The Gap Between the Rhetorical Why and the Practical What and How of Public Sector Innovation

ABSTRACT

Politicians and policymakers call for public sector innovation to address societal challenges and to streamline and cut costs. This results in rationales to handle both smaller and more complex types of innovation. To explore how these rationales materialize at a workplace level, this paper aims to examine perceptions of why innovation in the public sector is needed, what innovation is, and how innovation work can be conducted. The findings demonstrate difficulties in establishing an organizational purpose for innovation and translating this understanding into practice. The result is a gap between the rhetorical why and the practical what and how of innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Public sector innovation
• municipalities
• innovation capacity
• incremental innovation
• radical innovation

Introduction

Innovation in the public sector is important. Unprecedented societal challenges – such as climate change, migration, aging population, crime, and inequality – require public organizations to rethink their strategies for resolving complex issues, and innovation is considered by many to be one of the few ways of addressing these complex challenges (Demircioglu & Vivona, 2021; Harris & Albury, 2009; Helbin & Van Looy, 2022; Patterson et al., 2009; Vivona et al., 2020).

Influenced by private sector services, citizens are also beginning to expect and demand more personalized public services and increased availability (Vivona et al., 2020). These demands, combined with the growing number of societal challenges, put the public sector in the middle of what Albury (2011) calls “a perfect storm.” This raises awareness that standard solutions and traditional approaches may not provide adequate solutions, and it is imperative that public service organizations support creative approaches to these wicked problems. In fact, this is recognized by representatives from all over the world in the OECD’s “Declaration of Public Sector Innovation,” which states that “it cannot be assumed that existing structures, processes and interventions remain the most appropriate or effective means for the public sector to achieve its purpose and deliver upon government and citizen needs and expectations” (OECD, 2019, p. 5).

While innovation in the public sector is needed to come up with radical solutions to pressing societal issues, it is also needed to effectively tackle the constant pressure to streamline and cut costs. Although both objectives are imperative, they may be achieved using different strategies and types of innovation. Gradual long-term development that entails streamlining and cutting operating costs can often be achieved by implementing an accumulation of smaller incremental innovations (Benner & Tushman, 2003; Wihlman et al., 2016). However, solving complex problems such as the previously mentioned societal challenges has been shown to require more disruptive and radical innovations (Blumentritt et al., 2005; De Brentani, 2001; Dumay et al., 2013; A. Koch & Strotmann, 2008; Tidd, 2001; Tidd & Bessant, 2020; Zambrano-Gutierrez & Puppim de Oliveira, 2021) and previous research has called for more qualitative studies to identify the conditions conducive to radical innovations in the public sector (Demircioglu & Audretsch, 2020).

As seen in the preceding paragraphs, innovation is essential in the public sector to help solve unprecedented societal challenges. However, if such rationales are to become more than just rhetoric, it is imperative to examine whether the employees in the public sector (those who are responsible for transforming rhetoric into reality on a daily basis) share this understanding of why innovation is needed and what needs to be done as well as examine their perceptions regarding opportunities for how innovation work can materialize at a workplace level. To date, few studies have empirically explored these questions in a way that is close to workplace practice.

Using data from three Swedish municipalities that have made deliberate efforts to engage employees in innovative practices, this paper aims to examine participant perceptions of why innovation in the public sector is needed, what innovation is, and how innovation work can be conducted. The empirical data presented in the article draws on 23 qualitative interviews with municipal employees, first-line managers, and innovation coaches who were all involved in these initiatives to increase innovative practices.

In the following section, the conceptual framework is outlined. Next, the research setting is described, as well as considerations related to the study’s methodology. This is followed by a presentation of the findings, and the article concludes with a discussion of the central findings, limitations and suggestions for future research.

