Innovation Tag: Systems Change

Becoming a circular economy entails a deep transformation of industry, consumer behavior and policy. Traditional innovation funding focuses on technology, punctual projects and (single) companies, which alone fail to bring the required systemic change. Hence, the Flemish government launches the subsidy programme Living Labs Circular Economy for projects tackling complex challenges, with a high ambition level, in co-creation with very diverse stakeholders and employing system innovation methods.

How to bring new ways of working and problem-solving tools to the Estonian public sector? Over the course of a year and a half the Public Sector Innovation Team of Estonia developed a design sprint format suitable for the Estonian public sector. By constantly adapting and improving the format the Innovation Team has seen that it is a highly effective tool for spreading design thinking methods and generating enthusiasm around them.

In 2021 Statistics Canada, Canada’s national statistical agency, successfully implemented a new strategy for coding write-in responses to questions asked on the Census of population. Fasttext, a natural language processing algorithm, was applied to 31 questions and approximately 7 million write-in responses that would have in the past been completed by human coders. This innovation significantly increased the coding efficiency by decreasing the time and cost required to code the 2021 Census.

Since 2020, the City of Austin (COA) and the University of Texas (UT) have collaborated on over twenty diverse research projects under the legal and administrative framework of a five-year, ten million dollar master interlocal agreement (ILA). Among a very few of its kind in the USA, this ILA is an "innovation enabling innovation" that bridges the barriers between two large, extremely complex organizations and fast-tracks the launch of research and innovation projects by four to five times.

Women workforce participation is a key enabler of social development and economic growth. In developing countries, female labour workforce participation has continued to be sub-optimal due lack of avenues to support women’s mobility. Pink Passes along with universal deployment of bus marshals and ICT features provide free travel to women in a safer environment in public buses of Delhi to encourage their mobility. It increases women’s window of opportunity to become part of labour workforce.

Intergenerational fairness—the idea that we should meet the needs of the present without compromising rights of future generations or citizens—is a defining theme of our time. Although most politicians and citizens value fairness, society does not have a way to assess the impact we’re having on future generations and advocate for them. This Framework for Intergenerational Fairness contributes to this. The Framework provides a pragmatic solution, whether as a young citizen, or public…

Government struggles to exploit advances in science and technology that could improve public services. The UK Home Office developed a new, cost-effective model to enable start-ups, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), not-for-profits and academia to solve frontline challenges across UK government using diverse, cutting-edge capabilities and expertise. Uniquely, for UK public sector, it uses flexible, novel ways of working and commercial mechanisms to deliver mission impact at pace.

Public healthcare in Serbia is transformed through innovative use of mixed reality technology powered by Artificial Intelligence, that increased efficiency and quality of healthcare, minimized risks and efforts, and optimizes procedures. Through remote collaboration, doctors have the same insight into patient’s condition without the need of physical presence, enabling joint real time inputs and medical interventions with experts from anywhere, as well as remote education for medical students.

The Austin Civilian Conservation Corps (ACCC) began as a pandemic response program to help residents earn income and access green careers, and has evolved into a leading model for equitable, climate-focused workforce development. The ACCC, a collaboration with 10+ City departments and multiple community partners, has provided over 125 living-wage opportunities with supportive services, training, and career pathways for Austin’s underserved residents, and is actively shaping the green economy.

Challenge tenders are a new model designed to solve urging needs of the health system which usually aren't attractive enough for the start-up industry to engage in, such as fall prevention among elders, improvement of geriatric care in long term facilities and others. In order to attract digital based solutions to enter the health system, we initiated an innovative method of intervention which allows quick testing of technologies in health organization with MOH support for fast proven outcomes.