2. British Governance and Society: How to Innovate
• An introduction to Nesta
• The innovation imperative
• ?innovation
• A few examples of our work
• Some observations for discussion

3. About us
• Nesta exists to grow the UK’s capacity to innovate -
helping to generate great ideas and bring them to life
• We work in partnership – across the public, commercial
and social enterprise sectors and with civil society
• We are independently funded and moving to charitable
status in early 2012

4. Our capabilities
Knowledge
and method research
policy
data
Finance
investments
grants
programmes
Skills Networks
methods communication
coaching interdisciplinary
mentoring convening

5. Public Services Lab
• People powered public services
• A public services eco-system that is better at generating
great ideas and putting them into practice
• The challenge of scale

6. The innovation imperative
• A new financial reality, with no prospect of returning to previous
levels of investment anytime soon
• Longer term challenges, ageing society, long-term health
conditions, consequences of lifestyles, changing expectations and
more complex needs
• A model of public services that is ill-equipped to respond to new
challenges and opportunities
• Growing recognition of the need for radical new solutions and a
body of knowledge and examples from around the world

7. The innovation imperative
Office for Budget Responsibility: Economic and Fiscal Outlook November 2010
Impact of demographic trends on Public Sector Net deficit

8. ?innovation

9. When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I
certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering
the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, but I suppose that
was exactly what I did.

11. Innovation is invariably a cumulative,
collaborative activity in which ideas are shared,
tested, refined, developed and applied.
Charles Leadbeater 2008

12. Mapping public service innovation
Formal Informal
Sustaining Improve Combine
Disruptive Reinvent Transform
Developed by Charles Leadbeater, Nesta Fellow

13. Leading public service innovation
Formal Informal
Manager Collaborator
Sustaining Detail Partner
Incremental Combiner
Visionary Entrepreneur
Disruptive Hacker Campaigner
Designer Mobiliser
Developed by Charles Leadbeater, Nesta Fellow

14. 1 Prompts
2 Proposals
6 Systemic
3 Prototypes change
4 Sustaining
5 Scaling
From the Open Book of Social Innovation, Young Foundation and Nesta

15. surveys
asset mapping
data analysis
leadership
user data
crisis
failure demand user feedback
ethnography political mandate
prompting
scenario planning
needs mapping
new perspectives
petitions new technology
critical walking
research campaigns
reframing questions

16. Life programme
100 families in Swindon living in chronic crisis
and with high levels of need: £250k per year
Design team lived with 12 families
Mapped 18 years of state interventions, no
change in circumstances, no investment in
real change
Institutional barriers and 80 / 20 split

17. participation
challenge prizes skunkworks
recombination
user led design
inspiration
interdisciplinarity
idea markets
crowdsourcing
generating
co-creation hack days
design tools
open calls for ideas
camps
horizon scanning

19. beta testing
peer challenge
role playing
theory of change
elevator pitches
piloting
prototyping
incubating
developing
mentoring
co-design
experimental zones
simulations
logic modeling accelerators

20. Transforming Early Years
Nesta and Innovation Unit supporting six
early years services
Groups of families and professionals co-
creating different, better and cheaper
services

23. Neighbourhood Challenge
Nesta and Big Lottery Fund, working with
17 community organisations
Developing and testing new methods for
stimulating and supporting community-
led innovation
Mass Localism: distributed solutions to
problems
Asset Based: assuming capacity to
innovate
Role of funding organisations

24. Creative Councils
Nesta and Local Government Association,
supporting councils to develop and implement
transformative innovations
Focusing on deliberate, systematic approaches to
developing and implementing ideas, but also
spread and scale
Ideas include new approaches to democratic
engagement, renewable energy self-sufficiency,
impact investing and more

25. New models of public service delivery
People as assets Relationship based
Collaborative
Tapping into hidden wealth
Social design
+ innovation
Public services as Distributed
platforms Local
Outcome focused

26. Some observations
• Lots of examples of innovation in public services, but
still at the margins and mostly early stage
• Barriers around culture, politics, commissioning
practice, professionals, silos, accounting for value, the
incumbency bias, scale
• Inside or outside the system?
• Culture eats strategy for breakfast

27. Some observations
• Distributed solutions that add up to national impact?
(the national / local dilemma)
• Adaptive systems that deliver certain outcomes?
(the politician’s dilemma)
• Need for strategies, skills and methods for
systematically developing new ideas and achieving
impact at scale

28. www.nesta.org.uk
philip.colligan@nesta.org.uk
@nesta_uk
@philipcolligan