Innovation in Social Welfare and Human Services

A quick scan of the vast literature on innovation shows that it is dominated by theoretical and empirical work by economists focused predominantly on the private sector (p. 9). Perhaps this is unsurprising since innovation is, for many businesses, the way they survive – think Apple and consider the role it has played in their success.

The public sector is often cast as being resistant to innovation. Rolf Ronning and Marcus Knutagard, academics from Norway and Sweden, respectively, provide a thoughtful and practical overview of innovation in social welfare and human services, which challenges this assumption and makes a case for its the role in the sector.

In the business world, innovation is defined not just as coming up with a new product or service but also as finding its commercial potential. 3M’s accidental invention of a glue that wasn’t very sticky was not an innovation until the glue was used with small squares of yellow paper to create the Post-it note. A slightly broader conceptualisation of innovation – the idea of doing something new and developing this new thing to work in a given context – works across both the public and private sectors (p. 8).

Although a slim volume at just over 100 pages, the book should have broad appeal. It takes a distinctly European perspective, offering ways of thinking and examples that are relevant for any welfare democracy, and takes a broad definition of social innovation as “any activity concerned with improving the quality of life for vulnerable groups”. The writers have a gift for selecting memorable aphorisms to convey their ideas. For example, they say that good innovators must “rock the boat but stay in it”, suggesting that innovation should be disruptive but without alienating the people who will need to adopt the new practice or product.

The book opens by addressing the definitions of both innovation and social innovation, and then narrows its focus to public services. In Chapter 5, the authors get to the heart of how innovation in the public and private sectors differs by attending to the role of power and who makes decisions that will permit or stifle new ideas. This is followed by a review of levels of innovation, including macro level innovations like the National Health Service (NHS) and micro innovations such as hand-washing in hospitals, and obstacles to innovation. It closes by arguing that despite different contexts and drivers, innovation is just as important for the survival of the public sector as it is in the private sector.

The authors were prompted to write the book when they attended the Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development in Stockholm in 2012. They had written a book in Swedish with other colleagues on the topic of innovation and presented on this. It attracted a lot of interest at the conference. They were surprised to find that innovation was not discussed elsewhere in the conference. This mirrors the wider context. While there is much talk of the need for innovation in the public sector, particularly as a response to the global economic situation and cuts to public spending, the study of the subject remains dominated by the private sector. This book draws a line in the sand, describing where the concepts and thinking of the established literature are relevant, and where a different approach is required.

The book is packed with interesting ideas and makes very good use of case studies. One idea stands out as being particularly relevant. The authors argue that the service users and employees should be “the innovators, rather than being “innovated” by others” (p. 1). They maintain that “the sector needs new and creative solutions, and that it is important for these solutions to take into account the special demands of the sector, as well as both the tacit and the codified knowledge of service users and employees.”

This point brought to mind the entrepreneurs Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg who, at the time of writing this review, were attempting a round-the-world flight in a solar-powered plane. When asked whether the commercial airlines were interested in their plane, they replied by saying “It was not the candle makers who invented electricity”. The notion that radical innovation requires an outside perspective is not new. Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, was famously critical of using focus groups as he believed that people did not know what they wanted until they were shown it. This is probably one of the fundamental differences between the two sectors when it comes to innovation. The types of innovations that will lead to improvements in the quality of life of vulnerable groups will likely be neither radical nor technological but rather incremental and human. Consequently, those people who receive and provide those innovations are probably best placed to be the innovators.

What then is the role of evidence in the innovation process? The authors, like many others who write on the subject, see evidence and innovation as being at different ends of the same continuum. And, curiously, they include evidence-based services in the chapter on obstacles to innovation. They state that “We do not want to ignore existing knowledge, but some established truths have to be challenged”. It is hard to understand why an evidence-based approach would not be the foundation for a future innovation. For example, this might involve taking an effective group-based parenting programme and seeing if, through innovation and the authentic involvement of parents and practitioners, the same results can be achieved by delivering the programme virtually using tablets. Alternatively, why not take a class of effective programmes and draw out common theories of change as the basis for new, more scalable, versions? The book misses an opportunity to consider how evidence and innovation can be combined in the quest to improve the quality of life of vulnerable groups.

As welfare democracies across Europe cope with the on-going fallout of the global financial crash, the need for innovation is greater than ever. The expectation to achieve more with less will be with us for many more years. This book will be a useful and practical aid to anyone on that journey.