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OPSI Presents at French Territorial Innovation “Innova’ter” Conference

Written by | 26 September 2018

Yesterday, September 25th, OPSI Director Marco Daglio spoke at the 2nd annual Innova’ter in Paris. The conference highlighted the different challenges that local and regional public sector innovators face in France, and explored how to reinvent public service. During the day-long event, French innovators engaged with representatives of major players in the field of public sector innovation, including OPSI, Nesta, the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) from the UK, the French 27ème region, and the Direction interministérielle de la transformation publique (DITP).

“Status quo is the biggest hindrance to innovation,” Marco told the 350 civil servants, “because public sector innovation involves changing what exists now. There are usually a lot of clear and obvious reasons why the current state exists, and only a few for why something should be different.”

Regarding the biggest drivers of innovation, Marco highlighted OPSI’s framework of four facets, “because innovation happens for a lot of different reasons. It is very easy when talking about innovation to think of it as just one thing. In reality, innovation is a very varied activity.”

We at the OECD think it’s valuable to differentiate between different facets of innovation. We propose four different facets:

  • Enhancement-oriented innovation – where you are trying to improve what already exists and make the most of existing innovations
  • Mission-oriented innovation – where you are trying to achieve a particular outcome, and where new things are going to be needed in order to get there
  • Adaptive innovation – where you are trying to adapt to a changing world in order to stay relevant and appropriate
  • Anticipatory innovation – where you are trying to understand how things are changing and what new possibilities exist.”

When asked about the different ways innovators could improve their understanding of public sector innovation, Marco highlighted the tools that OPSI has published on its website to facilitate their learning, including our Skills Report, our analyses of the most recent trends of global public sector innovation, our Call for Innovations (the deadline has been extended to October 5), and our Toolkit Navigator, presently in beta testing.

Special thanks to Innova’ter for inviting Marco to represent the OECD’s perspective. Feel free to check out those resources to learn more, submit to our current Call for Innovations, and give us feedback on our Toolkit Navigator!