Improving the Local Landscape for Innovation (Part 1): Mechanics, Partners and Clusters

The following was originally published by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as part of its Occasional Papers Series.

I. Introduction

Cities across the nation increasingly face the challenge of doing more with less. Persistently high unemployment and poverty levels are driving heightened demand for public programs and services while rising personnel costs, aging infrastructure and downward economic pressure constrict public coffers. Because local government officials are responsible for direct service delivery, these leaders are rethinking the institutions and processes responsible for delivering basic services such as protecting residents, educating children and sheltering the homeless. Across the country, promising efforts to achieve greater efficiency and greater impact with fewer dollars are taking hold. New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, New Orleans’s Mitch Landrieu and Oklahoma City’s Mick Cornett are just a few of the current city mayors recognized for driving transformational approaches to local challenges (Avlon, 2012). But their high-profile reforms did not happen overnight. Effective mayors set the stage for future innovation by explicitly devoting attention, time and resources to spurring new ways of thinking about local government.

City leaders today are generating and adopting a variety of strategies to improve the local innovation landscape, defined here as the civic, institutional and political features involved in developing novel solutions to public problems. While some mayors direct their enthusiasm for innovation across city government agencies, others deploy a designated official or team whose portfolio includes responsibility for driving innovation. Chief innovation officer roles, for example, have emerged in a handful of cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco (Badger, 2012. Mayor Thomas Menino launched an innovation team in Boston—a model he calls the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics—that has since spread to other cities. A boost for this team-based approach to local innovation came from Bloomberg Philanthropies in the summer of 2011, when the foundation funded the launch of “Innovation Delivery Teams” in five cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis and New Orleans.

No matter the structure of their approach, city leaders are reframing innovation as a value-based concept to a concrete goal with specific targets—similar to the way that governments have addressed other values such as efficiency and transparency.

The first part of this paper introduces efforts in three US cities to improve the local landscape for innovation in public problem solving. These cities’ stories introduce readers to the nature of trending innovation efforts, including both the diversity of and commonalities among the mayors’ approaches. The vignettes also highlight some of the challenges to prioritizing innovation-specific efforts in light of the competing priorities, traditional mindsets, institutional structures, contractual rules and budgetary pressures that characterize the public sector. The second part of this paper introduces a framework designed to help cities in their efforts to become more innovative jurisdictions.

This paper is the first of three in a miniseries on the innovation landscape in cities and is part of the Occasional Paper Series published by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The miniseries’ foundation rests on research in which the authors participated beginning in 2008 under the direction of Harvard Kennedy School Professors Stephen Goldsmith and Mark Moore. Their mcombined efforts resulted, in part, in the publication of The Power of Social Innovation: How mCivic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good (Goldsmith, Georges, and Burke, 2010), a book that draws from the experience of more than 100 innovators in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. Since 2010, the authors have further developed this research, primarily through the Ash Center’s Project on Social Innovation. As in The Power of Social Innovation, the project explores innovation through the lens of delivery systems or networks comprising providers, funders, constituents, advocates and others. It defines innovation broadly as the spark that brings this complex system of actors together to help people in their everyday lives. The authors also build on the book’s assumption that innovation in public problem solving results from operational, political, financial and cultural changes that city leaders make in their jurisdictions.

Since the publication of The Power of Social Innovation, the authors of this miniseries have engaged with several cities across the country on their pursuit of local innovation. Through online forums, first-person accounts and surveys, as well as working in the field as participant-observers, the authors incorporated the experiences of dozens of additional innovators into their body of research. The authors also conducted in-depth interviews with senior officials in ten U.S. cities whose mayors have made innovation a priority. Each of these cities is promoting innovation focused on a variety of issues including business and economic development, education, health and government efficiencies. In order to introduce and illustrate the framework provided in this miniseries, the authors chose to focus on specific initiatives from three cities. The authors did not conduct, nor did they have access to, formal assessments of these efforts. The selection of the three cities—Boston, Denver and New York—was instead based on length of time each has been active in formal innovation efforts (for at least two years), level of commitment by the city (whether it has been built into the city’s infrastructure) and robustness of the strategies deployed.

It is important to note that the authors do not intend for readers to consider these brief cases—or even the miniseries itself—a definitive account of current best practices in public-sector innovation. Rather, the authors seek to contribute to the existing work of scholars and practitioners in three ways:

1. bring together in one place a number of existing ideas on local innovation strategies;
2. explore those ideas not from the perspective of an innovator, as is most common in the discourse, but rather through the unique lens of the operational, political and cultural context in which innovators operate; and
3. propose a new framework for creating an innovative jurisdiction in an effort to generate discussion among practitioners, students and fellow researchers.

To help achieve these goals, the authors welcome and hope for ample feedback on this miniseries, particularly from leaders engaged in driving innovation in their own jurisdictions, whose practical experiences and insights provide detail and nuance and are foundational to discussions such as this.

