Innovation is not just about coming up with good ideas, or borrowing and adapting existing ones. You have to implement that idea in the real world in a way that works and continues to work after the initial excitement dies down. That applies to public service innovation as much as to the entrepreneur.

In an organisational context  that means at first having a source of ideas from which to formulate practical propositions. There is much said and done here, such as knowledge sharing and innovation web sites. However, from a set of possible initiatives, an organisation needs to decide which to implement. This entails a management decision-making process involving feasibility assessment, costing, investment appraisal and business case development. Not all public sector bodies necessarily have a good process in place to do these crucial steps. Then, once the organisational and financial commitment is in place, comes implementation. This involves project management and change management, and is often difficult, particularly in a public service context where there are multiple stakeholders and interests. Putting the innovation on a sustainable financial and management footing, as part of the implementation project, is also non-trivial, as a history of deceased pilot projects in the public sector testifies.

So the Delivery Innovation Team would like to put on record that in its view

Innovation = Creativity + Decision-making + Execution

or

I = C + D + E

IPR Note: this concept of I = C + D + E is the original creation of Paul Waller and Ewen McKinnon who assert their intellectual property rights and moral rights as authors. It is licensed by them for general use in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution licence terms.