User-Driven Innovation in the Public Service Delivery

Abstract

As an answer to present challenges the Danish government has recently announced that user-driven innovation shall be a driver for innovation in the public administration. This policy raises question like: Is it possible to transfer the concept of innovation to the public sector? How can we understand innovation in the public sector? And what is the role of the user in user-driven innovation? In this paper I answer the first two questions by drawing on theoretical literature. I conclude that it does make sense to transfer the concept of innovation to the public sector but due to the differences between the two sectors we have to re-define the concept in a way that it reflects the conditions for the public sector. The third question is answered by an empirical analysis of governmental documents describing the role of users in user-driven innovation. It turns out that the documents describe users in quite different ways and interpret their role in user-driven innovation as either active or passive. I conclude that this difference reflect that users of present public services have different roles and thus they can participate in user-driven innovation in many different ways.

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