Abstract
The demand of a new generation of public services is leading to a systematic exploration of what design can do for public organizations. The article presents and discusses, with the help of 2 design projects conducted in the Municipality of Turin, a design based theoretical framework for organizational change by conducting long terms process of engagement and exposition of employees from public sector to design culture. The 2 cases show as the raise of innovation capacity in public sector based on the practice of service design projects must consider the necessity of coping with long-standing challenges, i.e. the innovation of public bodies; the peculiarities of organizational learning processes and of the absorptive capacity of the organizations; and the overall resistance to change in people and organizations instead of trying to circumvent them.
Keywords
public sector innovation, co-creation, organizational culture, experiential learning, innovation capacity, design thinking
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.355
Citation
Rizzo, F., Schmittinger, F., and Deserti, A. (2020) Expanding innovation capacity in public sector by design projects, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.355
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Expanding innovation capacity in public sector by design projects
The demand of a new generation of public services is leading to a systematic exploration of what design can do for public organizations. The article presents and discusses, with the help of 2 design projects conducted in the Municipality of Turin, a design based theoretical framework for organizational change by conducting long terms process of engagement and exposition of employees from public sector to design culture. The 2 cases show as the raise of innovation capacity in public sector based on the practice of service design projects must consider the necessity of coping with long-standing challenges, i.e. the innovation of public bodies; the peculiarities of organizational learning processes and of the absorptive capacity of the organizations; and the overall resistance to change in people and organizations instead of trying to circumvent them.