Conceptual framework

Defining the concept of public sector innovation has proven challenging in recent decades (Chen et al., 2020). The most recent edition of the OECD Oslo manual presents a definition of innovation made general enough to apply to both business enterprises and public sector innovation by stating that “an innovation is a new or improved product or process (or combination thereof) that differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been made available to potential users (product) or brought into use by the unit (process)” (OECD, 2018, p. 60). While such a general definition is used as a basis in many definitions of public sector innovation, some also argue the importance of taking an “interest in public sector innovation on its own terms, not just as a presumed identical twin of business sector innovation that just happens to be non-profit” (Lykkebo & Munch-Andersen, 2021, p. 50). Furthermore, scholars have also pointed to how conceptual connotations carried over from the private sector may result in the misconception that innovation means working with (high-tech) product manufacturing, which presents a problem to both the research community and practitioners working with public sector innovation (Nählinder & Fogelberg Eriksson, 2019). However, despite the issues in forming a universally accepted definition specific to the public sector, there are some common elements that recur in most definitions of public sector innovation. A large and growing body of research indicates that an innovation should be new (if not to the world, at least to the context in which it is applied) and should add value to a defined group of intended users. To realize this added value, it must also be implemented, which differentiates innovations from ideas (Fuglsang, 2010; Johannessen et al., 2001; Tsameti et al., 2023).

Another relevant differentiation is the distinction between continuous improvements and innovation. For decades, the public sector has been participating in initiatives to improve the quality of service delivery, and with the advent of innovative practices, the issue of disentangling the two arises (Cole, 2001; Gullmark, 2021; Singh & Smith, 2006). While researchers have continuously contested the conflation of these two concepts, Arundel and Huber (2013) showed that employees in the public sector also have difficulties distinguishing between innovation and ways of continuously improving operations.

According to P. Koch et al. (2006), the difference between continuous improvements and innovation is the specific intention of generating something new, while Fuglsang (2010) argues that innovations can occur without intention and may be recognized as innovations long after implementation. The British National Health Service claims that key stakeholders need to recognize an innovation for it to count as such, and Johannessen et al. (2001) argue that the uniqueness of an innovation is proportionate to the size of the economic unit that recognizes it as an innovation. However, the issue with basing the definition of innovation on recognition is that studies have shown that much of the innovation that takes place in the public sector is not recognized as innovation even by the innovators themselves (Helbin & Van Looy, 2022; Wihlman et al., 2016).

As stated, it can be difficult to distinguish continuous improvements from the concept of incremental innovation. Incremental innovation can be expressed as small changes based on existing knowledge and ways of working (Benner & Tushman, 2003; Wihlman et al., 2016). It thus often seeks to improve working methods or products that are already in existence, complementing existing sociotechnical regimes without opposing existing paradigms (Dumay et al., 2013; Ellström, 2010; Wagner & Fain, 2018; Zambrano-Gutierrez & Puppim de Oliveira, 2021). Incremental innovation is therefore similar to the closely related concept of “bricolage,” which also describes small adjustments made by employees who encounter service users and observe that certain changes need to be made (Bugge & Bloch, 2016; Fuglsang, 2010).

Innovations can be characterized on a continuum from small incremental changes to radical sector-altering innovations (Wagner & Fain, 2018). Radical innovation commonly entails making fundamental and disruptive changes in the way something is done, in order to create something qualitatively new (Albury, 2005; Benner & Tushman, 2003; Demircioglu & Audretsch, 2020; Iacuzzi et al., 2021). Hence, radical innovations often require significant changes to processes and generate significant changes in results outside and inside public service organizations (Demircioglu & Vivona, 2021). For example, a radically novel way of providing services may require organisational changes such as new ways of collaborating across the organisation and new forms of governance (Nählinder & Fogelberg Eriksson, 2017).

In light of this discussion, it is clear that incremental and radical innovation serve different purposes, both of which are important. Consequently, balancing these two types of innovation is also essential, as they have often been shown to compete for the same resources (Helbin & Van Looy, 2022; Smith & Umans, 2015; Vivona et al., 2020). Furthermore, organizational conditions may favor one of these types of innovation over the other, and they may not require the same type of support (Osborne & Brown, 2011).

