I just finished writing a piece for The Mark that argues our current policy conversations are dated. Like army generals who fight their previous war, the policies being debated are for the previous crisis. Our future well-being requires policy targeted to the future and with more creativity. I don't try to reinvent the wheel in the piece but instead look around the world for interesting policy programs that we could replicate with little effort and potentially a big payoff.
The program I discuss most is in the state of South Australia, called Adelaide Thinkers in Residence. Started in 2003 by the current Premier, Mike Rann, the program brings world-leading thinkers to live and work in Adelaide to assist in the strategic development and promotion of South Australia.
One of the past Thinkers was former advisor on innovation and governance to Tony Blair, Geoff Mulgan. I'm currently reading a piece by him on social innovation and how to make the most of the state's collective intelligence. Here's a quote:
"The usual approach of public sectors [towards social innovation] is a scattering of pilots, combined with new initiatives that reflect the enthusiasms of ministers or officials. There is plenty of excellent innovation in South Australia. But, as elsewhere, it often happens by stealth, under the radar, despite the rules rather than because of them. Often good pilots are not fully assessed and scaled up. Many grow outside the system."
There will likely always be innovation "outside" the sytem, since systems become fixed and less open to new ideas. But given the challenges we face in New Brunswick, this is an unacceptable approach to policy making and social innovation. It would be a big step forward for a group of New Brunswick stakeholders to commit to a Thinkers in Residence type program, encouraging the experimenting, learning and scaling we need to make meaningful change.
1 comments:
Tim, this is a very interesting post. My Ingenuity Arts book project lives in this kind of idea ecosystem. Innovation as a fringe activity is important to think about. I believe that increased ingenuity is possible but when a process begins to grow in scale, it is very difficult to avoid the de-innovation that efficiency drivers tend to impose.
There is such a strong sense among start-ups or fringe projects that very subtly says, 'when we grow this into a real company we'll get these loose ends tied up...' and which lead to looking like everyone else in the end. Getting those innovation feedback loops to keep looping is a big challenge, though I do think we can be much better at it than we are currently. Developing the right mindsets within leaders and then keeping the organization close to those creative start-up days will be critical.
I'm going to take some time and read through the links you have in the article to see what the Adelaide group does. NB Thinkers-in-Residence...great idea with real promise given the right architecture.
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