Innovation in US Cities: New Ideas in Policy Management and Planning

NYU Wagner School of Public Policy

Spring 2015

Course Instructors: Neil Kleiman and James Anderson

Course Meetings: Tuesday 4:55 – 6:35

Course Location: 194 Mercer, Room 305

Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:00 – 4:30, Puck Building Room 3069 and by appointment

Email:

  1. Overview

Governments are undergoing a shift—some might say a revolution—in their approach to operations, service delivery and policy making. With the rise of infinitely complex issues such as globally linked economies and climate change, as well as growing gaps in confidence in the ability of the public sector to address these challenges,prevailinggovernance approaches no longer seem adequate. There is a move to more innovative approaches– that tap into openplatforms, cross agencycollaborations, public/privatepartnerships, and publicengagementto extend reach and enhance public value creation.

With a focus on local government, this course will provide a comprehensive overview of the many facets of anew government paradigm that is taking root in various forms throughout the US. The curriculum is designed to function as a live-lab in which students learn new approaches and tools and directly engage in innovationsas they’re happening. Students themselves will be contributing to the understanding of this nascent field.

  1. Learning Objectives
  • Understanding of competing perspectives on
  • Current government operations
  • Barriers to innovation
  • Understanding of how innovation works (and fails) through numerous case examples in the US(with a few comparative examples from Europe and Asia)
  • Writing skills and published web-based portfolios in the area of government innovation
  1. Pre-requisite

Either introduction to policy course OR planning practice and methods course.

  1. Readings

Core texts to be purchased:

Christian Bason, Christian. Leading Public Sector Innovation, The Policy Press, 2010.

Osborne, David and Peter Plastrik.Banishing Bureaucracy, Perseus Books Group, 1997.

Additional texts that will be available for download on NYU Classes site:

Goldsmith, Stephen and William D. Eggers.Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector, Brookings Institution Press, 2004.

Lipsky, Michael. Street Level Bureaucracy, Russell Sage, 1980.

Heifetz, Ronald A. and Marty Linsky.Leadership on the Line. Harvard Business Review Press, 2002.

Swanstrom, Todd and Dennis Judd.City Politics, Longman, 2012.

Bissinger, Buzz.A Prayer for the City, Random House, 1997.

Barber, Michael.Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain’s Public Services, Methuen, 2007.

Nesta, Develop Your Skills,Nesta, (web-based texts)

Bloomberg Philanthropies, Transform Your City Through Innovation: The Innovation Delivery Model for Making it Happen, Bloomberg Philanthropies, 2014.

Freedman, Tom. The Collaborative City: How Partnerships between Public and Private Sectors can Achieve Common Goals. Freedman Consulting, 2013.

Eggers, William D. and Shalabh Singh, The Public Sector Innovator’s Playbook. Harvard Ash Institute, 2009.

Cels, Sanderijn, et al. Agents of Change: Strategy and Tactics for Social Innovation, Brookings Institution Press, 2012.

IV.Cases

A core component of the course will be assessing actual innovation cases. These will include ones that have been completed and ones happening in real-time.

  • Guiding Innovation. The entire class will track two innovation cases throughout the semester that we will keep referring back to. This might include a case like Boston’s Urban Mechanics that won a Harvard Innovations in American Government award.The leaders behind the case will be available to answer e-mail questions throughout the course.
  • Real-Time Innovation Analysis. We willform class teams of 3-4 students to track one case as it takes shape in real-time. This will allow students to assess their own chosen case and it will be the basis of their final paper.

V.Requirements

Class Participation: (25%) The course depends on active and ongoing participation by all class participants. This will occur in three ways:

Participation begins with effective reading and listening. Class participants are expected to read and discuss the readings on a weekly basis. That means coming prepared to engage the class, with questions and/or comments with respect to the reading. You will be expected to have completed all the required readings before class to the point where you can be called on to critique or discuss any reading.

Before approaching each reading think about what the key questions are for the week and about how the questions from this week relate to what you know from previous weeks. Then skim over the reading to get a sense of the themes it covers, and, before reading further, jot down what questions you hope the reading will be able to answer for you. Ask yourself: What types of evidence or arguments would you need to see in order to be convinced of the results? Now read through the whole text, checking as you go through how the arguments used support the claims of the author. It is rare to find a piece of writing that you agree with entirely. So, as you come across issues that you are not convinced by, write them down and bring them along to class for discussion. Also note when you are pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised, when the author produced a convincing argument that you had not thought of.

In class itself, the key to quality participation is listening. Asking good questions is the second key element. What did you mean by that? How do you/we know? What’s the evidence for that claim? This is not a license for snarkiness, but for reflective, thoughtful, dialogic engagement with the ideas of others in the class. Don’t be shy. Share your thoughts and reactions in ways that promote critical engagement with them. Quality and quantity of participation can be, but are not necessarily, closely correlated.