It is therefore important to ask what the public sector can do to encourage both radical and incremental innovation. Previous studies indicate that a pronounced strategy that emphasizes both types of innovation is essential (Agolla & Lill, 2013; Chiva et al., 2014; Helbin & Van Looy, 2022). Establishing strategic directives allows innovation efforts to be directed at both daily operational challenges and the big challenges at the top of political agendas (Albury, 2005; Nnanna et al., 2023). Moreover, budgeting processes can be adjusted in order to facilitate cross-silo collaboration, and innovation budgets can be apportioned to reflect the importance of both incremental and more complex innovations (Harris & Albury, 2009; Van Dijck & Steen, 2022).

Several studies have also indicated that innovation in the public sector, which has a reputation for being risk-averse, is more likely to involve incremental than radical innovation, since radical changes involve an inherent risk (Luke et al., 2010; Torugsa & Arundel, 2017). Since radical innovation is exploratory in nature and involves a greater change for the organization, it is more difficult to accurately predict the outcome and its consequences (Osborne & Brown, 2011). Thus, radical innovation requires the organization to accept failure and risk (Dodgson et al., 2005; Thøgersen et al., 2021), and to set specific goals and metrics to provide incentives for exploratory activities (Palm & Lilja, 2017). Defining such explicit objectives can assist in maintaining a focus on key societal challenges (like climate change), even in cases where avoiding such issues may seem to have no immediate effect on daily operations and therefore risk being omitted.

Moreover, previous research has also shown that the efficiency initiatives of recent decades adversely impact radical innovation in the public sector, and that this needs to be addressed in order to support this sort of innovation (Potts, 2009). Business ideas, such as NPM, have been transferred to the public sector to increase efficiency and reduce costs, which has also resulted in smaller, more self-governed but detached units and an increase in time spent on metrics and evaluative tasks (Fuglsang, 2010; Thøgersen et al., 2021). Other methods of streamlining such as Lean, TQM, and Kaizen have also been introduced to the public sector context (De Jong & Kemp, 2003). Several of these methodologies have shifted decision-making downwards, making it easier to implement small, incremental innovations at the departmental level but harder to implement radical, enterprise-wide innovations (Albury, 2005; Mathieu et al., 2020). It is true that the emphasis on “elimination of waste” has purged much of the undesirable waste, but it has also removed some of the “good waste” which is a necessary part of experimentation (Potts, 2009). According to Potts (2009, p. 36), “the goal of efficiency ‘crowds out’ the goal of innovation,” and other researchers also indicate that a focus on short-term efficiency gains in public sector quality work could hinder more radical types of innovation (Palm & Lilja, 2017; Parsons, 2006; Prajogo & Sohal, 2001; Wihlman et al., 2016).

Research setting

The research presented in this study was conducted within Swedish municipalities, which are political institutions tasked with providing social services such as social welfare, education, environmental and health protection, waste management and sewerage systems, housing, and libraries. A quarter of all Swedish workers are employed by the country’s 290 municipalities (SKR, 2022).

To increase the innovation capacity within the public sector, targeted investments have been made by the Swedish Innovation Agency (Vinnova). During the period 2016 to 2019, Vinnova implemented a national program with the purpose of supporting deliberate efforts to systematise innovative practices and engage employees in working with innovation. This resulted in the set up of 12 innovation support operations in the Swedish municipal context. Vinnova specified that the purpose of the program was to “increase the innovation capacity in municipal activities by capturing and developing ideas, testing solutions and utilizing them” (Vinnova, 2016, p. 3, translated by author). However, the participating municipalities were free to set up their innovation support operations in a way that they saw would best fit their needs, as long as the support was directed at employees with the purpose of facilitating their innovation work. The studied innovation support operations adopted various strategies to support innovative practices and while some provided training using service design methodology others offered innovation coaching to employees wanting to develop an idea (reference temporarily removed to protect blind peer-review process). Participating municipalities had the option of applying jointly or separately, resulting in innovation support sites of various sizes. The funding for each site was however limited to SEK 4 million, with a matching contribution from the local municipality. Considering that the participating sites represented examples of innovation work by municipalities in Sweden, they were the subject of the study in question.

