Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector. By Wendy D.Chen and David B.Audretsch, New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. 221 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐767944‐9

As communities worldwide grapple with wicked problems ranging from environmental challenges to economic crises to public safety, some believe that only private business holds the solutions with new ideas. However, this book argues that the way forward will prove daunting without activating entrepreneurship and innovation in the public sector. The authors first debunk a common myth that government cannot be innovative or entrepreneurial by exploring public innovations from a historical view. The book then explores the modern-day digital frontier for public innovation across the globe with real world examples and the various methods of collaborative governance being used with private companies, nonprofits, and most importantly, through partnerships with everyday citizens that emphasize grassroots democratic participation. As public innovations are mapped out, the authors also take a critical view examining the dark side of public innovation, or cases when public innovation did not go as planned. Inspired by effective entrepreneurial ecosystems such as Silicon Valley, this book then proposes a public innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem, highlighting key ingredients and approaches that enable successful public innovations. More importantly, the authors recognize that a main driving force of public innovation is public entrepreneurs, and they lay out actionable strategies for the public sector to turn government employees to public entrepreneurs. The book concludes with careful discussions on the challenges and future opportunities with contemporary topics including AI, blockchain, and more that lie with public innovation and entrepreneurship, while suggesting an agenda for future research in this field.

Society calls for innovative solutions to wicked problems such as poverty, food security, climate change or mobility. Many scholars stress that these problems can only be resolved through public innovation processes that cut across traditional jurisdictions and routines of organizations, that cross the boundaries between the public and private sectors, and that create new synergies, new learning and new commitments (Termeer 2007; Koppenjan and Klijn 2004; Ansell and Torfing in this volume). This chapter argues that new thinking about public innovation processes requires a new thinking about public leadership. We do not use ‘public leadership’ here in the sense of the formal bearers of responsibility but more in terms of the unofficial view of leadership (see Teisman et al. 2009). It is about those people who actively face up to public innovation challenges by seeing opportunities, arranging connections and reinterpreting their own routines. This leadership is not limited to elected politicians or high-ranking civil servants and may come from inside and outside government organizations (Ansell and Torfing in this volume). Inspired by the guiding questions for this book, we distinguish three features of public innovations leading to corresponding leadership challenges.

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Part 1: The State and Study of Public and Nonprofit Sector Innovations 1. Introduction to Innovations in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors Patria de Lancer Julnes and Ed Gibson Chapter 2. The Study of Innovation: State of the Art and Framework for Analysis Patria de Lancer Julnes Part 2: Case Studies of Innovations in the Public Sector Chapter 3. Innovations in the Measurement of Cultural Value: The British Museum Francesca Manes Rossi, Alessandra Allini, and Francesco Dainelli Chapter 4. Innovating from the Center in a Decentralized Agency: Electronic Filing in the Federal Judiciary Ed Gibson Chapter 5. Open Innovation in the Public Sector: The Case of Open 311 Sukumar Ganapati and Gina Scutelnicu Chapter 6. Data Sharing, Power Asymmetries and Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Innovation Processes: Lessons from a Failed Collaboration Stat in Baltimore City Seema Iyer Chapter 7. Making Milan a Smart City: An Emerging Strategy of Innovation in Governance Dario Cavenago, Benedetta Trivellato, and Mila Gasco-Hernandez Chapter 8. Innovations in Planning and Funding Infrastructure Renewal: The London Experiment Mark Pisano Chapter 9. Improving Citizen Satisfaction with Local Government Using 311 Systems: The Case of San Francisco, California Benjamin Y. Clark and Maria Rokakis Part 3: Case Studies of Innovations in the Nonprofit Sector Chapter 10. Chelsea's CONNECT: Building Economic Resiliency through Multiservice Cross-Sector Collaborations Janet Boguslaw, Martha Cronin, and Marissa Guananja Chapter 11. Leadership Developing Partnerships to Address the Social Determinants of Health Richard Callahan Chapter 12. Exploring the Linkages between Collaboration and Innovation Using Faith-Based Partnerships in the Child Welfare System Michael Howell-Moroney Chapter 13. Intermediaries of Innovation in Community Colleges: Coaching in Achieving the Dream Susan T. Gooden, Kasey J. Martin, and Lindsey L. Evans Part 4: The Future of Innovation - An Integrative Approach Chapter 14. Refining Our Understanding of the Process of Innovation in Public and Nonprofit Organizations: Lessons Learned and Future Directions for Research Patria de Lancer Julnes, Ed Gibson, and Soyoung Park About the Editors About the Contributors Index

