Gamechanging Innovation
Nick Gruen highlights a great post from the Dutch excellent government blog about a nifty private sector use of ICT for transformational organisation:
Let’s say that you have a radical idea for Shell. You can submit that to the Gamechanger-program via a website. A small team that reports directly to the CEO Jeroen van der Veer assesses the potential. If they like your idea you have a meeting with them within two weeks after your submission. If they like you they will give you budget to further develop your idea into a “proof of concept”.
Depending on how promising and big the idea is, the Gamechanger-people will bring you to the right executive people directly and you get a chance to pitch. Shell puts around 45 million euros into the Gamechanger program every year, about 10 per cent of its total R&D budget. One of the strongest indications that it’s working: middle management hates it.
Frans Nauta takes the next logical step and writes:
It wouldn’t be hard to set up a Gamechanger-equivalent in the public sector. If you’re a politician or public manager, create a way for the really smart civil servants to escape from the formal hierarchy that you are responsible for. Find a way to select the best ideas, invite the people directly to your table, give them a budget to test those ideas and support them during the testing. There are a lot of entrepreneurial minds working in the public sector, but we hardly have ways to tap into them.
It’s not a new idea apparently, but it sounds like a great idea. Here’s more.
I’ve been meditating on government’s role in creating the right architecture of participation for something like this for the last week or so, but unfortunately exam prep has been getting in the way. File this one under half-finished thoughts for the moment…
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