Method

Selection and participants

In this study, qualitative interviews were held with 23 participants from three sites participating in the abovementioned national innovation program. The three sites were strategically selected for analysis in this study. To achieve variation in the sample, three selection criteria were used. In the first selection criterion, the support strategy employed in the innovation support operations was taken into account. Descriptions of the support strategy were obtained from the grant applications. The second selection criterion pertained to whether the innovation support was provided to certain departments within a municipality or to all of them. The final criterion considered whether the innovation support operation served one or more municipalities.

The selection process resulted in the identification of three innovation support operations in Swedish municipalities. In case A, municipal employees and managers were provided with educational courses in service design methodology. In case B, employees were offered innovation coaching as well as courses in service design methodology. In case C, the support started by offering a digital suggestion box, but later switched to providing educational courses in service design methodology. Within these three cases, employees, first-line managers, and innovation coaches who had all been involved in setting up or using the innovation support services were selected. In all, seven employees, seven first-line managers, and nine participants from the innovation support teams were selected. The innovation support team consisted of municipal employees that were specifically employed and trained to set up, design, and implement the innovation support through training or coaching. For the sake of brevity, this group of staff will hereafter be referred to as “innovation coaches” or just “coaches.”

Data collection

During the data collection process, restrictions related to the Covid pandemic necessitated 17 of the 23 interviews to be conducted via phone or videoconferencing, whereas the first six were conducted on site as originally intended. The contents of a leaflet, sent by email to each participant before the interview, were repeated at the beginning of each interview. A summary of the purpose of the study, information about confidentiality, and details of how the data would be handled in compliance with GDPR were included. Permission was sought to record the interview, and the right to discontinue participation was reiterated. Each interview lasted about 60 minutes. A semi-structured interview guide was used, including questions on how the interviewees perceived rationales for working with innovation as well as how they defined and worked with innovation.

Data analysis

The recorded material was transcribed verbatim after all interviews had been completed. Based on Schreier (2014), a qualitative content analysis was then conducted in a stepwise manner. The process of constructing a coding frame departed from the research aim which resulted in three main categories being formed in the structuring phase (Schreier, 2014).

1. Participants’ perceptions of why innovation in the public sector is needed – the “why”

2. What they define as innovation – the “what”

3. Participants’ perceptions of how to work with innovation – the “how”

For each of these main categories, mutually exclusive subcategories were created in a data-driven manner for each main category. The answers from each group of participants (employees, innovation coaches, and managers) were analyzed until no new relevant concepts were found and saturation was reached (see Appendix A for the resulting coding frame). The inductively generated subcategories were carefully described with names, positive examples and instructions for when applicable. A trial coding and recoding of a segmented unit of data was performed by the author of this paper at two separate occasions to ensure consistency and validity of the coding frame. During the main analysis phase, the entire interview material was coded, and results were placed in a coding sheet where particularly illustrative quotations also were added. The coding sheet was later divided into three additional coding sheets, one for employees, one for innovation coaches, and one for managers. This facilitated the identification of similarities and differences in opinions between and within each group.

Findings

The three main categories from the coding frame are here reformulated as questions and used as a framework for presenting the study’s findings. For illustration purposes, quotations have been added with an indication of whether they were provided by an innovation coach (C), an employee (E) or a manager (M). The numbers are used to enumerate individuals, hence making it easy to see if the same individual is cited more than once.

Why is innovation in the public sector needed?