II. Three Efforts to Drive Local Innovation

Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics
As he entered a fifth term, Mayor Thomas Menino increasingly focused on driving a spirit of innovation more commonly associated with Boston’s private sector and academic institutions. In 2010, Menino launched the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM), a small team mandated to engage residents while solving public problems and reinventing city services. In some ways, MONUM is an office of research and development for the city. Reporting directly to the mayor and the city’s chief information officer, MONUM Co-chairs Nigel Jacob and Chrism Osgood have been granted the flexibility and political cover to identify and develop nontraditional solutions to challenges such as neighborhood safety, accessible health services and public school performance.

A common thread across the authors’ conversations with Osgood and Jacob was the city’s focus on broadening and deepening civic engagement—what it calls “participatory urbanism.” In practice, MONUM maintains a strong focus on mobile and other information technology platforms, in particular, on relatively small-scale applications costing approximately $10,000 each. These technology investments are generally paid for in part by public dollars in combination with nonprofit or other private sector contributions. MONUM’s flagship effort, launched in 2010, is “Citizens Connect”—a Web and mobile-enabled portal tied into the city’s 311 call system that allows residents to report broken street lights and graffiti to the city through the use of a simple and accessible smart phone application. Other IT-related innovations in MONUM’s portfolio include “Community PlanIt,” a Web-based social network developed by the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College that allows Boston residents to engage with the planning process in their communities, and “Street Bump,” a pothole sensor that relies on drivers’ smart phones. These apps have quickly attracted the interest of dozens of city officials outside Boston and have been adopted by at least two other cities as of 2012. In a nod to these innovations, Jacob and Osgood were recognized by Governing Magazine as two of its “Public Officials of the Year” in 2011 (Trenkner, 2011).

MONUM’s key strategies include creating platforms for encouraging new ideas and new innovators, helping to develop and shepherd along those ideas and innovators and transforming the culture of innovation in the City of Boston.

To attract and identify a pipeline of novel ideas, MONUM has sought to make its office a trusted channel for city employees to bring forward ideas that they were previously unable or unwilling to risk pursuing on their own. MONUM also focuses on outreach to hackers and programmers, corporate partners, local nonprofits and city residents themselves. Another prime source of potential innovations (and potential innovators) is the office’s collaboration with students and professors at local public policy and design schools to develop new ideas through applied learning exercises in courses. Osgood sees an additional longer-term benefit to working with university students, as well—the training of future government innovators (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012.

MONUM follows a multitier approach to monitoring the robustness of its pipeline—one of the more advanced among the cities with whom the authors spoke. The office records the quantity of new ideas and the diversity of sources for those ideas. One important measure is whether MONUM considers an idea truly experimental and novel, as opposed to being an adaptation or replication of an existing innovation. Osgood and Jacob also track the number of projects piloted and how quickly each innovation moves through the pipeline for the sake of operational improvements. And they record how many projects are adopted by additional city agencies or by outside cities.

MONUM also assists in the growth and development of innovations while supporting individual innovators. Promising ideas benefit from the backing of the mayor’s office when needed, and— in some cases—a small amount of capital to help with further development. The office provides innovators with connections to its extensive network and assistance in thinking through models and solutions. One role of these partnerships is to infuse development teams with the necessary expertise that the office lacks in-house. For example, at every stage of the innovation process for the Street Bump app—from prototyping to refining the data analytics—the team reached out to its network of external partners to secure essential expertise (James Solomon, personal communication, January 3, 2013.). MONUM also builds useful skills among the innovators within its portfolio, in particular around best practices in project management and innovation: prototyping, testing, measuring and reflection. Moreover, Osgood and Jacob focus on messaging and communication, which is a critical component in the context of city politics. MONUM helps innovators from both within and outside city government manage their relationships with the mayor, the media, city employees and the community. When needed, the office might simply act as a cheerleader or step in as a protector if failure is imminent (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012).

MONUM’s development assistance and support not only help to advance ideas with merit, they also bolster the skills and confidence of innovators within city government, increasing the likelihood that they will continue to generate ideas in the future. In providing these tools, MONUM hopes to slowly reshape the landscape for innovation in the City of Boston. Above all, Jacob and Osgood view MONUM’s mission as culture change (Millner, 2012; Reyes, 2012; Story Bellows and Jeffrey Friedman, personal communication, May 24, 2012). As Jacob asks, “It is easy to come up with one good idea. But what about the next time?” (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012)(11) It is a challenge to balance the work of shifting culture within city government with the work of identifying, testing, launching and adopting the projects in its pipeline. Individual innovations like Citizens Connect and Street Bump are what capture the attention of the media and the imagination of the general public. They are both novel and tangible. In contrast, when Osgood says that his group within the Mayor’s Office aims to be the “willing face of failure in government,” (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012) the goal might be novel but it is intangible.

