Measuring Innovation

The Innovation Challenge

Despite some notable exceptions (and considerable effort) many organisations in the public sector are not very innovative. In some cases this is desirable, but on the whole taxpayers and service users would benefit greatly if the public sector was better at innovation. The public sector needs to be more systematic in how it manages innovation, and disciplined in how it approaches innovation challenges.

Measuring innovation is an important first step in this direction. Innovation is measured for a purpose - to improve the management of innovation and its contribution to economic and social wellbeing through creating better services and increasing value for money.

Our approach

The Innovation Unit has been commissioned by NESTA to prototype an Innovation Index for the public sector. This will measure innovation activity within organisations, measure the innovation capabilities and culture of organisations, and measure the results of innovation against national policy imperatives and local priorities.

This will enable organisations to benchmark themselves against other organisations in their sector, and all other organisations in their local area - helping creating a map of where innovation is happening in public services. It will also generate recommendations as to how an organisation can become more innovative over time.

So far we have prototyped the Innovation Index with a Local Authority, a primary and secondary school with fascinating results. The final report is due to be published soon. Other participants in this programme include Ernst and Young, Deloitte, and DANSK University.

Project contacts

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