We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public bureaucracy, private markets and self-organized communities. Inspired by the successful use of co-creation for product and service design, this book outlines a broad vision of co-creation as a strategy of public governance. Through the construction of platforms and arenas to facilitate co-creation, this strategy can empower local communities, enhance broad-based participation, mobilize societal resources and spur public innovation while building ownership for bold solutions to pressing problems and challenges. The book details how to use co-creation to achieve goals. This exciting and innovative study combines theoretical argument with illustrative empirical examples, visionary thinking and practical recommendations.

Co-production and co-creation occur when citizens participate actively in delivering and designing the services they receive. It has come increasingly onto the agenda of policymakers, as interest in citizen participation has more generally soared. Expectations are high and it is regarded as a possible solution to the public sector’s decreased legitimacy and dwindling resources, by accessing more of society’s capacities. In addition, it is seen as part of a more general drive to reinvigorate voluntary participation and strengthen social cohesion in an increasingly fragmented and individualized society. "Co-Production and Co-Creation: Engaging Citizens in Public Services" offers a systematic and comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of the concepts of co-production and co-creation and their application in practice. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest both to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to co-production and co-creation and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of public administration, business administration, economics, political science, public management, political science service management, sociology and voluntary sector studies.

This book seeks to contribute to prior research facing the discussion about public value creation in Smart Cities and the role of governments. In the early 21st century, the rapid transition to a highly urbanized population has made societies and their governments around the world to be meeting unprecedented challenges regarding key themes such as sustainability, new governance models and the creation of networks. Also, cities today face increasing challenges when it comes to providing advanced (digital) services to their constituency. The use of information and communication technologies (usually ICTs) and data is thought to rationalize and improve government and have the potential to transform governance and organizational issues. These questions link up to the ever-evolving concept of Smart Cities. In fact, the rise of the Smart City and Smart City thinking is a direct response to such challenges, as well as providing a means of integrating fast evolving technology into our living environment. This focus on the public value creation in Smart Cities could be of interest for academics, researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts involved in and responsible for the governance, development and design of Smart Cities

This open access book attends to the co-creation of digital public services for ageing societies. Increasingly public services are provided in digital form; their uptake however remains well below expectations. In particular, amongst older adults the need for public services is high, while at the same time the uptake of digital services is lower than the population average. One of the reasons is that many digital public services (or e-services) do not respond well to the life worlds, use contexts and use practices of its target audiences. This book argues that when older adults are involved in the process of identifying, conceptualising, and designing digital public services, these services become more relevant and meaningful. The book describes and compares three co-creation projects that were conducted in two European cities, Bremen and Zaragoza, as part of a larger EU-funded innovation project. The first part of the book traces the origins of co-creation to three distinct domains, in which co-creation has become an equally important approach with different understandings of what it is and entails: (1) the co-production of public services, (2) the co-design of information systems and (3) the civic use of open data. The second part of the book analyses how decisions about a co-creation project’s governance structure, its scope of action, its choice of methods, its alignment with strategic policies and its embedding in existing public information infrastructures impact on the process and its results. The final part of the book identifies key challenges to co-creation and provides a more general assessment of what co-creation may achieve, where the most promising areas of application may be and where it probably does not match with the contingent requirements of digital public services. Contributing to current discourses on digital citizenship in ageing societies and user-centric design, this book is useful for researchers and practitioners interested in co-creation, public sector innovation, open government, ageing and digital technologies, citizen engagement and civic participation in socio-technical innovation.

A seminal figure in the field of public management, Mark H. Moore presents his summation of fifteen years of research, observation, and teaching about what public sector executives should do to improve the performance of public enterprises. Useful for both practicing public executives and those who teach them, this book explicates some of the richest of several hundred cases used at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and illuminates their broader lessons for government managers. Moore addresses four questions that have long bedeviled public administration: What should citizens and their representatives expect and demand from public executives? What sources can public managers consult to learn what is valuable for them to produce? How should public managers cope with inconsistent and fickle political mandates? How can public managers find room to innovate? Moore’s answers respond to the well-understood difficulties of managing public enterprises in modern society by recommending specific, concrete changes in the practices of individual public managers: how they envision what is valuable to produce, how they engage their political overseers, and how they deliver services and fulfill obligations to clients. Following Moore’s cases, we witness dilemmas faced by a cross-section of public managers: William Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protection Agency; Jerome Miller and the Department of Youth Services; Miles Mahoney and the Park Plaza Redevelopment Project; David Sencer and the swine flu scare; Lee Brown and the Houston Police Department; Harry Spence and the Boston Housing Authority. Their work, together with Moore’s analysis, reveals how public managers can achieve their true goal of producing public value.

