Stillwater: Orchestrator of Innovation, Enabler of Change?

Parking. Housing affordability. Moving from car- to human-centered cities. In my last post, I wrote about how innovation holds great promise to address “wicked” societal problems and create value for a city's residents.

We don’t usually associate the public sector with innovation. It's often seen as plodding, cautious, and bureaucratic; it’s not driven by profits and competition the way the private sector is. But there are plenty of examples of innovation in the public sector if you go looking for them – in policy development, communication, mitigating and anticipating the effects of climate change, and implementing smart technologies to streamline operational processes, to name a few.

Why would cities make good sites for innovation? According to Richard Florida, cofounder of CityLab, “as our national politics and government have become polarized, dysfunctional, and ineffective, local government has become more effectively non-partisan, pragmatic, and effective.” In addition, “local administrations are the closest to citizens and are deeply involved in the daily routine of communities,“ says Rudi Bormann, Undersecretary of Public Innovation and Open Government in Argentina’s Ministry for Modernization.[i] Thus, cities can be envisioned as “both orchestrators of innovation and enablers for change.” [ii]

Collaborative innovation in the public sector ensures that “public innovation draws upon and brings into play relevant innovation assets in terms of knowledge, imagination, creativity, resources, transformative capacities, and political authority.”[iii] But what does collaborative innovation in cities look like? How does it work?

City residents can be thought of in different ways: clients, customers (yes, these are two different things), prosumers (producers + consumers), or co-creators.[iii] In collaborative innovation, cities would do well to treat residents as co-creators, actively soliciting their input and leveraging their diverse backgrounds, experience, and expertise to come up with solutions. Along the way, cities are encouraged to freely share data and knowledge (the screengrabs here show examples from St. Paul and Grand Rapids, MI).

It's important that the creative decision-making process intentionally includes people from groups at risk of marginalization [iv], since there's a real risk that a very narrow segment of the population becomes hyperinvolved and may end up excluding those with fewer resources, and even conserving the status quo rather than creating change and innovation.[iv]

Can you envision a culture of innovation in Stillwater? Would you want to be part of it?There are several ways people can participate in public innovation. [iii]

• Citizen-initiated: A person or group has a good idea, implements it, and with growing positive feedback and demand, the citizenry continues to support and scale the innovation. Sustainable Stillwater is an excellent example.
  

• Citizen co-designed: Co-design is guided by the idea that those affected by a design should have a say in its design process. It “allows non-designers to become equal members of the design team  …[in which] participants who are not normally involved in design activities can directly contribute their knowledge and fresh perspectives to exploring problems and possible solutions.”[iv]
  

• Citizen co-implemented: Residents are invited to test and adjust a new or revised service in order to aid implementation.

So be brave and step up! You are eminently qualified to be part of this city's innovation, and I would be thrilled to be there working alongside you.

[i] Bloomberg Cities Network. The Future of City Innovation. https://bloombergcities.jhu.edu/news/future-city-innovation

[ii] Tukiainen, T., Leminen, S., & Westerlund, M. (2015) Cities as Collaborative Innovation Platforms. Technology Innovation Management Review, 5(10): 16–23. http://timreview.ca/article/933

[iii] Agger, A., & Hedensted Lund, D. (2017). Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector: New Perspectives on the Role of Citizens? Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 21(3), 17-37.

[iv] J. Trischler, Dietrich, T., Rundle-Thiele, S. Co-design: from expert- to user-driven ideas in public service design. Public Management Review 21(11): 1595-1619. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2019.1619810