1. Move fast and fix things
How to think and act like
a public entrepreneur
2. THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE
ENCOURAGEMENT OF ARTS,
MANUFACTURES AND COMMERCE
Founded 1754
Tackling a range of social challenges
through research, action and ideas
www.rsa.org.uk
3. Today
• The findings from recent research from the RSA Lab make the case for
the public entrepreneur – a new type of government actor.
Key questions we explore:
• What does it mean to be a public entrepreneur?
• What cultures, mindsets and competencies are needed to act
entrepreneurially?
• What is required to shift public sector cultures and overcome immunity
to innovation?
4. Background to the RSA & Policing
The RSA was commissioned by both the
Police Federation and the Metropolitan Police
for independent reviews.
'Safer together: policing a global city in 2020'
is our most recent analysis based on an
extensive consultation, wide-ranging
research, and the RSA’s public service and
institutional reform specialisms. Following an
extensive engagement with 500 of the most
senior Met officers and others throughout the
service and a consultation involving more
than seventy external organisations, Safer
Together establishes a shared mission. This
mission involves public agencies, the
voluntary sector, companies, the public and
5. RSA Lab programme
In 2017-18, the RSA Lab partnered with Innovate UK to understand
how to think entrepreneurially about public services – and in particular
public procurement – using the RSA framing of “think like a system,
act like an entrepreneur”. We focused on the UK government’s Small
Business Research Initiative (SBRI) as a primary case study.
We observed a lot of good work – the adoption of design thinking, the
prioritising of digital and agile methods and a strong desire for
innovation partnerships. The public sector is also starting to operate
as eGovernment or as a catalyst for GovTech enterprises.
But we also identified what we called a “system immune response” to
innovation in the public sector… where innovations aimed at tackling
public and social problems ‘bounced off’ the system they were
intended to impact. Rather than scaling to create systems change,
many innovations experienced an immune response whereby a
complex set of barriers to change rendered the innovation redundant.
8. The Age of the Entrepreneur
• Incessant technological and digital change is disrupting business across sectors:
connected cars are reshaping the automotive industry, smart grids are changing
energy sector, mobile payments are disrupting banks, big data offers insurers
unprecedented opportunity, online shopping has transformed consumerism, digital
media now dominates communication…
• Traditional businesses are being overtaken by challenger start-ups with platform
business models that can bring down entire sectors (like Uber, Amazon and Airbnb).
• Without question, whatever industry, every organisation must transform for a digital
world. In PWC’s 21st Global CEO Survey, 81% of respondents agree technological
progress will fundamentally change their organisation. And the pressure to move
faster is unrelenting.
• Consultancies recognise that innovation and agility are in high demand. In the past
10. What is a public entrepreneur?
Public entrepreneurs are socially minded — but they differ from social entrepreneurs in that
they carry out a public or state role. The Centre for Public Impact defines it as such:
“While “social entrepreneurs” are people outside government, public entrepreneurs
act within government and, at their heart, are a blend of two different roles: that of a
public servant, and that of an entrepreneur. The underlying premise is that these roles
are usually distinct but the skill sets they require need not be. Indeed, the future public
servant will increasingly need to think and act like an entrepreneur — building new
relationships, leveraging resources, working across sector lines and acting, and
sometimes failing, fast.”
As Marianna Mazzucato says: the public sector is a force for good, taking proactive action to
solve public problems. The idea of the public entrepreneur counters the caricature of the state
as a slow, lumbering, bureaucratic machine and sets out to find the people, processes and
practices in government that are ‘moving fast, and fixing things’ and demonstrating a new
11. Why now?
• There is a mandate to drive digital – but this transformation requires more than
technology. Two other things are just as critical. First, agility: delivering change through
quick steps, learning as you go. Second, adoption: taking your people with you.
• Beyond digital disruption…
• Governments have catalytic spending power. The UK public sector alone spends
over £251.5 billion annually procuring goods and services which accounts for 33% of
public sector spend and 13.7% of GDP.
• A profound shift in practice is required if government is to proactively use this power to
stimulate innovation in the way that Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Entrepreneurial
State calls for. She advocates for “mission-oriented innovation” which can enable
speed as it has “not only a rate, but also a direction” — using government’s purchasing
power to stimulate innovation.
12. “HELP IT
HAPPEN”
Negotiated,
Influenced, Enabled
Co-production
“LET IT HAPPEN”
Informal, Unplanned
Horizontal
Unpredictable, emergent
Adaptive, self-organising
More behavioural approach
Power of networks
“MAKE IT HAPPEN”
Formal, Planned,
Regulated, Managed
Vertical (Hierarchical)
More structured approach
E.g. Comms, training,
marketing, public
engagement, social
media, consultation etc
‘New Public Management’
Top-downBottom-up
The new role of the public servant
15. Entrepreneurs are…
• Opportunistic
• Attuned to the market signals – is there a market? Can you test them?
• Passionate, ambitious and motivated
• Confident risk takers and hackers – they get around the system
• Positive deviants
• Single-minded and solutions-oriented
• Adaptable and Flexible – does what it takes to get the job done
• Networkers - Who are the actors? Who has influence? What will it come up
against?
16. Why the computer says no…
• In one word: Risk.
• To work like this when the stakes are so high in public institutions is very hard – statutory
responsibilities for tax spend and human lives drives a strong culture of risk aversion (Special
measures is a culture that runs very deep in local authorities and NHS England)
• But the OECD says that the values of entrepreneurialism conflict with those of perceived good
governance:
“Generating public value through innovation is complex and challenging for
governments. Innovation runs contrary to the perceived role of bureaucratic
organisations. Innovation is new, unknown and risky; by contrast governments have a
statutory duty, democratic responsibility and political mandate to deliver public
services in consistent and equal ways.”
• By promoting public entrepreneurship, we are not opposing good governance. We caution
against the Silicon Valley notion of ‘fail fast’ in government .
• Governance is vital when spending public money — but an important entrepreneurial shift is to
move away from the redundant concept of “fail-safe” into “safe/fail” environments. These can
also be described as “learn fast” environments that deploy an ongoing process of testing,
development and learning
18. What is required to shift public
sector cultures and overcome
immunity to innovation?
19.
20.
21.
22.
23. • To affect change, public institutions need to act in an agile way, with
competence and confidence.
• To be entrepreneurial is to spot the hacks that can plant the seeds for wider
change “show me the lawbook, not the rulebook.” Civtech founder
• Find willing partners to experiment with – work at small scale and adapt to
feedback
• Build on examples like the G-Cloud Digital marketplace and Govtech catalyst
• Understand the difference between different types of problem…
How to kick start change
24. Efficiency is the
answer: digitising
gov.uk
Crisis: terrorist attack,
environmental
disaster…
Childhood obesity,
social determinants of
health
Cynefin Framework (Dave Snowden)
Problems not markets
25. UNDERSTANDING
THE PROBLEM
ACHIEVING IMPACTCREATING THE SOLUTIONUNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
1
Understand
Problem
3
Design
Concept
4
Accelerate
Build
5
Test
Product
6
Commission/
Deploy
Solution
2
Exploring
Ideas
CONCEPT
PROVENSOLUTION
MVP
SCALEABLE
SOLUTION
DEFINEDPROBLEM
26. CREATING THE
SOLUTION
ACHIEVING IMPACTUNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
1
Understand
Problem
3
Design
Concept
4
Accelerate
Build
5
Test
Product
6
Commission/
Deploy
Solution
2
Exploring
Ideas
Chasm
3
CONCEPT
PROVENSOLUTION
MVP
SCALEABLE
SOLUTION
DEFINEDPROBLEM
CREATING THE SOLUTION
27. ACHIEVING IMPACT
(AT SCALE)
ACHIEVING IMPACTCREATING THE SOLUTIONUNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
1
Understand
Problem
3
Design
Concept
4
Accelerate
Build
5
Test
Product
6
Commission/
Deploy
Solution
2
Exploring
Ideas
CONCEPT
PROVENSOLUTION
MVP
SCALEABLE
SOLUTION
DEFINEDPROBLEM
28. Key points
Understand the wider system
Identify incentives
Anticipate immunity to change
Understand power
Build competence and confidence
Create Safe/Fail environments
Encourage flexible mindsets
Practice agility – be a norm entrepreneur
Start small and operate in Beta, build on what works
Test ideas through partnerships
Being complex is different from being complicated.
Things that are complicated may have many parts, but those parts are joined, one to the next, in relatively simple ways: one cog turns, causing the next one to turn as well, and so on.
Complexity, on the other hand, occurs when the number of interactions between components increases dramatically—the interdependencies that allow viruses and bank runs to spread; this is where things quickly become unpredictable.
General Stanley McChrystal et al, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Wicked problems with multiple causes interacting in unpredictable ways and which therefore require the alignment of a broad set of actors. This might include challenges such as obesity, air quality, homelessness or educational attainment.
Highly individual problems, including those that are related to life and living circumstances that may require relational support, such as frailty and loneliness, unemployment, mental health or imprisonment.
Highly political problems that require important ethical or material trade-offs, and therefore require deliberation and the mobilisation of consent, such as the location of new houses and roads, whether to preserve the green belt or licensing regulations.
