NESTA Creative Councils Project - Update

Posted on the Genius! York website 22nd September 2011

York has been chosen as one of the 17 shortlisted councils to take part in the NESTA Creative Councils Programme, out of 137 applicants from all over the country.  Last week was an intensive and very rewarding week for me as SCY and the City of York Council team took part in a 3 day workshop in Birmingham to further develop our NESTA Creative Councils idea. 

Local government faces severe challenges with reducing budgets and increasing expectations. Traditional approaches have focussed on improving efficiencies: this is no longer sustainable and is bringing forward diminishing returns. The way forward is to focus on effectiveness and transformation which has innovation as its core. Traditional ways of generating ideas within a Council are myopic and new innovation will not happen organically: it needs to be encouraged and the City of York Council wish to take advantage of ideas whatever their source. In business, digital communications have facilitated a shift in boundaries, with an increase in the number of partners involved in the innovation process and with a new focus on the cross fertilisation of ideas. Proctor and Gamble is on record suggesting that over 50 percent of its new innovations will come from external sources. Of the private sector models for introducing innovation the "Open Innovation" approach appears to offer the greatest potential built on the principle of “opening up” the innovation process to parties outside their organisation. The City of York Council wishes to seek transformational opportunities by opening up innovation to outside the council and outside the extended “Council family”. Using "Open Innovation" would be a first amongst the local government community.

This video explains a bit more about our vision for York: