Reinventing the Wheel? Public Sector Innovation in the Age of Governance

• Author: Mehmet A. Demircioglu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12821
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

800 Public Administration Review • September | October 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 5, pp. 800–805. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12821.

Reinventing the Wheel?

Public Sector Innovation in the Age of Governance

Mehmet A. Demircioglu is assistant

professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of

Public Policy, the National University of

Singapore. He earned his MPA and PhD

from SPEA, Indiana University, Bloomington.

His research interests are public sector

innovation, employee attitudes, social

media, and public sector reform. He

holds a visiting scholarship position at

the University of Canberra and Yonsei

University. His work has been published in

several journals, including

Journal of Public

Affairs Education

.

E-mail: mehmet@nus.edu.sg

Jacob Torf‌i ng and Peter Triantaf‌i llou , eds., Enhancing

Public Innovation by Transforming Public

Governance ( Cambridge : Cambridge University

Press , 2016 ) . 368 pp. $110 (cloth), ISBN:

9781107088986.

Patria de Lancer Julnes and Ed Gibson , eds., Innovation

in the Public and Nonprof‌i t Sectors: A Public

Solutions Handbook (New York: Routledge ,

2016 ). 276 pp. $46.95 (paperback), ISBN:

9780765644589.

P ublic sector innovation has become a buzzword

in today ’ s society and organizations, including

the public sector (Demircioglu 2016 ).

This is understandable because innovation can

increase organizational survival, growth, efficiency,

performance, and legitimacy. On the other hand,

public sector innovation is a relatively new subfield,

so there is not much established or well-developed

research, theories, and cases that inform us of the

conditions, types, measurement, outputs, and

outcomes of innovation in the public sector context.

In other words, despite its importance and the

promise, many questions on public sector innovation

remain unexamined, such as how the sources of

innovation affect types of innovations (Demircioglu,

Audretsch, and Slaper 2017 ), outputs of innovation

(Demircioglu 2017 ; Demircioglu and Audretsch

2017 ), and innovation complexity (Demircioglu and

Audretsch 2017 ).

In the age of increasing popularity and even necessity

of public sector innovation, the two edited volumes

reviewed here—both published in 2016—provide

insights, frameworks, guidelines, and case studies

on public sector innovations.

1 At their core, these

books convey the message that innovation in public

organizations matters a lot. Another theme found

in the books and book chapters is that successful

and sustainable innovation cannot be established

by one actor—government or organizational

leadership. Given the increasing complexity of global

problems and grand challenges (e.g., security, global

warming, health, and demographics), more complex

innovations are needed (Demircioglu 2016 , 2017 )

and a collaborative approach to innovation may help

us to better address these problems, improve citizen

satisfaction, make our cities more livable, and make

our lives better. The following sections will explore

these topics in more detail.

Enhancing Public Innovation by

Transforming Public Governance

Enhancing Public Innovation by Transforming

Public Governance is edited by Jacob Torfing and

Peter Triantafillou, who are professors at Roskilde

University in Denmark and leaders in the study

of collaborative innovation. This book centers on

innovation in governance, which reflects the current

focus on networks and governance. The 17 chapters

contributed by 24 authors reflect this overall theme:

“How can we transform the institutional structure,

the organizational designs and cultures, the steering

systems, the management practices and more generally

the entire system of public governance in order to

further stimulate and enhance the production of

innovative solutions to both deep-seated and emerging

problems?” (Torfing and Triantafillou 2016 , 3).

This volume has three parts. The first part of

the book, Linking Governance and Innovation,

includes four chapters: Ansell (Chapter 2) explains

collaborative governance with focus on collaborative

problem solving. Osborne and Radnor (Chapter 3)

explain the New Public Governance (NPG)

concept and implications of the NPG such as the

governance of coproduction and inter-organizational

collaboration. Torfing and Triatafillou (Chapter 4)

analyze public sector innovations around the world,

with seven cases—promoting health literacy in South

Africa, securing housing and employment for young

people in Australia, open university in Britain, cycling

without age in Denmark, neighborhood football

project to reduce youth crime in the Netherlands,

electricity supply and waste management in Brazil,

Danny L. Balfour , Editor

Mehmet A. Demircioglu

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore