Innovation in Public Services

Laura Bunt, UK IRC 17th June 2013

This afternoon:

• Overview of Nesta and our research and practical work on public services innovation

• Spotlight on two new research projects: - Adoption of innovation in health services - Managing public sector innovation • Drivers for future research

About

Research and policy work on innovation in different fields and contexts

Practical programmes to support innovation within organisations and communities

Investments in innovation

Research on public services innovation

Our hypothesis: public services innovation is often a coordination or systems change challenge; there are big returns from innovation for whole systems and smaller returns and higher risks for individual organisations (which more often thrive by adapting or adopting the innovations of others).

Our research explores need for interconnected elements to make public services innovative, including:

Structures to drive and promote innovation

Processes that embed innovation in key aspects of decision making (commissioning, politics, crowdsourcing)

Combining experimentation and close attention to evidence

Exit tools and processes for decommissioning

Cultures that reward risks and creativity

Tools and skills that are widely shared

Who are the Superadopters?

Who are the Superadopters? To identify public service organisations and individuals that take up new innovations rapidly, to understand their characteristics and behaviour, and to see how they can be used to speed up the diffusion of innovation in public services.

Phase 1 Research with Mastodon C New drugs adopted in primary care in England (GP prescription data, NHS Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) and Indicator Portals) since 2010 Analysed adoption patterns of 108 potentially innovative items Detailed analysis of prescription pattern of 5 NICE accredited drugs

Phase 2 Research with Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation(CASMI) Wider range of health innovations (novel diagnostic screening, practice-based technologies, process and service innovations) Qualitative research with GPs to explore ‘superadopter’ characteristics

Phase One (2012)

Early Adoption in Primary Care Data from GP Prescriptions with contextual data from QOF and Indicator Portal Chart shows the number of innovative drugs (from phase 1 sample of 108) adopter early (in first 3 months of availability) by each GP practice in 2yrs.

Emerging findings:

• Most new drugs introduced in the period studied were not adopted by most practices (slow adoption rates?);

• Most significant factor that made a practice more likely to adopt a new drug was whether nearby practices also adopted it (social network influence?);

• Large practices and those with larger patient lists were slightly more likely to adopt new drugs early; those service deprived neighbourhoods were, on average, slightly less likely to;

• NICE issuing guidance does not appear to create a step-change in the number of items prescribed; growth of a drug tends to begin immediately after MHRA approval and continue smoothly.

Thomas, E., Bennett, F., and Westlake, S. (2013) In Search of the Superadopters: what open data tells us about GP prescribing practices. London: Nesta

Managing public sector innovation

Managing public sector innovation (iteams) To discover what are the most useful and effective structures for managing innovation in Government and the public sector, including labs, units, teams, funds etc.

Phase 1 Selection of global case studies from desk research and assessment framework (shortlist of ~25 case studies with demonstrable impact) Gathering descriptive information e.g. why was it created, what it does methods, resourcing, location, impacts, links with wider organisational culture.

Phase 2 Primary research (interviews) with cases - site visits, qualitative interviews, observations Comparative typology to enable decision makers to make informed choices about different options and to act as recommendations [Beyond February 2014: explore complementary strands i.e. institutions outside of government that influence public sector innovation]

decentralised

centralised

internal external

Prizes

accelerators

Collaboratives

Behavioural

insights team

Nesta

Innovation Lab

Emerging findings:

• Right balance of insider/outsider structure (sufficient proximity to political priorities, sufficient distance to take risks);

• Right balance of practical/creative (relatively rapid practical and demonstrable impact vital);

• Strong internal processes for building coherent teams out of diverse elements;

• Early focus on defined problem solving; • Ethos driven (reform), methods driven(design), tool driven (data); • Ability to iterate between specifics and systemic implications.

Drivers for future research

• More evidence about cultural and behavioural factors • Opportunity in use of new data sources – e.g. data grants

looking at social network data, online job ads, company websites, etc. as sources of both structured and unstructured data on innovation in public services.

• Experiments in idea generation – crowdsourcing; challenge prizes for public sector tasks; accelerators; internal labs – and developing a community of practice drawing on research on the effectiveness of these different tools.

• Develop research and skills programme on systemic innovation involving business, NGOs etc

Thank you Laura.bunt@nesta.org.uk

@laurabunt