For the Asian Productivity Organization, Alex Glennie of the Innovation Growth Lab discussed the role of innovation agencies in Europe.
Alex’s presentation drew on the collaboration between the TAFTIE network of innovation agencies and the IMAJINE project looking at the future of European regional inequality.
You can watch Alex’s presentation on YouTube, and read more about “TAFTIE x IMAJINE” at the website of the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation.
Over at the blog of OPSI, the OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, Alex Glennie of Innovation Growth Lab, Marie Mahon of NUI Galway, and I have written about our work using the IMAJINE scenarios with TAFTIE, the European network of innovation agencies.
At the OPSI website, you can read our discussion of what happened when we used IMAJINE’s four visions of Europe in 2048 to help innovation agencies ask ‘magical questions’ about what lies ahead and the implications for innovation strategy & policy today.
The Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport’s “Laboratorios Ciudadanos” (Citizen Labs) course returns this year, offering a series of online modules for Spanish speakers who would like to develop community-led innovation projects in their local area.
I’ll be joining the team to lead the module on strategic foresight, having previously contributed to last year’s session on questions of public value and impact measurement.
Si hablas castellano y te interesan las cuestiones de innovación liderada por la ciudadania, inscríbete antes del 29 de abril de 2021 para un viaje de aprendizaje y aventura. Sign up before 29th April 2021 to join us on a journey of learning & new adventures in citizen-led innovation.
This month, I spoke with Florence Engasser, senior foresight analyst at the innovation foundation Nesta. Florence works on exploring the future of innovation for social good; her interests include intelligent cities, social incubation, games and simulation.
We caught up to talk about her work using games as a tool to stimulate and develop the thinking of policymakers, including the innovation board game Innovate!, which was released in 2018.
M: You’re fond of quoting Bernard Suits in The Grasshopper: games are “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”, what he calls “the lusory attitude.” Have you always enjoyed overcoming unnecessary obstacles?
F: It’s a really cool quote, isn’t it? I’ve always been into all kinds of games; growing up with two brothers who are close in age, and parents who weren’t great fans of television or pop culture, I spent a lot of time “off screen”. As I grew older, I graduated from games like Uno to those which my parents might have labelled as “brain games” – more intense and elaborate stuff like Pandemic or Risk, where you might end up banging your head against the board!
M: Games serve so many purposes: entering an imagined world, competition, intellectual challenge, social connection — for you, was there one particular aspect which appealed above all?
Read moreThe OECD’s Alex Roberts, Deputy Head of the Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, joined me for the final episode of the Government After Shock podcast series.
Over thirty episodes this year, Alex and I have been speaking with public sector professionals, policymakers, stakeholders, and their allies about the crises of 2020 and the response of government bodies around the world.
In our last instalment, I took the opportunity to ask Alex what he’d learned from these conversations, and how the events of 2020 – and their associated learnings – have affected OPSI itself.
It’s impossible to pick out favourite episodes from the series – every guest offered unique and powerful insights – but I do want to highlight two conversations which were particularly provocative for me as a host and listener.
Read moreSocietal challenges are complex. More complex than going to the moon, which was mainly a technical feat. To solve them requires attention to the ways in which socio-economic issues interact with politics and technology, to the need for smart regulation, and to the critical feedback processes that take place across the entire innovation chain.
Mariana Mazzucato, Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation In The European Union
Every strategy, every approach, every angle of attack that we take in life – whether individually or as a collective – has its moment. Insurgents become incumbents, if they succeed; and the most novel or surprising innovations will, in time, become yesterday’s news.
The UK’s Wellcome Trust has just launched a new strategy built around three global challenges.
Wellcome is far from the only organization taking this approach. Using challenges to structure strategy echoes the new trend towards “mission-led innovation”, where systemic public policies draw on grassroots and frontline knowledge to attain specific goals. Whether it’s clean air in congested cities, continued independence in a healthy old age, or the challenges of cancer, climate change, and digital exclusion, missions are intended to help us apply big thinking to big problems – setting a clear direction for innovation while still enabling bottom-up solutions.
I think the mission-led approach is really promising, and I’ve been pleased to collaborate with organisations like Business Finland and Nesta as they explore what mission-setting might look like for them. But I’m also realistic about the limits of any one approach to ever serve as a panacea for the ills of our time. Inevitably, even the best strategies will have gaps and blindspots; no human endeavour escapes the need for tradeoffs, and omniscience is still an attribute which eludes us.
Read more“Smoke, fire, hail, and pestilence…we’re just waiting for the locusts, really” – the wry and insightful Marie-Louise Ayres, who heads the National Library of Australia in Canberra, talked to me about guiding her unique federal institution through the many challenges faced by the Australian capital in 2020.
You can hear what Marie-Louise had to say on the OECD’s Government After Shock podcast.
I also spoke with Håkon Haugli, CEO of Innovation Norway, a state body which promotes sustainable growth and exports for Norwegian businesses through capital and expertise. Håkon talks about moving to a digital workplace, the struggle to preserve multilateralism, and embracing the messy nature of innovation. His episode of the podcast can be found here.
Spanish speakers can now watch a short public video from my contribution to the Laboratorios Ciudadanos Distribuidos course developed by the Spanish Ministry of Culture & Sport and MediaLab Prado.
The recording offers a brief overview of new approaches to public value. It outlines a number of practical tools that allow you to map the value created by your organisation or team, then consider ways to transform the value and impact you offer to the community you serve.
Find out more about the full Laboratorios Ciudadadnos Distribuidos course here.
Following our recent two-part discussion on this blog, you can hear Saskia Van Uffelen, Belgium’s Digital Champion, speaking with me on the OECD’s Government After Shock podcast in this week’s discussion.
During our interview, Saskia explores communication, leadership, and adaptation beyond crisis. If we pull on the “elastic” of our society and its institutions too far, it will break. Are we ready to fashion a new, more resilient world as the crises of 2020 demonstrate the old one’s limitations?
As part of the OECD’s Government After Shock project, I’m working with a team from their Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, interviewing public sector leaders & practitioners for a podcast series exploring their perspective on the crises of 2020, and the implications for the future of government worldwide.
This week, Petra Nilsson Andersen of the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency joins me for a brief chat about COVID’s test of the Nordic social model, how to balance the physical & digital, and what 2020 teaches us about preparing for future crises.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 