12 February 2016

CenSE hosts two major international conferences.

Over the past year CenSE has organised two major research conferences exploring social innovation and innovation in public service delivery. This has built upon its central role within the European Commission ‘Learning form Innovation in Public Service Environments’ (LIPSE) research and engagement programme. LIPSE has been evaluating social innovation and innovation in public service delivery across 12 countries in the EU through 8 work packages. These work packages have explored such factors as co-production and social innovation, governing risk in social innovation, the impact of regulation upon social innovation, ICT and social innovation and scenarios for the future support and enhancement of social innovation across Europe. As well as being part of the coordinating group for the programme, CenSE has led the work package on the governance of risk and social and public service innovation.

The first of the two conferences was held in Shanghai in May 2016 with over 150 delegates from around the world – including China, Korea, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and from across Europe. An especial feature of this event was the exploration of two key themes – the interaction between social policy and social innovation and eastern and western perspectives on innovation. Stephen Osborne presented the keynote at this event, exploring the relationship between co-production and social innovation.

The second was held in Budapest in October 2016 and this too attracted over 120 delegates, mostly from across Europe – including Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the Czech republic and Switzerland. This latter event included a special panel coordinated by Stephen Osborne and Sophie Flemig based around the findings from the LIPSE work package on risk and social innovation. This latter paper emphasised that many current approaches to risk governance for social innovation, where they exist, are based around risk minimisation. Yet if you minimise or eradicate risk, then you eradicate innovation as risk is a core element of it. The paper presented an alternative model of risk governance that helps practitioners and policy makers consider the types of risk that any social innovation entails and where they fall, and facilitates their decision making about how much risk to take on for any given potential innovation. It also facilitates multi-stakeholder negotiation about the potential benefit and risks of any social innovation.

The best papers from both these conferences will be published in a special issue of Public Management Review in 2017 while a book is also to be published by Palgrave that draws upon the work presented in Shanghai on social innovation in China and Southeast Asia.