Powering Collaborative Policy Innovation: Can Innovation Labs Help?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACTThere is nothing inherently new in the idea of cross-cutting collaboration, joined-up government' and networked governance' (Pollitt, 2003; Hartley, 2005; Mulgan, 2009). However, in the last decade, new forms of internal units have been set up within public sector organisations with the explicit purpose of supporting innovation efforts. And in at least one case, such a unit has evolved into a permanent governance network - designed to foster cross-governmental innovation. We start by discussing the underlying change logic of innovation labs. The article then examines the history, role and functioning of Denmark's MindLab, an innovation lab that today is part of the Ministries of Business & Growth, Taxation, and Employment. We emphasise how the development of MindLab over time reflects a typology of different generations of innovation labs. Finally, we reflect on potential future directions for platforms for collaborative innovation in the public sector.Keywords: Innovation labs, collaboration, governance, policy development.IntroductionThis article explores the potential for collaborative innovation based on interaction and mutual learning between relevant and affected stakeholders, and driven by dedicated platforms in the form of innovation labs. The Danish MindLab is used as an example of this.MindLab is today a cross-governmental innovation lab, which involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society. MindLab is also a physical workshop space - intended as a neutral zone for inspiring creativity, innovation and collaboration. MindLab works with the civil servants in the three parent ministries: the Ministry of Business & Growth, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Employment. These three ministries cover broad policy areas that affect the daily lives of virtually all Danes. Taxation, entrepreneurship, digital self-service, employment services and workplace safety are some of the areas these ministries address.The story of MindLab is perhaps interesting in and of itself; but we believe that the 10-year journey of this lab reflects a set of wider trends in public sector innovation and illustrates the potential for more strategic, systematic and indeed powerful approaches to collaborative innovation.Public sector innovation: Barriers1In spite of daunting challenges such as the global financial and economic crisis, increased social stratification, demographic change, and the rise of health costs, most public sector organisations today are ill-suited to develop the radical new solutions that are needed. The rate of change and the turbulent environment dramatically increase the risk that public organisations loose even more of their touch with the enterprises and citizens they are meant to serve.Research shows that most modern public organisation's innovation capabilities are focused on internal administrative processes, rather than on generating new services and improved results for society (Eggers and Singh, 2009; National Audit Office, 2009). New ideas mainly arise from internal institutional' sources (mostly public managers themselves, and sometimes their employees), and to a much lesser degree via open collaboration with citizens, businesses or other external stakeholders. Innovation efforts are typically driven by a few isolated individuals, dependent on their personal initiative and willpower. At all levels, from the political and regulatory context over strategies, organisational models, management style, staffrecruitment, involvement and incentives, to the relationship with end users, the public sector is characterised by numerous barriers to innovation (Wilson, 1989; Mulgan, 2007; Bason, 2010; Eggers and O'Leary, 2009). Add to that a lack of awareness or knowledge of the innovation process, and lack of good and relevant data on how the organisation performs, and we have an almost perfect storm crashing down on any innovation effort. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.051 | 0.090 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.038 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.033 | 0.051 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.025 |
| Research integrity | 0.016 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.039 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".