Précis/Response Papers: (10%) Each week 3-5 people will take responsibility for preparing response papers to one or more of the readings. This includes writing a 3-5 page précis of the reading that a) lays out the main argument(s), b) indicates what you found provocative and/or mundane, and c) poses 3-4 questions for class discussion based on the readings and how it relates to the innovation case that you are following during the semester. These handouts will be distributed via email to the rest of the class by Sunday at 5 PM (using the course website). Everyone will prepare one précis over the course of the semester. Everyone who prepares a précis for the week should be prepared to provide a brief (2-3 minute) outline of their reaction to the readings as a contribution to discussion.

Written Assignments
One case memo (10%), 10-15 tweets (10%) and case review (12-15 pages) (45%).
1. One case memo (750-2,000 words (which is about 3-5 pages double spaced -- word limit is rigid) analyzing a particular aspect of innovation that could be improved in the case you have selected. You will choose one particular aspect of innovation (e.g. generating new ideas, metrics, delivery, etc.) that will be explored in this memo. We are not looking for comprehensiveness but sharp analysis and new thinking. This is a memo that we will forward to the actual case practitioners and should contain useful assessments and new approaches for their work. We will provide sample case memos in advance of the assignment.
2.Tweets (10-15).A twitter feed has been set up and you are expected to populate with at least ten tweets a semester. You will be evaluated on tweets that are original, point to useful information in the field, make smart connections between articles and readings and your understanding of the field and generally update followers with interesting news.
3.Final Paper: Case Review: Papers must be producedindividually and will center around the real-time innovation you have followed throughout the year. Our goal is to use all class cases and then bind them together (virtually) into a final innovation review for the larger public policy field.
An annotated outline will be due at the end of Class # 8 and the final case review is due one week after the last day of class.We will talk about this in more detail in class and provide you with a case review template. All case topics will need to be approved by Class # 4in advance.
  1. Expectations

Students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings each week. Students are also expected to glean knowledge from other innovation cases and follow general public policy events through the news, reading at least one major US news source daily, a newsweekly (Economist, Time,etc) and follow a range of government and innovation-oriented sites (e.g. Bloomberg Philanthropies, Kennedy School, Governing magazine)

  1. Weekly Schedule

WEEK ONE - OVERVIEW

Introduce the difference between an innovation, meaning an idea or process that’s new in the local context, and innovation potential, meaning the mindsets, skillsets, approaches, and capacities that enable new ideas to emerge and take hold time and time again. Our focus is mainly on the later – and the exciting new ways publicsector leaders are creating that potential. These include networked, data-driven, citizen informed and effective governance approaches. We will cover:

  • The state of innovation potential incities today
  • Where it’s most mature
  • Current models/drivers/causes that areaccelerating and shaping this field
  • Smart cities
  • Civic technology
  • Performance improvement and Stat programs
  • Budgetary reform
  • Design
  • Social entrepreneurship
  • Innovation labs

Readings: Bason, Introduction and Ch. 1; Sanderijnm, Introduction

WEEK TWO – URBAN POLITICS

  • History of urban government reform through the years; legacy of bureaucracies from the progressive era
  • Inherent innovation barriers at the local level (cities are creatures of states; few areas are fully within administrative and budgetary control of municipal govts, etc.)

Readings: Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy. Ch 1 & 2

Judd and Swanstrom (1994), City Politics. Pages: 1-8, 44-47, 91-99

WEEK THREE – TRADITIONAL BARRIERS TO PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

There are moments when significant innovation traditionally occurs: at the onset of an administration or in the wake of crisis, for example. Why doesn’t innovation happen more frequently and consistently? There are a set of major barriers recognized in experience and the literature. These include:

  • Protective, status-quo nature of bureaucracies
  • The power of incumbents
  • Actual or perceived inflexibility in rules or regulation
  • Silos for funding and responsibility
  • Priority of daily work and insufficient capacity
  • Diffusion of goals and responsibilities
  • Risk aversion
  • No incentives (risk capital, recognition)
  • Intolerance for failure
  • No overarching innovation strategy

Through illustration and classroom discussion, we will explore the nature of these barriers, reflecting on whether they are more or less acute in the public sector verses a business environment. The goal is to deepen the students’ appreciation for how mayors can overcome these barriers.

Readings: Bason, Ch. 3; Osborne and Plastrik, Introduction and Ch. 1-3

WEEK FOUR – EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP

Innovation cannot proceed without support from the top; that’s as true in the public sector as it is in the private sector. This week will focus on the ways in which mayors and other public sector chief executives create the conditions for innovation to flourish. We will examine leaders in the assigned readings and discuss approaches taken by business leaders-turned-mayor such as Michael Bloomberg and Greg Fischer, as well as those undertaken by Seoul’s Park Won So, a former human rights lawyer and civic innovator, and San Francisco’s Ed Lee, a lifelong civic servant. The discussion will focus on the structures they put into place, the processes they adjusted, the cultural conditions they established, and the resources they galvanized and approved to make innovation routine. From this discussion, we will begin to assemble a constellation of things leaders can (and arguably should) do – and debate with the class the relative importance of each.

