Crisis and innovation: let the bad times roll: innovation appears to flourish in agencies under extreme pressure.

• Author: Donahue, John D.
• Position: Commentary - Column

For its first several years, the Harvard Kennedy School program to celebrate public-sector breakthroughs was called Innovations in State and Local Government. In the mid-1990s, eligibility was opened to federal applicants, though without any expectation that hidebound Washington would generate much in the way of innovation. But federal entries actually won a big share of the awards in subsequent years.

Like just about everybody else, I was surprised by this, and decided to explore what was going on. With the help of a team of research assistants, I produced a book called Making Government Work that profiled the story behind each of the 14 programs that won Innovations in American Government awards in the first five years of federal eligibility.

I had a hunch about what the evidence would show. My prediction was that most innovations would be associated with relatively large, relatively sudden increases in resources. The previous decade had featured wild swings in program budgets as the course of events and shifting ideological tides brought different missions in and out of favor. I imagined that a fresh flood of dollars would, at least temporarily, free agencies from the hand-to-mouth austerity that tends to cement in place the governmental status quo. Public servants with ideas for creating more public value would briefly have the wherewithal to realize their ambitions.

After all, this is basically how it happens in the business world--which government is constantly urged to emulate. Investors looking to unleash the next big thing put up serious grubstakes so that inventors and entrepreneurs have the time, staff, and resources they need to make it happen. Whether stand-alone startups or "skunk-works" within established firms, private-sector innovators are seldom expected to take responsibility for keeping the old model cranking along while they're dreaming up the next version. Investors are ruthless about demanding results eventually, but in the short run they know innovators need some slack.

In normal times, such slack is exceedingly rare in government. Any extra resources are instantly deployed to urgent needs, and if not used, snatched back by budget offices. But perhaps in abnormal times--when an agency's mission catapults to the top of the political priority list and the budget exceeds expectations--there will be a fleeting moment when budgetary bounty permits experimentation and creativity. Such moments, I hypothesized, would be the...