Experiences our author learned a few lessons

THE ART PUBLIC STRATEGY

Mobilizing Power and Knowledge for the Common Good

by Geoff Mulgan

Oxford University Press, 306 pages

Geoff Mulgan is an author whose biography arouses curiosity. Consultant, University, founder of the "think tank" progressive Demos, Adviser to Tony Blair, at the head of the prestigious Strategy Unit, he now runs the Young Foundation () a dynamic organization dedicated to social innovation. Experiences, our author learned a few lessons. It is a little ordinary work. In all the rhetoric on "State strategist", here is a useful and clear room.

Mulgan, the natural slope of the organizations and public officials is to sacrifice long-term placing tactics, intuition and the reaction. However it is important first to know where you want to go and how to access them. Such an orientation (which seems obvious) is neither natural nor easy. The Planner France of the thirty Glorioso can be a reference in the matter. It is now exceeded by the Finland, the Ireland (up to the crisis), Dubai, Singapore, and of course, the United Kingdom (it is never better served than by yourself).

The key of a public strategy is to focus concerns and actions on users, based on innovation. The idea is not new and the recipes are also known: Diagnostics documented and accurate; the solutions tested and evaluated; a voluntarist distinction of the urgent and important. Mulgan think simply beyond slogans and blah - blah it is really possible to live virtuous circles of the accumulation of knowledge and confidence. It takes courage, vision, and discipline to supervise and conduct (as say men of art) change.

Expert identifies the wrong reasons, qui are legion, to repel good innovations: risk aversion, discouraging complexity of law and institutions, uncertain results of investment in the novelty. It follows the requirements simple, but ambitious: use the power to change society and not only to chair; focus on a number limited topics; prepare and plan not to be overly distracted by the news. do not hesitate to challenge (particularly in the areas where the deadlock is patent).

Mulgan, most Governments overestimate what they can do in the short run and underestimate what they can succeed in time long. Is this anti-manuel bureaucracy, supported on a tour of horizon international successes and failures, a pious wishes Digest Absolutely not, because they have been widely enough heard where they have been expressed and translated into facts.

THE INNOVATION MANUAL

Integrated Strategies and Practical Tools for Bringing Value Innovation to the Market

by David Midgley

Wiley, 328 pages

Innovation is what it was. While it was previously primarily on products, it can now also, or even primarily involve services and economic models. Hence a reduction of the challenges. Innovation is one of the sectors that is less well "managed" in business. This is the observation and the struggle of David Midgley, an Insead marketing professor.

Accompanied by a well provided site (), he proposed a "manual" of innovation. This vademecum, has nothing of the booklet of recipes of the "loan-to-innovate", was written for leaders whose responsibility is to move the innovations of the State of ideas to products, services, or organizations on the market. There is naturally a plethora of titles on these themes, but it has the virtues of simplicity. It does not provides haunt theorizing on the nature of innovation. It does not describe the umpteenth "success story" of some of the latest technical, organisational or marketing in part, that revolutionized our lives. Midgley insists on the fact that innovation is not reduced to the technology or finance. Its innovative iPod is located in connexes services and the market helped to structure. Can say the same of Vélib'. Novelty, this is not the bike. What are the features service and economy Decaux.

Innovation is important in the knowledge economies. Either. It must now create, finance, organize, make accept. To this end, managers are on the front of innovations should focus on a few tasks. Midgley dissects them. Specifically, the subject is to establish and support good teams able to find, develop and disseminate. Critical orientation is to put the customer at the centre of the innovation process. It is even "co-construire" with him. Finally, we must prepare both the market and the Organization for the extension of the innovation. Midgley provides a kind of boxes to tools, adapted to the various industries potentially concerned. He recalled that adaptation and adoption of innovation will never of itself. He noted that the important is not the effort for innovation, but what it is.

LESSONS FROM ABROAD

Adapting International Social Welfare Innovations

by M.C. Hokenstad, James Midgley,.

NASWPress, 167 pages

Social policies are, also, directly concerned by the issues and mechanisms of innovation. Innovation can be applied to the same principles social, but also their practical policies. It is certainly some areas in particular, including when they are high technological density. Above all, issues of innovation are also, social protection, the issues of implementation and management. Early 2000 experts assembled by the American association of social workers thus embarked on a tour of what's new in the coverage of risks and social action around the world.

In seven chapters, which, alas, a little, are the authors update on international initiatives dealing with aging. They address some (especially British) innovations for the support of disadvantaged children. They dissect the dynamics of individualization and privatization of pensions. They discuss the new services (often associated with work obligations) of unemployment insurance. Most original, they are able to find initiatives in the South (support to micro-enterprises for example) which could inspire the United States. The great difficulty is the transcript of the innovations. Nevertheless. Our authors are precisely what would be the conditions of implementation to the US of techniques and also identified benefits. Interested in innovation elsewhere is always exciting. The operation also was hired recently by Futuribles is the Ewo in a tower of the world of social policy to the challenge of innovation ( psiaccueil.htm). Remains may want to change...