Collaboration and design: new tools for public innovation

Abstract

Society calls for innovative solutions to wicked problems such as poverty, food security, climate change or mobility. Many scholars stress that these problems can only be resolved through public innovation processes that cut across traditional jurisdictions and routines of organizations, that cross the boundaries between the public and private sectors, and that create new synergies, new learning and new commitments ( Termeer 2007 ; Koppenjan and Klijn 2004 ; Ansell and Torfing in this volume). This chapter argues that new thinking about public innovation processes requires a new thinking about public leadership. We do not use ‘public leadership’ here in the sense of the formal bearers of responsibility but more in terms of the unofficial view of leadership (see Teisman et al. 2009 ). It is about those people who actively face up to public innovation challenges by seeing opportunities, arranging connections and reinterpreting their own routines. This leadership is not limited to elected politicians or high-ranking civil servants and may come from inside and outside government organizations (Ansell and Torfing in this volume). Inspired by the guiding questions for this book, we distinguish three features of public innovations leading to corresponding leadership challenges.

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