Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector by Jacob Torfing

Author:Jacob Torfing [Torfing, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626163607
Google: hcx1DQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30148707
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2016-01-15T07:30:21+00:00

Learning from Processes of Collaborative Innovation and Building Future Capacities

For multi-actor collaboration to foster innovative solutions, it must give rise to some kind of mutual, expansive, and perhaps even transformative learning that fosters collective creativity. That being said, we should remember that learning is not only an essential part of the process of collaborative innovation but also a valuable tool for improving the functioning and outcomes of such processes. Thus, learning is both a practice embedded in the process of collaboration and a strategic reflection on the current and past performance that enables the actors to enhance their capacities for collaborative innovation.

Learning through either simultaneous or ex post evaluation of collaborative innovation requires measuring the actual processes and results as well as the informed reflections about the drivers of and barriers to different parts of the process and the production of desired outputs and outcomes. In the current audit regime, associated with New Public Management, the demands for quantitative measurement are strong and pretty hard to satisfy when it comes to measuring innovation and the processes of collaboration and mutual learning that aim to produce it. The element of subjective interpretation is too large. What can and should be measured in quantitative terms, however, are the outcomes of innovation. User satisfaction surveys can establish whether the quality of public services is improved. Productivity statistics and fiscal accounts can tell whether service production or public regulation has become more efficient. Performance studies can help assess whether the problem-solving capacity has actually increased as a result on innovation. Finally, quantitative surveys can reveal whether the democratic legitimacy of public governance has improved due to the creation of new arenas for participatory governance and the cocreation of public solutions. While the measurement of the desired outcomes can be done in relatively rigorous ways, the measurement of the innovative output and the processes that have produced it will, to a large extent, have to rely on a qualitative assessment. The important step here is to ask the right kind of questions.

Evaluating the production of innovative outputs may involve asking the following questions. What initiated the process, and what was the output? To what extent is the form and content of the output breaking with common knowledge and established practices in the field of application? What kind of innovation was produced, and how was it implemented, consolidated, scaled up, and diffused? Did the results match the expectations? Were there any bottlenecks in the innovation process that need to be eliminated? Which drivers and barriers to innovation affected the innovative output, and how can the drivers be sustained and the barriers removed through joint initiatives and the exercise of innovation management?

Asking questions can also help assess the collaborative processes that produced the innovative solutions. How was the process of mutual exchange organized? Who participated, and what kind of knowledge and resources did they bring to the table? Did the actors merely coordinate and cooperate with each other, or did they actually collaborate in ways that involved

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