The age of knowledge has brought new values, new ways of relating, doing business, learning. Public organizations need to adapt to this new reality and review their processes. Thus, this article aims to analyze the factors that influence the creation of organizational knowledge and innovation in the public sector. For that, it was adopted the methodology of a case study in a federal teaching institution. As a research tool, it was used a semi-structured interview script. The results of this study showed that the factors of commitment and teamwork are evaluated positively. In addition, there are flaws in factors such as communication and interorganizational network. Because it is a case study, this research presents as a limitation the impossibility of the results generalization, nevertheless it can serve as an input for other institutions whose focus is the progress of knowledge, creation and innovation. This article aims to contribute to scientific knowledge in the field of innovation in public administration, highlighting the importance of continuous improvement.

Framing improvements of public innovation in a living lab context: Processual learning, restrained space and democratic engagement

The participation of citizens to solve public challenges is a driver to implement public innovation. Addressing new mechanisms and arenas that facilitate citizen participation is one of the challenges on the governments’ agenda, especially under changing, complex and social distancing scenarios such as those caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Therefore, digital platforms that promote co-creation between citizens, governments, and other actors in the countries’ innovation ecosystems, are becoming more and more necessary, but at the same time, there is a need to study their scope and contributions to generate transparent, equitable, inclusive and people-centered citizen participation processes. Indeed, the research aim was to make a trend analysis on the field integrating two methods: a literature review about concepts related to public innovation platforms: co-creation and citizen participation; and finally, a web content analysis on three platforms that generated co-creation exercises to solve challenges in the Covid-19 Pandemic. The main results show the need to study the challenges and contributions of digital platforms to make public innovation the result of a collaborative effort that goes beyond the ideation stages to implement solutions and generate public value.

Antiretroviral therapy in countries with low health expenditure

Artificial intelligence (AI) builds on the previous digitalization in the public sector as the next logical step. Using machine learning to exploit investment in information and communications technologies, it potentially offers more personalized and appropriate services to citizens. AI already features across a wide range of public services, driving innovations in areas such as healthcare and traffic, and it could alter how public services are organized, how they interact with citizens, and how they can be integrated.This chapter has two objectives: (1) to survey AI-enabled innovations operating in the public sector and (2) to explore the dynamics of AI-enabled innovation in public services. These discussions are structured by conceptualizing mutuality governance in the analysis and guidance of the ethical and problem-solving impact of AI. The research addresses the need for AI-enabled innovations to relate ethically to citizens, as many of the innovations originate or partner with AI-enabled capabilities in the private sector.The chapter shows how the public and private sectors can successfully work together to deliver ethical AI by exploring the AI innovation ecosystems in two Finnish cities: Oulu and Tampere. We delve into how AI-enabled innovations can respond to the diverse needs of citizens, creating AI innovation ecosystems, including new governance arrangements.

