At Work Newswire

By Adrian Brown

Innovation in the public sector is particularly tough to pull off and those managers that are able to achieve it must be a particularly special breed. Consider Bill Strickland, a social entrepreneur who founded the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC) in Pittsburgh.

MBC is an organization providing educational programs for struggling middle and high school students and unemployed adults. Strickland himself had struggled from a poor background and felt he had been “saved” by a local ceramic artist who took interest in him a taught him to be a potter.

MBC had grown from operating out of a row house basement in 1968 to a multi-million dollar social organization. Few doubt that the main driving force behind this extraordinary success has been Strickland’s intense passion and determination. He has toured the country for the past two decades giving “The Speech,” a passionate exposition of MBC’s work and call for donations. Strickland’s work was recognized in 1996 with a MacArthur Foundation no-strings “genius” award of $295,000.

The MBC story is not unfamiliar. Often we find that those public sector managers who are able to continually innovate are a rather special breed. Professor Robert D. Behn has called them “nuts.” Behn writes (in “Replication (continued): It takes a Nut!”, Management Insights, April 19, 2006): “These innovators want to accomplish something, and they realize that to make that something happen they have to think and behave differently.”

The most successful innovative public sector managers tend to adopt two tactics in particular:

• Persuasion. Showing the benefits of an innovation, establishing demonstration projects and social marketing.
• Accommodation. Consulting with affected parties, co-opting affected parties by involving them in the governance of the innovation, compensating losers and making the program culturally sensitive.

It is notable that strong-arm tactics rarely appear to be successful in the public sector, with an almost universal emphasis on consensus-building approaches. Successful innovators are also adept at marshaling a wide range of supporters from within their own agency as well as from other agencies, politicians and the wider community.

If innovation is driven by “nuts” then what happens when they move on or when you want to replicate their success in other areas? MBC has struggled to replicate its particular model in other cities. Only Strickland himself has been successful at selling the idea and establishing the sort of relationships that led to million dollar donations and his schedule was already punishing, delivering “The Speech” dozens of times a month and attending board meetings at affiliate organizations.

This is an excerpt from Adrian Brown’s book “Creativity & Innovation” (MindEdge Press, 2007). Brown has worked as a consultant and advisor in both the public and private sectors. From 2002-2005 he served as an advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair covering a wide range of policy areas including health and transport.

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Copyright © 2007 Adrian Brown

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