On the 14 March, we had a very long day – The Director of WPS2025, The Director of Local Government Innovation at Nesta and the two Co-Public Innovation Leads Wales also from Nesta and myself made three meetings in one 12 hour day.
The day started in Carmarthenshire at Trinity Saint Davids, with the first seminar looking at the Seeds of Change draft report. We had 10 participants representing nine different organisations and councils. There were many important comments and ideas which came out in the discussions and which are being incorporated into the report. From a personal perspective, three things stood out for me:
- For innovation to take off we need inspiration in leadership, innovators need to be encouraged.
- Unlike in business, failure is seen as not an option in Public Services – as it affects people directly. But with innovation comes a risk of failure.
- One of the attendees used the analogy of the Yellow Brick road in the Wizard of Oz. Only one person set out with a clear aim (Dorothy), she picked up others along the way and solved problems and issues as they travelled along. When they got to the end of the road it was an anti-climax – the outcome wasn’t as they had expected. However, they had adapted along the road and actually solved the problems along the way so that everyone had a better outcome.
The five of us then jumped into cars and headed to the Cardiff City Stadium for the second seminar of the day also looking at the Seeds of Change draft report. Again we had 10 participants representing ten different organisations and public bodies. As with the Carmarthen seminar there were excellent discussions.
- Wales innovation is at a micro level – it needs to be able to get to a macro level once proven but this seems to be where we fail.
- Success should be about the number of obstacles overcome and issues solved and not the end game.
- We have drinking holes of knowledge and innovation, we need to build an inclusive movement – a pipeline for innovation. Need ideas, then people who can develop the ideas into a service, then others who can provide the service which can then be analysed and those that are successful shared.
After this meeting, we fit in a cup of coffee before heading back to Cardiff Business School for a Steering Group meeting, where we looked not just at the draft report from the Seeds of Change but also the Weathering the Storm report. Now the editors of the reports are busy making all the amendments so we should have both reports out in the next month or two.
Sarah
