Systemic Innovation Model Translated into Public Sector Innovation Practice

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores a systemic innovation model and its translation into public sector innovation practice in the welfare and health field. This systemic innovation model has been developed in the Innovillage project (2009-2013) and it has been incorporated into an open web-based development environment for enabling and enhancing collaborative innovation activity. Innovillage is a national innovation community for innovation activities in the welfare and health field in Finland. The paper argues for a systemic and collaborative innovation practice where the actors with respect to the object of development co-design, co-develop and co-enact the object through the innovation process. The paper consists of three parts. The first part defines the basic concepts and content of the systemic innovation model. The second part describes the structure of the web-based development environment for enabling and enhancing collaborative innovation activity. The third part analyses the user experiences of collaborating and co-developing in the web-based environment. In the discussion implications are drawn, on the basis of the analysis of user experiences, for the further development of the systemic innovation model, web-based development environment and public sector innovation practice.Keywords: public sector innovation, systemic innovation model, socio-materiality, involvement, co-development.IntroductionThis paper explores a systemic innovation model developed in the Innovillage project (2009-2013) and its translation into public sector innovation practice in the welfare and health field. The model has been incorporated into an open web-based development environment for enabling and enhancing collaborative innovation activity. The Innovillage project as a whole developed a national innovation community in the social and health field in Finland. Innovillage is coordinated by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and jointly maintained and further developed by the National Institute for Health and Welfare, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, and the Finnish Society for Social and Health.During the last decade innovation has become the organizing concept that drives almost every research, development and policy agenda. However, the fuzzy discussion about innovations has vitiated the whole concept. People typically identify innovations with ideas, models or inventions, and then every research and development project seems to produce innovations. Innovations are also talked about as if they were objects which could be transferred from site to site as such. Once an innovation has been made, it can be implemented everywhere. 3This innovation model shifts the focus of innovation discourse from the blurred concept of innovation to the socio-material constituents of the objects of development and from the userdriven or user-centered innovation process to the co-creation and co-development activities of shared objects of development. It studies any kind of object of development, a product, a technology, a service, etc., as a socio-material system or assemblage. When designing any kind of object of development, it is vital to notice every element that has to be mobilized to translate it into practice, to enact it, and to get it to work.The innovation model proposes a collaborative innovation activity, where the actors or stakeholders with respect to the object of development are recruited and involved in the innovation activity from the very beginning. The argument runs as follows: because any kind of object, such as a technology, a product, a service, and a structure, is studied as a socio-material assemblage and practice that is locally constituted by heterogeneous elements (human actors, artifacts, rules, laws...), it is useful to persuade, recruit and involve the potentially relevant actor groups with respect to the object under development in co-developing and co-designing it. …

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