PA 568 Strategic Competitiveness in the Public Sector

Strategic Competitiveness in the Public Sector: Assignment 5
PA568
Innovation & City Networks Building Capacity & Strategic Competitiveness
Osborne’s concept of Innovation in the public sector;
There are diverse meanings of innovation in public policy, including concepts that focus on radical and innovative ideas that are put into practice, disruptive changes and continuous improvement. Osborne & Brown, (2011) consider innovation as disruptive and step-changes rather than incremental change that are also associated with general change. In the public service, risk is often regarded negatively as it is minimized or avoided, yet risk is a common phenomenon in innovation in the business sector and public sector. Considering risks and benefits in innovation in the public sector helps to understand how innovation is closely linked with public policies.
Learning takeaways
Innovation in public services has not always met the public policy needs because there are wrong assumptions from the private sector that ignore the uniqueness of public services. While the public service innovations are process based, there has been adoption of inappropriate models of innovation by focusing on manufacturing rather than the service sector (Osborne & Brown, 2011). For instance, in the private sector, there is emphasis on completion and the market forces and competition, but emphasis on gaining competitive advantage is solely linked with the manufacturing sector. Based on this innovation in the public sector first focused on designing innovative products and not services (Osborne & Brown, 2011). Ideally, innovation models from the manufacturing sector need to be adapted to the service industry including the public service.
There was reformulation of the concept of innovation where there was more emphasis on continuous improvement. in the UK, “The Modernising Government White Paper” of 1999 highlighted the need for continuous change, improvement and learning in the public sector (Osborne & Brown, 2011). However, in public services deliver, the service-dominant approach to innovation places emphasis on the service user and not the policy makers in the innovation process. The case for this approach is that there is more focus uncovering and meeting future needs and not merely reacting to the current needs as is common in public services.
The normative approach to innovation focuses on the need for innovation based on the belief that any innovation is good. To Osborne & Brown (2011) the idea that innovation is like a normative good and policies associated with this idea are based on the wrong assumption that every innovation is positive. Innovation and improvement are not necessarily one and the same thing, as is the case with technology that is associated with invading privacy and as such is not a normative good. In other words, the researchers highlight that there are at times negative consequences of innovation that are largely ignored in public services because of the normative assumption of innovation.
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