The innovation coaches described how municipalities need to innovate in order to respond to today’s societal challenges. They emphasized that these complex challenges have no given solutions and therefore could not be handled using current ways of working. Furthermore, they noted how these issues affect all municipalities today and that there is widespread recognition that something needs to be done. However, the coaches also noted that even though people within the municipalities were aware of the importance of innovation, the means to achieve a shift towards more innovative ways were less clear:

So, these are major issues … that drive costs in the municipality and that create problems, future problems. Hence, the awareness of why is strong, but we are still exploring the what and the how. (C1)

Employees, on the other hand, did not mention today’s societal challenges as a driver for innovation. Instead, employees spoke about the importance of supporting their creativity, making better use of their ideas, and helping them realize their thoughts. However, some employees offered no rationale for innovation, and said that they were unsure why the innovation initiative had started and what the municipality was hoping to derive from it.

Contrarily, the managers saw a multitude of reasons why their organization and staff should engage in innovation. Some mentioned the complex societal challenges, while others talked about incentives connected to operational effectiveness. Other managers mentioned how the digital era’s fast-paced development necessitated innovative thinking. One coach verbalized the aspiration of increased effectiveness and keeping up with tech-driven development by saying:

[We need to] find more efficient solutions for our operations, to be innovative. Because I think technology is advancing, everything is advancing and in our operations, we have multiple ways of working that we also need to develop … which may not be as effective. (M1)

In sum, it was made evident that – for the most part – innovation coaches, employees, and managers had differing views as to why innovation in the public sector is needed, and that societal challenges were not seen as a main driver by employees. However, some of the coaches’ and managers’ opinions overlapped.

What is innovation?

In response to the question “What is innovation?,” coaches, employees, and managers all mentioned how the term “innovation” caused concern. They all saw it as problematic that innovation was such a “big word” that caused misconceptions. The coaches explained that they had therefore adopted a conscious strategy to counter misconceptions by teaching employees and managers that innovations need not be radical or large in scale, but can be small and subtle. Additionally, the coaches emphasized how innovations do not necessarily have to be completely original ideas, as long as they are novel in the context in which they are introduced. The coaches also described how they tried to make innovation more approachable as a concept by scaling down ideas and providing operationally relevant examples of what innovation could mean in a municipal context. The employees, on the other hand, described how they had perceived innovation as something intimidating at first, but had learned that it did not have to be so momentous.

Innovation can become so big in people’s heads […] just that word, I think, can be a bit intimidating for many since it makes you feel that it is something huge … And it’s really not … it’s just that we should make a change, quite simply. (E1)

At the same time, employees also confirmed that they had difficulty distinguishing between innovation and ordinary quality improvements.

I think we are probably doing more improvement work than real innovation work […] And some things are so modest that you, you are almost ashamed to call it innovation, some things are so simple, they are ordinary continuous improvements. (E2)

Furthermore, many coaches and employees described innovation as a process rather than an outcome. They talked about how innovation means using a certain set of methods and techniques to identify user needs. This procedural definition of innovation was prominent among responses from both the coaches and the employees.

[Innovation is] another way of working with development which is creative and more innovative with its short cycles and its focus on user needs. (C2)

[Innovation] is a method … which we are encouraged to use to do work relating to change. (E2)

Some managers also stated that they defined innovation as a method for doing development work in a more evidence-based manner, while others talked about it as a tool for increasing operational effectiveness and quality of service. However, these statements collectively indicated the belief that innovation was largely seen as a process and not as an outcome, hence leaving the “what” close to the “how.”

How is innovation work conducted?

As indicated in the section above, there was a consensus among coaches, employees, and managers that working with innovation implied a certain process. They stated that the earlier phases of this process entailed using techniques for defining the problem, questioning all given solutions, and spending time identifying user needs. Subsequent activities would involve rapid prototyping, user testing, and reiteration. In addition, some employees and managers mentioned that working with innovation could also involve analyzing current ways of working to identify obsolete procedures that they could simply stop doing.

However, coaches, employees, and managers also recognized how ideas needed to advance through implementation to become innovations. They agreed that this crucial part of the process was fraught with difficulties, unless the suggested change was small, cheap, and only involved their local operations.

