Blogs

Diffusion of Innovation: Myths and Realities

John Craig
Monday, 6 February 2012 - 3:44pm

This is a fantastic presentation on...

Public Services: A movement

John Craig
Sunday, 5 February 2012 - 8:08pm

Last week’s workshop with public service staff started out tough. ‘People never listen to our ideas’. ‘If we start making improvements, we’ll be seen as trouble-makers’. ‘I’d be intimidated to make suggestions to management – they bully us’. By the end of the day, we had generated some ideas, gathered data and made some small-scale changes, and morale was on the up. But it was hard work.

It’s easy to criticise staff as cynical, but there are probably millions of public servants who feel this way. And this is something Innovation Unit has always worked to turn round. Political...

Dispatch from Crystal Palace: Good Taste Decommissions their Coffee Service

Alec Patton
Tuesday, 31 January 2012 - 9:16am

 

It is an uncomfortable fact of public service innovation that reducing costs requires decommissioning existing services as well as creating new ones. That is to say, you need to close things down as well as starting things up.

Sarah Gillinson has written before in this blog about the deep emotional attachments we feel towards (some) public services. Many people tend to dismiss these attachments as sentimental and therefore beneath serious consideration. However, it is...