice.
Demand matters as much as supply: how market demand, or demand from commissioners
and policymakers is mobilised to spread a successful new model. This process is often
referred to as ‘scaling’, and in some cases the word is appropriate, as the innovation is
generalised within an organisation or the organisation itself expands. But scaling is a
concept from the mass production age, and innovations take hold in the social economy in
many other ways, whether through inspiration and emulation, or through the provision
of support and know-how from one to another in a more organic and adaptive kind of
growth.
7) Systemic change. This is the ultimate goal of social innovation. Systemic change usually
involves the interaction of many elements: social movements, business models, laws and
regulations, data and infrastructures, and entirely new ways of thinking and doing. Systemic
change generally involves new frameworks or architectures made up of many smaller
innovations. Social innovations commonly come up against the barriers and hostility of an
old order. Pioneers may sidestep these barriers, but the extent to which they can grow will
often depend on the creation of new conditions to make the innovations economically
viable. These conditions include new technologies, supply chains, institutional forms, skills,
and regulatory and fiscal frameworks. Systemic innovation commonly involves changes in the
public sector, private sector, grant economy and household sector, usually over long periods of
time.
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Resourcing our Innovation Strategy
Our innovation strategy is intended to be low direct cost with expenditure being focused on
upskilling our staff through training supported with external strategic partners where necessary.
We are small enough in Guernsey as an organisation to avoid the creation of an innovation lab
as adopted in many other jurisdictions and seek to create a Virtual Innovation Team or
Community spread out across the service. This is where the indirect costs will lie through the
opportunity cost of staff time. Managers and Leaders across the organisation will have to allow
our staff to attend training courses, reflect and implement the tools and techniques across the
many and varied service delivery areas of operation.
In order to resource our innovation strategy we will:
invest in our staff to develop our in-house innovation capabilities and this will be
reflected in our People Plan so that our strategy is sustainable;
give our staff the space, both in terms of time and physical location, to become more
innovative within our organisation; and
invest wisely to support innovation in the transformational operational
programmes.
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References – to be completed
i
Tett, G. (2015) The silo effect: The peril of expertise and the promise of breaking down barriers, New York:
Simon & Schuster.
ii
OECD. (2015) The innovation imperative in the public sector: Setting an agenda for action, Paris: OECD
Publishing
iii
Clayton,M. (2014) The influence agenda: A systematic approach to aligning stakeholders in times of change,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
iv
Considine, M., Lewis, J. M. and Alexander, D. (2009) Networks, innovation and public policy:
politicians, bureaucrats and the pathways to change inside government. London: Palgrave Macmillan
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