Ideas that are smaller and linked to one’s own operations give you a whole other opportunity to take them all the way [through implementation]. (E3)

In addition, coaches, employees, and managers described how difficult it was to solve multi-dimensional issues that required collaboration. The reason for this was described as a combination of how complex challenges present conflicting needs and the lack of support for collaboration within the organization. A coach exemplified this issue by saying:

When we are going to solve issues that are directly linked to the current operations, then we can do it […] “Now let’s make a new side walk,” then I can do it, but if I instead aim to create a safe way for kids to get to school … then there are other perspectives involved … Then you need the children’s perspective, and a traffic safety perspective, and a sustainability perspective, a health perspective, an integration perspective […] So then it’s an issue that does not belong to one specific department, and then we have to collaborate across operational borders and that is difficult. (C3)

Employees and managers also discussed their experiences of working with less complex innovative ideas that did not belong within their own operations. In such cases, they were forced to conclude that no appropriate forum existed to facilitate continued development, and that the innovation processes had to be brought to a halt. The managers therefore concluded that it was imperative to determine whether a particular idea belonged within their own operations before spending time and money on it.

Ideas that would require collaboration with entities outside the municipality were also deemed problematic. Some of the ideas would be highly technical in nature, which would necessitate the assistance of IT companies, and although collaboration with private companies was possible, it was made difficult by the Public Procurement Act.

Furthermore, the innovation coaches identified how operational goals, budgets, and political agendas played a significant role in determining which innovations could be implemented. They recognized that even a good idea would be difficult to implement if it did not fit into the current agenda and budget.

We can be out working on cases and there are good ideas […] but then it still gets stuck on the way up […] because we may have worked with things … that the top management has not prioritized, you know the five things on their agenda. (C4)

The coaches concluded that the problem might be mitigated if municipalities encouraged staff to develop innovative solutions to specific problems that were already on the political agenda, as opposed to inviting everyone to innovate freely.

Moreover, coaches, employees, and managers also discussed their attempts to work with more complicated, radical innovations. In short, they concluded that radical innovations had to be simplified and downsized to reach implementation. One coach verbalized their part in this by saying:

[We coaches] try to scale down and reach implementation so that they see results, so that it will turn into something even if it is something very, very small … It is still something, instead of getting caught up in these endless processes where you just loop … discussions and meetings. (C4)

Coaches, employees, and managers also discussed how complex challenges often required complex solutions that could not be downsized and instead required cross-functional collaboration. However, the examples of attempts to implement such radical innovations had one thing in common: They never reached the implementation stage. Managers and employees explained how complex societal challenges require collaborative solutions, and that structures for such collaborations were still lacking. Talking about today’s societal challenges, one employee said:

These are major challenges that relate to how different organizational units really need to collaborate, but today there may not be an organization for such collaboration. We need to solve things together because sometimes these are very big and tricky challenges. (E4)

Managers and employees expressed how it was therefore very hard for a single operational unit to solve any larger issues. Coaches and employees also pointed out that the budget process did not allow for collaboration, and that this played a major part in the ability to solve complex issues with radical innovation.

Many of the challenges require intraorganizational collaboration and how can we solve them when we work in silos […] We know that we need to work preventatively, but we don’t […] No, because … your budget is yours and mine is mine. (C3)

This section has reviewed the major findings from this empirical study. The section that follows moves on to discuss these findings.

Discussion

Rationales for innovation in the public sector based on societal and organizational needs are frequently cited by researchers and policymakers (Vivona et al., 2020). However, such rationales need to be transformed from rhetoric to reality at the workplace level. This study provides insights into how rationales for innovation are perceived in the public sector, and how these rationales manifest themselves at a workplace level when public sector organizations engage in innovation. The findings show that many coaches and managers concur with the rationale expressed by political leaders and policymakers: Innovation initiatives are necessary in the public sector to address challenges facing society (Harris & Albury, 2009; Helbin & Van Looy, 2022; Patterson et al., 2009; Vivona et al., 2020). However, employees did not cite this rationale, but instead referred to motivations that were more directly related to their own work practices. In light of this, it may be reasonable to assume that their conceptualization of the motives for innovation may have been influenced by both their professional roles and their assignments.

