Global: Systems Approaches

Better ecosystem understanding is needed in the Western Balkans where governments face the challenge of aligning with the European Green Deal and Circular Economy amid EU enlargement discussions. This project implements an innovation policy for sustainable growth by introducing tools for territorial analysis to support development policies. It is the first regional effort of this kind, positioning existing circular economy challenge owners in a system viewpoint as part of a co-creation process.

How do you manage a variety of innovation projects, with differing types of innovation, different goals, and perhaps different teams and funders? To avoid dealing with a mere list of projects, practitioners have recently become interested in innovation portfolio approaches. What we mean by innovation portfolios Portfolio management is an analysis and sense-making activity connecting innovation practice – specific projects, initiatives, and programmes – to the intent and purpose behind those…

“We create and re-create narratives throughout our lives to make sense of what happened, to process experience, to interpret and reinterpret our view of the world as life unfolds. I believe that beautiful and difficult process is what it is to be human.” Lauren Oakes For me, significant transitions in life prompt such introspection and recreation of narratives – to reflect on key moments that have shaped who I am and how I think. Recently,...

This is a guest post from Anne Pordes Bowers and Peter Glenday of SOIF, the School of International Futures. COVID-19 has underlined the importance of thinking systemically about the future, even though our institutions are not well structured or incentivised to do this. More urgently than ever, governments need to reinvent how they do strategy and policymaking. Strategic foresight is an organised, systematic way of looking beyond expected trends to better assess uncertainty and complexity....

Innovation portfolio management is becoming a core practice for intentional and proactive public sector innovation units to prepare governments to address a diversity of current and future challenges.  The practice: Helps build clarity of purpose of innovation; Provides a high-level view of the interrelationships between innovation support activities; Identifies gaps and prompts for ideas for changes in direction or composition; and Identifies the types of innovation supports needed to…

Editor’s note: This is a guest blog written by Emily Wise, Lund University action researcher for Future by Lund, Sweden. Lund municipality’s innovation platform, Future by Lund works to catalyse development activities for sustainable cities – addressing complex challenges through collective action. Leveraging insights from OPSI’s innovation facets model (among others), the Future by Lund team is currently experimenting with new ways to steward and advance a portfolio of collaborative…

The Rural Support Service of Latvia (RSS) is responsible for the implementation of unified state and European Union support policy in the sector of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and rural development. The project was initiated by the need to reduce bureaucratic burden and help customers to receive support easy, quickly, without mistakes. RSS cooperated with different stakeholders, such as private sector organizations, service providers, clients and professionals from agricultural holdings.

Editor’s note: This guest blog was written by Katju Holkeri, Head of Unit for Governance Policy in The Public Governance Department in the Finnish Ministry of Finance. This post was written following a February 2021 collaboration session between three OECD teams to join up intersecting work on trust, civic space, and anticipatory innovation governance in Finland.  Anticipating the trust of citizens is not easy. What is possible for us in Finland however is to strengthen...

This toolkit offers a starting point and a framework for uncovering circular potentials and barriers and to potentially identify new circular business models. The tools in this toolkit focus specifically on mapping a company's circular potentials in the value chain it operates within. And it gives priority to understanding, framing and re-fining the value businesses create in the value chain, exploring the interaction with both customers, collaborators and influential stakeholders. The toolkit…

Features: Associated curriculum, Facilitators guide, Video guidance

Tiger Team is a monthly cross-corporate super team of 25+ passionate people to boldly tackle problems in the administration and city. This collaborative experiment brings together staff, citizens, and community stakeholders for 2.5 hours to understand and explore complex problems, generate ideas and prototype solutions to test with users. By bringing together these diverse perspectives Tiger Team is able to compress timelines, find unexpected solutions, identify change makers, and break down…