Valuing Public Innovation

Public innovation is distinctive from private sector innovation by being set in a political system rather than a market. The roles of citizens and elected politicians as well as public servants and other stakeholders are frequently relevant. Public organizations can be creators, funders, orchestrators or sense-makers of innovations, which are carried out with the aim of benefitting society. This book provides a comprehensive insight into the theory and practice of public innovation using a wide range of research evidence about the processes, drivers and barriers, stakeholders and outcomes of innovation. Using the lens of public value, the book offers a stimulating discussion of how public innovation is valued and contested in current societies. Valuing Public Innovation aims to help develop a deeper understanding of innovation and how to use that knowledge in practical ways. This is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of innovation, organisation studies, public administration and public policy, as well as for policymakers and practitioners.

Innovation is seen as an interactive process that involves many actors within and across organizational boundaries. In public sector services, innovation is a frequent, often holistic, and multi-layered process that involves many actors and many services at the same time. However, most of the existing literature on innovation in public sector services is based on the economics of innovation, which is heavily influenced by investigations of the private sector. Innovation in the Public Sector develops a more context-sensitive and rich approach in order to explore the different logics of innovation that prevail here. Rather than presenting a general theory of innovation, the book specifies how innovation and value creation are interconnected with social and institutional elements. Analytical constructs, including dynamic capability, absorptive capacity, and practice-based approaches, are reviewed and anchored in the organizational context of public sector services. Such a perspective on innovation can help us develop new understandings of the process and history of innovation, contributing to processual organizational analysis in a broader sense, and further developing present theories of organizational change.

A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’. One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions. This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

This text provides a concise and internationalized restatement of the public value approach, an assessment of its impact to date - in theory and practice - and of its particular relevance to the challenges of public management in a time of crisis and austerity.

Innovation Design presents an approach to designing shared value for businesses, non-profit organizations, end-users and society. The societal and economic challenges we are currently facing – such as the aging population, energy scarcity and environmental issues – are not just threats but are also great opportunities for organizations. Innovation Design shows how organizations can contribute to the process of generating value for society by finding true solutions to these challenges. And at the same time it describes how they can capture value for themselves in business ecosystems that care for both people and planet. This book covers: creating meaningful innovations that improve quality of life, engage users and provide value for organizations and other stakeholders, guiding the creation of shared value throughout the innovation process, with a practical and integrative approach towards value that connects ideas from economics, psychology, sociology and ecology, designing new business models and business ecosystems to deliver sustainable benefits for all the involved parties and stakeholders, addressing both tangible and intangible value. Innovation Design gives numerous examples of projects and innovations to illustrate some of the challenges and solutions you may encounter in your journey of designing meaningful innovations and creating shared value. It also offers practical methods and tools that can be applied directly in your own projects. And in a fast-changing world, it provides a context, a framework and the inspiration to create value at every level: for people, for organizations and for the society in which we live.

Rising and changing citizen expectations, dire fiscal constraints, unfulfilled political aspirations, high professional ambitions, and a growing number of stubborn societal problems have generated an increasing demand for innovation of public policies and services. Drawing on the latest research, this book examines how current systems of public governance can be transformed in order to enhance public innovation. It scrutinizes the need for new roles and public sector reforms, and analyzes how the gradual transition towards New Public Governance can stimulate the exploration and exploitation of new and bold ideas in the public sector. It argues that the key to public innovation lies in combining and balancing elements from Classic Public Administration, New Public Management and New Public Governance, and theorizes how it can be enhanced by multi-actor collaboration for the benefit of public officials, private stakeholders, citizens, and society at large.

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed. Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic: that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.