Furthermore, the findings extend our knowledge of the difficulties in defining innovation in a municipal setting (Chen et al., 2020), as well as how conceptual connotations present issues when innovation is introduced into the municipal context (Bugge & Bloch, 2016; Nählinder & Fogelberg Eriksson, 2019). A majority of the interviewees attested to the fact that the concept in itself was problematic, and the coaches disclosed that they therefore adopted a conscious strategy to make it more approachable. In their interactions with employees and managers, they conveyed the idea that innovations did not need to be complex or groundbreaking, but could be simple solutions to everyday problems. According to employees, this made the concept of innovation more approachable and easier to fit into their daily work.

While it is hard to decipher just what causes the concept of innovation to be perceived as foreign to public sector staff, previous research has indicated that it may be because innovation is still a relatively new concept to the public sector (Desmarchelier et al., 2019) and many public servants still perceive innovation as a term belonging to the private sector that bears connotations relating to (high-tech) product manufacturing (Bugge & Bloch, 2016; Nählinder & Fogelberg Eriksson, 2019). However, irrespective of the reasons, this study has shown that the efforts to counter misconceptions and make the concept more approachable may result in increased emphasis on smaller incremental changes.

Furthermore, the feasibility of implementing innovations also seems to have limited the way the participants viewed and approached innovation. The consensus from coaches, employees, and managers was that small, inexpensive changes that only pertained to their own operations could be implemented, whereas larger innovations had to be significantly downsized to make it through the implementation stage. While this helped make innovation more approachable, it again resulted in smaller incremental changes. The lack of radical innovations is, however, reasonably attributed to the fact that radical innovation requires collaboration between different levels and actors possessing the necessary mandate (Osborne & Brown, 2011). The employees and managers interviewed in these workplaces did not have such a mandate, and therefore had difficulties engaging in more radical innovations.

The innovation coaching and educational courses in service design methodology was partially focused on helping staff to conceptualize innovation, and on equipping them with techniques for working with innovation. However, the findings of this study indicate that the conceptualization of innovation may have continued to be problematic while the techniques taught were easier to assimilate. The interviewed employees, all of whom had taken part in courses or coaching, discussed how innovation referred to the application of a certain set of methods and techniques, indicating that they defined innovation as a process rather than an outcome. This procedural definition of innovation resulted in the “what” of innovation being equated with the “how” of performing a process. It is possible to infer that these techniques were easy to assimilate since they provided tangible and stepwise guidance. However, there is nothing inherent in the service design methodology that makes it unfit for use when working with more complex innovations. On the contrary, the techniques included in this methodology are helpful when working with more radical innovation since they enable us to envision a future that does not yet exist (through, for example, prototyping techniques or scenarios) (Bessant & Maher, 2009).

Furthermore, this research also contributes to our understanding of how incremental and radical innovation may require different types of support. If public sector innovation is (at least in part) motivated by the need to solve pressing societal challenges and radical innovations are needed to address these, then special attention needs to be paid to what is required to support radical innovation in the public sector. This is also in line with findings from previous research (cf. Demircioglu & Vivona, 2021). Further, the findings of this study indicate that special attention needs to be given to the mandate issued to these innovation support operations. At the studied locations, coaches had limited authority to affect organizational structures such as silos and rigid budget processes, and these structural characteristics were found to have an impact on the ability to develop and implement more complex innovations.

Conclusions

This study has demonstrated the difficulties in establishing an organizational purpose for innovation, and in translating this understanding into how and what to do when working with innovation in public sector organizations. In practice, this creates a gap between the rhetorical why and the practical what and how of innovation within the studied organizations. This decoupling between innovation rationales and how innovation manifests itself in the workplace is mainly attributed to difficulties in the implementation stage when working with more complex innovations, the difficulties of integrating innovation into daily work, and the need to make innovation more approachable for public sector employees due to the connotations implicit in the concept. As a result, the focus is placed on what can be accomplished, which is delivering smaller innovations rather than the more radical forms.

