Public Innovation through Collaboration and Design: (Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management)

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’. One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions. This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

Table of Contents:
1. Collaboration and Design: New Tools for Public Innovation 2. Necessity as the Mother of Reinvention: Discourses of Innovation in Local Government 3. Reconstructing Bureaucracy for Service Innovation in the Governance Era 4. The Complexity of Governance: Challenges for Public Sector Innovation 5. The Impact of Collaboration on Innovative Projects: A Study of Dutch Water Management 6. Understanding Innovative Regional Collaboration: Metagovernance and Boundary Objects as Mechanisms 7. The Importance of Joint Schemas and Brokers in Promoting Collaboration for Innovation 8. Collaborative Networks and Innovation: The Negotiation-Management Nexus 9. Innovative Leadership Through Networks 10. Designing Collaborative Policy Innovation: Lessons from a Danish Municipality 11. Design Attitude as an Innovation Catalyst 12. Collaborating on Design – Designing Collaboration

About the Author :
Christopher Ansell is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is also the US Editor of Public Administration: An International Quarterly. Jacob Torfing is a Professor in Politics and Institutions at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is also the Director of the Centre for Democratic Network Governance and Vice-Director of a large-scale research project on Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector.

Review :
'This brings together the key debates about design and innovation and provides a welcome comparative perspective. The contributors highlight the tension between service improvement and cost reduction in times of fiscal crisis. They also make clear that collaborative design is both high risk and high reward and give us a wealth of material on actual practices to guide us.' Mark Considine, Professor, The University of Melbourne, Australia 'This book offers well selected and interesting examples of different possibilities in different places. It also clearly articulates the complexity of the collaborative process, and the difficulties encountered with conflicts and contestations in collaborative policy arenas.' Michele Ferguson, The Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland