The Innovation Unit

Welcome to The Innovation Unit

The Innovation Unit is an innovation intermediary in public services. It is devoted to stimulating, incubating and accelerating innovation to achieve transformed services with better outcomes for citizens.

The Innovation Unit has made a key contribution to the evolution of public service innovation and improvement through the development of a new, disciplined approach to stimulating, incubating, and accelerating innovation (the Next Practice Innovation Model), which is strongly driven by users' needs. This approach is known as Next Practice. Next Practice has been developed from the evidence base on innovation in public services and from the pioneering work The Innovation Unit undertook with OECD and other parties on Futures Literacy.

We believe passionately that the creativity of public service practitioners, working collaboratively and with service users, holds the key to this transformation. We support the process by bringing evidence-informed, disciplined methods to innovation.

Major strands of our work include the Next Practice in Education Programme in schools and Children's Services; and the Innovation Exchange for the Third Sector.

Internationally, The Innovation Unit continues to work closely with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and will be involved, representing England, in a new programme in 2008 entitled 'Alternative Models of Learning'.

A further important element of The Innovation Unit's work is associated with knowledge management. Among other developments, The Innovation Unit has established knowledge management systems to bring the education community's combined expertise to bear on the development of solutions through its online Next Practice Acceleration Space which encourages contribution from its innovation community.

The Innovation Unit is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee working in partnership with customers to co-construct a range of solutions to meet their needs and the needs of their users.  Our service offers focus on schools, school Governors, parents and carers, Local Authorities, National Agencies and Educational Foundations, multi-school Trusts and collaboratives, Government departments, businesses and international customers.

Since November 2006, we have been a separate and independent entity from the DCSF (formerly DfES) and we receive no grant funding.

Our customers include:

• BECTA 
• Cisco
• Department for Children, Schools and Families
• Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA)
• Knowsley Local Authority 
• Leicester City Council
• Local Government Association
• London Borough of Lewisham
• National College for School Leadership
• Norfolk County Council
• Office of The Third Sector, Cabinet Office
• Partnerships for Schools
• Paul Hamlyn Foundation
• RSA
• The Cabinet Office
• Training and Development Agency for Schools
  

Our history

The Unit was originally established as the DfES Innovation Unit as part of the measures in the White Paper 'Schools - Achieving Success' which followed the Education Act 2002, and which were "intended to raise standards, promote innovation in schools and reform education law". It was launched by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Professor Sir Michael Barber and the then Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris in June 2002. Its purpose was to foster innovation in education. Since then we have led the Government's innovation agenda on behalf of around 26,000 schools and their users.

The first phase of the Unit's work concentrated on responding to innovative ideas that were sent into the Government, mainly by teachers and headteachers. The Unit funded a number of these, and provided advice and practical support for many others. During this phase, the Unit worked on several large-scale programmes  (eg the Leading Edge Partnership programme, Federations, Networking and Collaboration, Teachers TV, Breakthrough (with the NHS)), alongside other innovative small-scale projects. Some projects also involved brokering new partnerships between diverse organisations who might not normally expect to work together.

As part of its general work, the Unit also advised, between 2003 and 2008, on The Power to Innovate (PTI), a piece of legislation which enabled schools and Local Authorities to apply to the Secretary of State to have regulations lifted if a strong case could be made that they were getting in the way of raising standards in education. The Education and Inspection Act (2006) extended The Power to Innovate, which has cross party support, to the further education sector

The Unit also played an active role in supporting and sponsoring the National Teacher Research Panel, The Research Informed Practice Site and the Teaching Awards. 

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