Readings: Heiftz and Linksy, Ch. 1-2; Bason, Ch. 11; Bissinger, Ch. 1-4; Barber, Ch. 1-3

WEEK FIVE– STRATEGY/PURPOSE/PRIORITIZING

Albert Einstein famously said that if he had just one hour to solve a problem, he’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes on the solution. Prioritization and problem definition are essential steps in the innovation process – yet they are often short-skirted, as problem solvers jump to generating ideas without fully understanding why and how the problem exists or if there’s political support and alignment around solving it. In week five we will discuss the essential work involved in defining and deeply understanding the problem to be solved – and the opportunities therein to create radically different potential outgrowths for the work. We will look at the city of Philadelphia, which won the 2013 Mayors Challenge award for its procurement innovation and talk with Peter Madden at Future Cities Catapult, a global center of innovation on cities with expertise in redefining problems.

Readings:Bason, Ch. 4 & 5; Osborne and Plastik, Ch. 4; Bloomberg Philanthropies, pages 1-28

WEEK SIX AND SEVEN – GENERATING NEW IDEAS

Here we will explore the growing set of tools and approaches municipalities are using to generate better ideas. From co-creation efforts (Helsinki’s planto improve transitions between mental health settings to community care) to surfacing ideas from front line staff (the Denver Peak Academy innovation training school) to competitions (NYC’s applied sciences initiative), bureaucrats are talking with new people in new ways to find ideas. How are these efforts structured and implemented? Are these efforts producing better ideas – and how do we know? Are we learning anything from the less successful engagement efforts? Below are the specific idea generation approaches we will explore including:

  • Co-creation
  • Surfacing ideas internally; from all employees
  • Citizen involvement
  • Competitions
  • Learning from other regions

Readings:Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ch. 2; Eggers & Singh, Ch. 2-6; Bason, Ch. 2 and 7

WEEK EIGHT – PARNTERSHIPS AND NETWORKED GOVERNMENT

The capacity to develop, structure, and maintain partnerships over time with an increasingly diverse set of actors has become one of the defining features of a successful City Hall. Partnerships enable cities to get work done efficiently, as well as produce improved value for the public. This week will focus on 1) the value proposition of partnerships,2) the increasingly diverse forms of partnerships, and 3) an overview of the structures city halls are building to manage these relationships. Case studies could include the New York City Social Impact Bond, a partnership that catalyzes private sector capital to fund prevention programs for inmates at Rikers; the Boston Mayors’ Office of New Urban Mechanics, which engages citizens in solving public problems; and [a university/city partnership].

We will assess the role of the following public sector partners:

  • Relevant agencies
  • Business groups (e.g. chambers of commerce and introduce Civic Consulting Alliance model)
  • Local universities
  • State/federal government
  • Local/national philanthropy

Readings: Goldsmith and Eggers, Ch. 1-3; Freedman, entire report

WEEK NINE – IMPLEMENTATION AND SUPPORTING INNOVATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Moving from policy formation and design to implementation – while also keeping all the other machinery of government humming along – is challenging. Using one city as a case example we will trace the trajectory ofan idea to implementation and assess the needed tools and approaches including data tracking, performance management, and delivery routines to ensure progress in the face of significant bureaucratic resistance.

Readings:Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ch. 3 4; Osborne and Plastik, Ch. 5 and 8; Bason, Ch. 10

WEEK TEN – COMMUNICATIONS AND INNOVATION

This class will focus on the role of communications and innovation. We will discuss the importance of defining the problem, ground-softening and stakeholder buy in, quick wins and continuous reminders of the work and progress. We will review data and data metrics used to track media penetration and how cities use such information to facilitate program implementation. A high-level speaker panel will address the class for this session.

WEEK ELEVEN – CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF NEW YORK STATE AND CITY APPROACHES TO INNOVATION

This class will use the various approaches discussed in previous sessions to critically assess innovation at the state level and in the five boroughs of New York City. We will assign students in advance to assess various service areas and topics to determine how creatively New York is advancing its policy objectives in Spring 2015.

Readings:TBD

WEEK TWELVE – GOING TO SCALE/SUSTAINING INNOVATION

In this session we will also cover the following approaches needed to permanently sustain an innovation culture including:

  • Communications
  • Legislation
  • Curriculum development
  • Technology
  • Building in daily routines

Readings: Nesta, review entire site

WEEK THIRTEEN AND FOURTEEN – PRESENTATIONS

Thelast two classeswill be dedicated to student presentation. These sessions will be attendedby a set ofNYC-based thought leaders and practitioners who will offer reactions and suggestions for students to improve their case analysis and models.