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“I don’t know how much you know about innovation, but it’s really just about thinking outside the box…and you work with lots of people and try new things, and maybe you’ll end up inventing something.” – Julie

During the summer I caught up with my parents’ young neighbour, 12-year-old Julie. This month Julie starts year eight of state school in Denmark, and she waxed lyrical about making her choice between having an international, innovation or science angle to her formal education during the next three years, and about all the collaboration, work placements and project work these years will bring. This is not the school format I remember, and the conversation with Julie led me to investigate what’s been going on on the other side of the North Sea.

There are obvious links between educating Danish children to “work systematically and creatively with the development of ideas”, as the Ministry for Education describes it, and how the country has operated hitherto: export, invention and drug R&D (think Lego, Vestas windmills, the NovoPen etc.)

This new system is, however, a much more flexible and outward looking approach, which requires considerable systemic change, and requires re-education of the teachers and other adults both inside and outside the education system, as well as creating a culture of innovation and a willingness to work with a constantly evolving curriculum.

Systemic change, adapting to constant change – we are hearing this a lot in Scotland’s social services at the moment. What can we learn from what the Danish teachers and organisations have been through, to build a system which ensures that both the current and future workforce develop competences that match the demands of a rapidly changing world?

In the municipality of Esbjerg, development consultant Pernille Paaby, who leads on the council’s “The Innovative School” programme, has found that focusing on adult learning processes makes a great difference, and especially using structured reflection. In her report “ The innovative organisation – how do we invent it?” she argues that “when the wish is to promote an innovative organisation, we have to look at how adults re-learn”, and “provide opportunity for deeper reflection in our team meetings throughout a development process”.

Paaby highlights Jack Merzirow’s critical reflection theory as a helpful way to alter the meaning schemas which exist for each person. The simplified model below outlines the key reflection points Paaby recommends:

(Merzirow in Walhlgren (Paaby,2012: 8).

To innovate is disruptive to how we think, how we learn and how we work. But remember that you can start small – you don’t have to aim for large-scale systemic change. It is, however, important to reflect upon, and document, what you are going through. Not only because it helps all involved to re-learn but also because it may, later on, become a large scale and systemic.

In the IRISS I&I team we always talk about the importance of capturing the process of transforming new thinking into action. Innovation needs to always do more than be new thinking and must lead to much more experimentation and creation. We want to help people to develop better practice and provide added value (think actual value not Pounds Sterling).

This year we have the opportunity to look very closely at the processes between thought and action as part of the Social Services Lab, Creative Quarter projects and training sessions we will be running later in 2013. Expect us to ask lots of questions to help us document what happens between idea and action. We are doing it to help you ask questions in the future and to hopefully contribute to the innovative workforce of now and the future.

If you would like to share your experiences of introducing new ways of thinking and doing please get in touch.

Julie has decided to go the international route. She is confident that it will allow plenty of thinking outside the box, and most of all she wants to visit other countries.

“To travel is to live”, I said.

“Ha, ha, that’s Hans Christian Andersen”, she replied, “…we learn about old stuff too”.

– Rikke

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h https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=132670#B17

http://www.folkeskolen.dk/519014/udvikling-af-en-innovativ-skole-kraever-fokus-paa-voksnes-laereprocesser

http://www.eggeslevmagle-skole.dk/Infoweb/indhold/Linjer%20i%207%20-%209%20klasse%20-%20fremtidens%20skole/Evaluering/Ekstern%20evalueringsrapport%20-%20International%20Linje%20-%20Eggeslevmagle%20Skole.pdf

http://wwwprod.ln.edu.hk/osl/conference2011/output/breakout/4.4%20%5Bref%5DHow%20Critical%20Reflection%20triggers%20Transformative%20Learning%20-%20Mezirow.pdf

It is continually recognised that the current economic climate requires new ideas and creativity to maintain and achieve quality support for people using social services. In social services, we are constantly told that ‘more of the same won’t work’, we have to ‘do more with less’ and that what is necessary are ‘ever-more innovative ways of providing social care that both meets the needs of the user and is at a lower cost’ (Christie, 2011[1]).

