Skip to content
An official website of the OECD. Find out more
Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

How to validate authenticity

Validation that this is an official OECD website can be found on the Innovative Government page of the corporate OECD website.

Toolkit

Follow the Rabbit: A Field Guide to Systemic Design

Champion CHAMPION:
Can be remixed
This Field Guide is a systems take on typical design thinking methodology. It demonstrates how to design something with a greater emphasis on creativity and humour. The Guide goes through a systemic design project from concept to implementation. It takes you through the workshop planning process, and discusses workshop roles and client relations. In the FAQs, you’ll find explanations to some commonly asked questions about systemic design concepts to help you introduce others to SD and bring…
Toolkit

There may be zombies: A Field Guide to Strategic Foresight

Champion CHAMPION:
Can be remixed
This Field Guide is designed to support new-to-foresight practitioners in incorporating future thinking and foresight into everyday projects. In addition to describing methods (including purpose, pros, cons and considerations for each), it also provides guidance on how to advocate for a foresight related project or approach in your organistion, cultivate a futures/foresight mindset, and build a team. The ""zombies" referenced represent an unexpected and unlikely event for humanity. Stories about…
This is a report from the Workshop ‘How might we approach transformational change for complex challenges in the future?’, held in London 30-31 August 2017. It provides 18 insights and considerations for playing the enabler, catalyst, and convenor roles in creating a mindset of long-termism.
The toolkit's goal is to help actors conceptualize and operationalize their ambitions in terms of supporting social innovation. It contains not only “procedures” but also knowledge concerning social innovation. The guide was designed to support European Social Fund (or other) funding organisations that want to focus mainly on service innovation (as opposed to systems innovation or internally oriented process innovation). But it also recognizes the idea of broader societal transitions and the…
The resource addresses the use of financial prizes to source solutions to challenges. It draws on academic literature, interviews with analysts and practitioners, surveys of prize sponsors and competitors, databases of small and large awards, and case studies of 12 effective prizes to produce lessons from a range of sectors, goals, and prize types. It provides frameworks and recommendations to help improve current prizes and stimulate effective future use. While it is targeted to philanthropic…
Toolkit

Paper Prototyping: A Guide For Surfacing Innovative Ideas More Quickly

Basic BASIC:
Allows reuse
This is a report produced in conjunction with IDEO after a 2-year initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation called Paper Prototyping, an effort to better inform investment decisions of the Foundation. While this resource is not a typical innovation toolkit, it was included because it describes an often implicit and invisible process of developing and testing proposals for innovative solutions to complex problems.
Toolkit

A Field Guide to Ethnographic Experiential Futures

Champion CHAMPION:
Can be remixed
Ethnographic Experiential Futures, is a protocol for surfacing and documenting existing images of the future. It combines Ethnographic futures research, EFR, a protocol for surfacing and documenting existing images of the future. Experiential futures, XF, is a family of approaches for vivid multisensory, transmedia, and diegetic representations of images of the future. The hybrid approach puts together two modes of futures research and practice in a step-by-step guide. Its intent is to help…
Toolkit

Ideas to Impact

Basic BASIC:
Allows reuse
A curated set of resources on innovation by Tim Kastelle. This resource is primarily framed around private entrepreneurship, but some elements are transferable to a public sector context (i.e. cultivating a growth mindset). The resource is associated with a masterclass offered at the University of Queensland.
Toolkit

User Centred Design Toolkit

Champion CHAMPION:
Can be remixed
This resource contains a framework and guidance regarding the use of user-centred design. The publisher defines the UCD process in six phases - two planning and four delivery phases. The two planning phases focus on typical project planning aspects such as problem space, resources, agency readiness, team logistics, governance, etc. The four delivery phases are about action, talking to users to understand their real needs, prototyping potential solutions, and building the minimum viable product…