It is perhaps obvious to state that actively courting failure is politically risky. However, this emphasis both reinforces, and is reinforced by, Mayor Menino’s vocal call for more innovation across city government. Menino’s public pronouncements and speeches, echoed regularly by senior advisors, make the case to residents and external stakeholders for the need for innovative ideas and new experiments. At the same time, the mayor is signaling to city employees that novel solutions are not only acceptable but also encouraged (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012).

One of MONUM’s challenges is evaluating its impact. While reporting on the number of pilot projects and number of cities that have expressed an interest in a new app is fairly straightforward, there has been no comprehensive effort to determine whether and how MONUM’s efforts are changing the culture within Boston city government or increasing community engagement. Indeed, measuring these types of changes in any innovation effort is a difficult, and often elusive, task. Osgood envisions “the more that people like frontline employees and Department of Public Works step forward to say, ‘I’ll try that’ or ‘I’ve got an idea’ or ‘I’m willing to work with somebody on something new’...is the most clear, tangible impact of the approach” (Chris Osgood, personal communication, June 6, 2012).

Finally, similar to Mayor Menino’s broader efforts to promote innovation outside of City Hall— such as the new Innovation District on Boston’s waterfront—Osgood and Jacob look to promote innovations outside of city government. The pair often seek to leverage their contacts with universities, nonprofits and high-tech startups to make introductions and nurture collaborations between external institutions, many of which cross disciplines (Nigel Jacob, personal communication, June 6, 2012). Similarly, for almost a decade, the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships, profiled in the next section, has shared MONUM’s belief that cross-sector collaboration can be a key to unlocking latent ideas and opportunities across a jurisdiction.

Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships

In early 2004, reflecting his own cross-sector experience, then-new Mayor John Hickenlooper created the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships (DOSP, http://www.denvergov.org/strategicpartnerships/) to be an “intentional bridge” between the City of Denver and the local nonprofit, business and philanthropic sectors. The DOSP ran trainings, collaborated on foundation and federal grant proposals and helped mobilize the Denver community in volunteer service (Summary of Current Local and State Initiatives, 2009). In 2009, under the leadership of Director Dace West, DOSP sharpened its focus on the local nonprofit sector.

As in most cities, Denver’s nonprofits deliver a variety of publicly funded services. In a typical year, approximately 150 nonprofits contract with Denver to provide critical services, representing 300 social-service contracts valued at more than $40 million. These nonprofits play a significant role but represent only a small fraction of the city’s total nonprofit community. DOSP has engaged an additional 3,000 local organizations, representing almost one in four nonprofits in metro Denver. In a typical year, DOSP delivers ten trainings to representatives of more than 350 nonprofits and city agencies with good results—up to 50 percent of participants typically report engaging in new cross-sector partnerships after DOSP trainings (Dace West, personal communication, September 27, 2012).

By 2011, DOSP had established itself within Denver city government and remained in place under the new administration of Mayor Michael Hancock. While DOSP has evolved to reflect the new mayor’s priorities, the purpose of DOSP’s engagement with local nonprofits remains the same: leverage each sector’s assets to develop better solutions to Denver’s toughest public Problems (Dace West, personal communication, June 19, 2012). Three of DOSP’s key strategies are providing a platform through which city agencies and local nonprofits create new connections and partnerships, building the capacity and otherwise supporting local providers across all sectors in their collaborative efforts and eliminating administrative hurdles within the public purchasing system of nonprofit services.

To facilitate and encourage new connections, DOSP organizes, facilitates and participates in collaboratives specific to an issue or need that the city or community has identified and that might benefit from better coordination of effort (Dace West, personal communication, June 19, 2012). For example, DOSP worked with nonprofits and other local organizations to conduct a robust assessment of Denver’s affordable housing needs. These new collaborative efforts can serve not only to better align city and nonprofit activity but also as pipelines for innovative organizations and community groups to engage as providers of public services, bringing potential innovators to the city’s attention. Indeed, DOSP often recruits a diverse cohort of actors —younger organizations, those other than the “usual suspects”—into DOSP’s collaborative projects and events (Dace West, personal communication, June 19, 2012).

Also at the core of DOSP’s approach are outreach and education in support of collaboration. DOSP runs workshops and trainings that annually reach hundreds of nonprofit providers and colleagues within city government. These trainings focus on essential skills and on developing the tools needed to form cross-sector partnerships. DOSP also facilitates exchanges of ideas through meet-and-greet events in which a city agency shares information on its work and affords opportunities for providers to meet agency representatives. A 2012 addition to the development assistance that DOSP provides local nonprofits was the Denver Shared Space Project (http://www.denversharedspaces.org/), multitenant centers that help nonprofits operate more efficiently, share resources and establish new relationships. DOSP has a well-established system for measuring its work in building skills and making connections. The office asks for immediate feedback from participants in its workshops and other sessions on the specific skills and knowledge they have gleaned. After six months, DOSP follows up with participants to assess their skill retention and any behavior change, which might include steps to ready themselves to partner, outreach to another sector or actual collaboration (Dace West, personal communication, September 27, 2012).