Right, so we need to innovate then.

But what do we mean by this? Are we expecting the emergence of an army of new social entrepreneurs? Are we expecting people to innovate alongside maintaining the status quo within their own organisations and environments? Some other combination?

For the past day or so, I’ve been struggling against my inner pragmatist to sit, reflect, and write down my thoughts about just two questions:

What is innovation in the social services sector?

What could it be?

Questions, you might think, that would be relatively simple to answer.

It would be easy to rhyme off a number of definitions and dichotomies from leading scholars and practitioners alike. We could get into theoretical debates about the difference between radical and incremental innovation, disruptive and continuous, what makes social innovation ‘social’ (more on that in another blog, I think). But what I’m interested in, really, is what this means practically for people on the ground. What it means for the practitioners working tirelessly day in and out to support people, for the middle managers who are being pulled in 101 different directions and for us, as an intermediary trying to build the capacity of the workforce so that they can have ideas and create an environment where those ideas can flourish.

One thing we know about innovation is that it is complex, it’s not-linear and it’s messy. It can start with a genius idea from a practitioner, it can start with a problem or policy and it can start with a need. Depending on where and how it starts greatly depends on the ease with which the idea will be implemented in practice (sorry!). The system that we have set up for social services in Scotland scarcely allows incremental change, never mind radical change (Duffy, 2013 – forthcoming). Therefore I’ve long since thought that radical innovation happens more easily on the fringes of systems – from the ‘outside-in’.

The current policy focus is that which is seeking radical innovation. Everyone gets excited about brand new or emerging ideas, radical projects or interventions that have been thought up that will revolutionise the way we work. These are all great (excellent, in fact) but they will likely come across a number of difficulties when we get to embed them within the system. When adding new ideas into an existing system it is usual that it will be difficult for that system to yield to what it is the new idea has to offer. Implementing these types of ideas will demand that people who use services, practitioners and those higher up the chain have a perspective which is comfortable with ambiguity and not afraid to get things wrong. All entirely possible. All very exciting. It’s the ‘how’ that intrigues me.

More recently, thinkers in the area (see for example, Mulgan, 2013[2]) are beginning to highlight that innovation may be more likely to come from connecting the dots between a range of different things, putting commonplace ideas together and making connections between them. Cleaning up a system which incorporates lots of different ideas can be innovative itself without any particularly novel components. These everyday innovations are vital, and we should not lose focus on them. These are the types of innovations that may be more likely to get taken up in practice, but they so rarely get the glory.

At IRISS, we are interested in understanding what works to enable effective implementation of both these approaches. In particular, we are interested in exploring how an idea becomes embedded in practice, how you stop doing what you were doing before, and how you share what went well and what didn’t.

For both types of innovation, though, we know that there is a need to remain outward facing. If ideas are a new mixture of old(ish) elements, it is important to constantly expand our experiences and horizons and expose ourselves to the ‘new’ and ‘different’. There is much that we can learn from what is happening on our doorstep, or round the corner, even, but we aren’t always conscious of what is there as we get caught up in the distraction of our own organisation, lives and situation.

And that is one reason that we have created this blog. It is all too easy for us at IRISS to stay behind the desk, get our heads down and never look up. But we won’t. We know that others are exploring and grappling with key concepts in this field and we want to learn and share our thoughts and ideas as well as hear from others – hear from you. We also know that there are enough of us that want to change and make a difference and we believe that that change is entirely possible.

We hope to use this space to encourage debate, discussion and to greet guest bloggers – so get in touch; we’d love to hear from you.

More soon.

[1] Christie Commission (2011) Commission on the future delivery of public services, Edinburgh: Scottish Government
[2] Mulgan 2013 podcast: http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/geoff-mulgan-achieving-more-less-innovators-catalyst)

Category: Uncategorized

Reflecting on thinking and doing

Radical vs. Incremental… not that old chestnut?