Abstract
This paper investigates how public sector institutions change their form and approach to achieve a socially innovative urban governance. The “Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics” (MONUM) in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) proves a representative case of innovation in the public sector. As a new type of government agency, it is essentially an open innovation lab dedicated to innovative evidence-based policymaking. Following a new dynamic organizational pattern in urban governance, MONUM is conducive to project-oriented social innovation practices and horizontal multi-sectoral collaboration among the three societal sectors: public, private, and civil. Its results suggest that first, the peculiarity of MONUM lies in its hybrid and boundary-blurring nature. Second, new institutional forms that experiment with urban governance can rely on multi-sectoral collaboration. Third, MONUM has experimented with a systemic approach to social innovation following the “design thinking theory.” The MONUM case can contribute to the current debate in Europe on the need to harmonize EU policies for an effective social inclusion by promoting the application of the place-sensitive approach.
Highlights
The innovation gap in the private sector is a subject of study that has raised much interest over the last 15 years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics” (MONUM) represents a new urban governance model in the form of a public agency operating in a market-oriented society and conducive to processes of social innovation
On the public sector side, the MONUM case positively indicates a way to approach the need for changes in contemporary urban governance
Summary
The innovation gap in the private sector is a subject of study that has raised much interest over the last 15 years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Murray and others [22] clarified that social innovation manifests in boundary-blurring activities developed through the interaction of the three conventional spheres of society: the public, the private, and civil society The linkage among these sectors has created space for the formation of new dynamic organizational. The study, by presenting the analysis of the MONUM case together with the preliminary comparison with the two EU best practices, offers a possible framework to structure the change factors that public organizations address concerning social innovation rationale. This framework intends to guide further analysis of the soundness of this change in terms of social benefits for local communities. The output of the latter activity may result in the definition of likely measurable indicators of social innovation-oriented policies (in terms of effects/impacts) to test and evaluate the transferability of the lessons learnt to European cities
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