The discussion on innovation ecosystem has been intensifying over the last 15 years and, considering that public services play an essential role for the management of innovation, an approach in which public organizations occupy a central place presents an opportunity for theoretical and empirical advancement in the theme. Using a qualitative and comparative approach, the objective of this article is to characterize the actors involved in the innovation ecosystem in the public sector. To achieve this goal, 224 awarded innovation experiences in the public sector in Brazil and Spain, from 2007 to 2018, were used as the object of content analysis. By applying three principles related to scientific rigor of research - validity, reliability and replicability - the results present a database with a longitudinal description of the phenomenon that consolidates empirical evidence that classifies the actors related to innovation ecosystems in the Brazilian and Spanish public sector. In addition, the data analyzed revealed ecosystems with an endogenous characteristic, as well as variables that translate key elements for public innovation. Furthermore, the analysis provided a repository of information conferred to managers and policy makers, who aim to increase the performance of innovation projects in the public sector.

Symposium: Entrepreneurship in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors

The Future of Public Service: A Search for a New Balance

This article hypothesizes that economic reforms become sustainable when the discursive conditions prevailing in society tip against the existing paradigm under exceptional circumstances. Thus, unless the pro-liberalization constituencies dominate the development discourse, economic reforms, initiated under the exigencies of crisis and conditionalities, or carried out by a convinced executive with or without the stimulus of a crisis, will be reversed. The discursive conditions are determined based on eight factors: the dominant view of international intellectuals, illustrative country cases, executive orientations, political will, the degree and the perceived causes of economic crisis, attitudes on the part of donor agencies, and the perceived outcomes of economic reforms. The paper seeks to prove this “discursive dominance” hypothesis for the Indian case through a cross-temporal, comparative review of the evolution of economic policy in India over six different phases.

In today's public sector, there is an urgent need for efficiency, effectiveness and rapid response to economic and social changes. This change is supported by tremendous technological progress, where artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important pillars of digital technology that can dramatically change all sectors of society, including the public sector, its leaders and public servants. It may also help in playing a new role and giving a new legitimacy to the public sector and government work based on modern technology. To the best of our knowledge and due to the lack of a comprehensive vision, a hypothesis that establishes for the possibility of applying artificial intelligence in the public sector. This study aims to shed some light on the need of public sector leaders to Gain a comprehensive and deep understanding of the scope and impact of AI-based applications in the public sector as their organizations are fully digitized. Previous studies discussed the application of artificial intelligence, often partially, specialized in the business sector, which generated a research gap that did not address the specificity of the public sector and government work. The methodology of this study is based on collecting, analyzing, and linking relevant ideas from published scientific research to provide an integrated overview of the applications of artificial intelligence in the government sector, taking into account the significant role that this sector plays in the lives of citizens and the rest of the vital sectors. This study examined the specificity of the application of artificial intelligence in the government sector, the role of governments in ensuring the successful implementation of the artificial intelligence strategy in their departments, and the enormous opportunities and capabilities that artificial intelligence provides to the public sector. The study also focused on the most prominent issues and challenges faced by artificial intelligence in government work, the great role that the partnership between the public and private sectors plays for the success of the application, and how government leaders can play an important role in the development and strengthening of the artificial intelligence community.

Energy Efficiency—the Role of Government

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between collaborative governance arrangements for place-based competitiveness and public innovation. Design/methodology/approach The paper combines a conceptual discussion of the links between collaborative governance, competitiveness policy and public innovation with a case study analysis of a specific governance process that aims at adapting policy to respond to local competitiveness challenges in the Basque province of Biscay. Findings The conceptual discussion leads to the hypothesis of a new distinction with respect to how governance relates to public innovation. Innovation can occur in governance, through governance or with governance. The analysis of the case supports this distinction. Multi-actor collaboration for competitiveness policymaking (innovation in governance) has led to policy innovation (innovation through governance). This has also promoted emerging administrative changes that could be conducive to a more innovative public sector in general (innovation with governance). These findings validate arguments posed by proponents of collaborative innovation that suggest that multi-actor collaboration is a driver for public sector innovation. Originality/value The value of the paper rests on linking theoretically and empirically two relevant and currently popular phenomena: networked governance for place-based competitiveness policymaking and public sector innovation. The paper provides original insights from the practice of building a process for context-sensitive policymaking that can inspire practitioners with similar problems.