In August this year, 35 international experts in co-creation and design thinking gathered in Copenhagen to form the international Copenhagen Co’creation Network. The aim of this network is to harvest the experience already gained through the application of co-creation and to disseminate knowledge of co-creation as a tool to tackle the social, cultural and economic challenges we face today.

The public sector in the western world was very much in focus, especially the question of increasing pressures to make social innovation a priority and the related question of: What must be done to equip the public sector to react positively to this pressure and come up with viable solutions?

When asked to identify the greatest challenge facing the public sector today, apart from climate changes, employment and new technologies, Christian Bason selects one central challenge, which concerns the system and its users:

“The public sector is facing staff shortages in the coming years. Every second manager in the public sector and one quarter of all public employees will be retiring in the next 7-8 years.”

“At the same time, the public is demanding more and more of its public services. People expect coordinated and meaningful services that can effectively help them to meet their own personal challenges.”

All in all, this means that the system must become more effective and innovative and must to a far greater extent than it does at present base its efforts on the citizens and their needs.

This is where Christian Bason sees a major potential in the way co-creation is organized and applied as a method to create innovation:

“In co-creation, innovation takes place for and with the citizens, and in cooperation with others who may be involved id the development of viable solutions (other administrative bodies, government agencies and ministries and/or private companies).”

“The task facing the group is defined in the first instance by the client, then by the whole group working together, to ensure that all aspects of the matter have been considered and that the solution arrived at is viable.”

“The general approach and the tools used are mostly borrowed from the design sector and the way designers think and develop their products: the basic themes are empathy, openness and holistic thinking, cutting across entrenched ’silos’. At the same time, the tools used effectively actualize (through visualization) what otherwise are long, abstract discussions, quickly implementing and testing ideas in practice (prototyping).”

One of the most important things for him is the work process (of co-creation), which challenges ways of thinking in the public sector and the way the system is managed at the present time. Co-creation forces public employees to work with an eye to the future and to see potential for development, instead of focusing on the past (evaluations) and on problems. It also forces them to cooperate with citizens and other public agencies – agencies which they may perhaps see as ‘enemies’ today, but which it would be dangerous to ignore from the point of view of innovation. Co-creation might be the way to take issue with traditions that are not always advantageous and could act as a catalyst for development in the public sector, ensuring its viability – even in 50 years’ time.

/ mind-lab.dk

About Christian Bason

A recent example was a design workshop run by MindLab during the Copenhagen Design Week, on Design Against Climate Change. View the short video from the event for a first-hand impression of co-creation in practice.

Exactly because the public sector is highly complex and dominated by numerous actors and interests, it makes sense to develop solutions together. However, today, that is the exception rather than the norm. Co-creation offers an opportunity to essentially redesign the typical public sector development process. Across government officials and citizens, across organisational silos, and across the public and private sectors.

No matter whether the focus is on developing a new service in the care sector (service design) or it is to innovate new state initiatives (policy design), co-creation as a discipline has much to offer?

Why? Because co-creation is about the mutual creation of coherent new solutions that work for the end-users.

How? Here is a first attempt at seven principles for co-creation:

1. Create through collaboration
2. See everything as an experiment
3. Challenge the status quo
4. Put citizens first
5. Be concrete
6. Visualise
7. Iterate.

Could these seven principles help transform how government works? Yes. If public managers really, really took co-creation to heart, it could be the beginning of a revolution.

About Christian Bason