The best thing a city administration can do to innovate at a faster rate is to reduce the threshold criteria for service procurement, making it more inclusionary, and dilute the gatekeeping arrangements to make way for fresh ideas.
From a service provider's perspective, innovation is less of a function of organizational critical mass, period of market existence, and proof of concept, and more about organizational agility, ideation, and their ability to experiment.
Especially in the urban innovation space, where certain approaches are being tried for the first time, certain concepts are being tested based on inconclusive literary evidence, and certain technologies are being embraced while still nascent and years behind their known lifecycle performance.
The public procurement framework, in its current shape, is structured enough to attract good service providers while ensuring transparency and accountability; but exclusionary enough to miss out on some of the best ones out there.
City administrations must move away from self-limiting prophecies of many kinds, whether procedural, statutory, or simply comfort of familiarity. What is also required is to develop a risk appetite, to embrace the innovation.
To start embracing innovation as a habit, city administrations-
✅Should develop a small-scale virtual or hybrid sandbox environment, to invite and allow all kinds of concepts, ideas, and approaches, with a range and hierarchy of actors. A place where failing is permissible.
✅Should develop an unparalleled, multipronged feedback and idea gateway.
✅Should use their discretionary power to test the minimum viable idea, sometimes out-of-turn, and with or without a mandate.
✅Continuous and frequent learning from test outcomes should directly feed into urban and sectoral policies via a special and fast route.
✅Should use their discretionary power to allocate a nominal fund and resources to realize the above. It’s also possible that some of the following may emerge from the above activities, like new and innovative sources of revenue, new forms of public-private partnership, and new business models.
Deviating from the norm and taking risks are not familiar themes in conventional urban governance, but those cities that develop a risk-taking aptitude will lead the way in urban innovation. There are known examples of cities, regions, and countries that have taken risks to test innovative concepts, and approaches for the first time, with acclaimed success, more should join the league or develop their own pathways. Resources, skills, and community support shall follow.
Author: Anoop Jha
Founder, Urban Tenets
Website: https://urbantenets.nl/
Image: Google Labs
UrbanInnovation Urbanmanagement SmartCities CityGovernance InnovationLeadership PublicProcurement FutureCities InclusiveGrowth UrbanDevelopment SustainableCities PolicyReform Netherlands India Delhi Mumbai Bangalore Kolkata Gurugram Utrecht Amsterdam Hague Rotterdam
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