Co-creation, a strategy inspired by product and service design, would stimulate public innovation, improve governance and reinvigorate our democracy.

In a time of unprecedented turbulence, how can public sector organisations increase their ability to find innovative solutions to society's problems? Leading Public Sector Innovation shows how government agencies can use co-creation to overcome barriers and deliver more value, at lower cost, to citizens and business. Through inspiring global case studies and practical examples, the book addresses the key triggers of public sector innovation. It shares new tools for citizen involvement through design thinking and ethnographic research, and pinpoints the leadership roles needed to drive innovation at all levels of government. Leading Public Sector Innovation is essential reading for public managers and staff, social innovators, business partners, researchers, consultants and others with a stake in the public sector of tomorrow.

Apple embraced co-creation to enhance the speed and scope of its innovation, generat­ing over $1 billion for its App-Store partner-developers in two years, even as it overtook Microsoft in market value. Starbucks launched its online platform MyStarbucksIdea.com to tap into ideas from customers and turbocharged a turnaround. Unilever turned to co-creation for redesigning prod­uct lines such as Sunsilk shampoo and revitalized growth. Nike achieved remarkable success with its Nike+ co-creation initiative, which enables a com­munity of over a million runners to interact with one another and the company, increasing its market share by 10 percent in the first year. Co-creation involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals—customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and other stake­holders—bringing them into the process of value creation and engaging them in enriched experi­ences, in order to —formulate new breakthrough strategies —design compelling new products and services —transform management processes —lower risks and costs —increase market share, loyalty, and returns In this pathbreaking book, Venkat Ramaswamy (who coined the term co-creation with C. K. Prahalad) and Francis Gouillart, pioneers in working with com­panies to develop co-creation practices, show how every organization—from large corporation to small firm, and government agency to not-for-profit—can achieve “win more–win more” results with these methods. Based on extraordinary research and the authors’ hands-on experiences with successful projects in co-creation at dozens of the world’s most exciting organizations, The Power of Co-Creation illustrates with detailed examples from leading firms such as those above, as well as from Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Ama­zon, Jabil, Predica, Wacoal, Caja Navarra, and many others, how enterprises have used a wide range of “engagement platforms”—and how they have even restructured internal management processes—in order to harness the power of co-creation. As the authors’ wealth of examples make vividly clear, enterprises can no longer afford to view custom­ers and other stakeholders as passive recipients of their products and services but must learn to engage them in defining and delivering enhanced value. Co-creation goes beyond the conventional “process view” of qual­ity, re-engineering, and lean thinking, and is the essential new mind-set and practice for boosting sus­tainable growth, productivity, and profits in the future.

Existing research understands co-production as leading to shifts in roles of the public sector institutions and their staffs. The shift is seen in the way that a discursive use of the term service provision with embedded logics encompassing fiscal accountability, performance measurement, efficiency, and process regulation has changed towards discourses that embrace collaboration between the public sector front staff and the citizens, with the aim of developing legitimate and effective welfare services that are co-produced by means of active participation and distributed decision making. However, this change requires new approaches to the way in which the implementation of new practices and tools is executed in practice as studied and researched, and how the new practices and tools are understood and evaluated in organizations. Processual Perspectives on the Co-Production Turn in Public Sector Organizations is an essential reference book that examines, unfolds, and develops approaches to co-production and implementation as dynamic, processual, collaborative, sensemaking, and as requiring and resulting in capacity building and learning. Moreover, the book examines new approaches to engage citizens and public sector actors in collaborative and co-productive processes, especially with concern for new goals pertaining to sustainability, social equity, democratic legitimacy, etc. Covering topics that include knowledge management and collective leadership, the book presents perspectives on capacity building, learning, change, and evaluation in organizations and current research in different areas of the public sector. It is intended for public sector administrators and managers investigating the relevancy, approaches, and methods in co-production. Furthermore, it targets civil actors and welfare service users, leaders and managers of public organizations, researchers, academicians, and students in programs that include social welfare development, public administration, political science, and organizational development.

This enlightening book scrutinizes the shifting governance paradigms that inform public administration reforms. From the rise to supremacy of New Public Management to new the growing preference for alternatives, four world-renowned authors launch a powerful and systematic comparison of the competing and co-existing paradigms, explaining the core features of public bureaucracy and professional rule in the modern day.