If public sector innovation is to alleviate pressing societal challenges, radical solutions are required and organization-wide changes in both policy and practice need to be put in place. The national program aimed to support innovation in the public sector, but the study has shown that the innovation support operations ended up supporting incremental innovations but not radical types of innovation. Furthermore, the study has identified several conditions in public sector organizations that inhibit radical innovation, such as hinders to collaboration around and implementation of radical innovations. Based on these results, future policy initiatives can encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing between different levels and actors in the public sector. This could involve creating platforms for sharing information and ideas, establishing networks and communities of practice, and providing opportunities for employees to work on cross-functional teams and projects.

The demonstrated difficulties in implementing more radical innovations could also be used to inform policy adjustments. By encouraging public sector organizations to formulate their pressing challenges as goals for innovation initiatives and to set aside a specific portion of their budget to finance solutions, future initiatives can gain direction and radical solutions to pressing challenges are more likely to be implemented.

There are a number of limitations to this study, as with all research. Considering that the study was designed to examine perceptions of innovation in the public sector, the sample consisted only of municipalities that had initiated innovation initiatives, and participants who had engaged or been affected by innovation work. Thus, the municipalities and participants may have been more engaged and showed a more positive attitude towards innovation than the average. Further, the data in the current study was collected over a limited period of time and additional studies that use longitudinal designs may therefore be beneficial to gain a better understanding of the why, what and how of innovation in the public sector. Based on the above proposition to encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing to support radical innovations, future studies could be designed to assess and compare the number and impact of radical innovations developed before and after such platforms and networks cross-functional teams are established. The proposition to allocate a specific portion of the budget to finance radical innovation solutions can also be tested in future studies by comparing the implementation of radical innovation solutions in public sector organizations that have allocated a specific portion of their budget to finance these solutions with those that have not. This can be done by collecting data on the budget allocation, the types of innovation solutions implemented, and the impact of the solutions on addressing pressing societal challenges. The relationship between budget allocation and implementation of radical innovation solutions can then be analyzed using statistical techniques. Additionally, surveys or interviews can be conducted with public sector employees to assess their perceptions of the impact of budget allocation on innovation implementation.

In all, more research is needed to provide direction for future policy initiatives specifically aimed at supporting radical types of public sector innovation that can help alleviate the complex and pressing societal challenges of today.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Appendix A.

Coding frame

Table

Main categories	Primary sub-categories	Secondary sub-categories
Perceptions of why innovation in the public sector is needed	To improve use of resources	Utilize intellectual capital
		Increased effectiveness needed
	Changes to external requirements	Societal challenges
		Increasing costs
		The wickedness of today’s problems
	Personal motivations	Motivations related to self-fulfillment
		Joy of idea realization
	Rational unclear	Rational for project initiation unclear
		Unclear goals
What participants define as innovation	Innovation bears problematic conceptual connotations	Misconceptions described
		Strategies to remedy misconceptions
		Benefits of remedial strategies
		Drawbacks of remedial strategies
	Procedural definition	Innovation is a process
		Innovation is satisfying user needs
		Innovation is using evidence-based techniques
	Innovation vs current continuous improvements processes	Similarities between innovation and current continuous improvements processes
		Differences between innovation and current continuous improvements processes
		Confusion due to similarities
Participants’ perceptions of how to work with innovation	One clear process	Steps described
		Benefits of given process
		Drawbacks of given process
	Implementation difficulties	Implementation of small, cheap and local innovations is supported
		Difficulties in implementing radical innovations
		Difficulties in implementing innovations outside the local operation
		The fit to goals and agendas affects implementation
		Strategies to counter difficulties in implementation
	Complex challenges require collaboration	Descriptions of why complex challenges require collaboration
		Current structures for collaboration
		Hinders to collaboration described
		The role of budget processes in collaboration