The Actualization of Innovation : A case study on how the district administrations in the City of Stockholm actualize innovation

Abstract: As innovation plays a predominant role in gaining competitive advantage, profit driving companies within the private sector have found ways to use innovation to succeed on the market. Although the public sector works according to a different set of logic, the demand for innovation within the public sector has been found to be growing due to increasing user needs, as well as increasing expectations on the effectiveness, availability and the quality of the public services. The district administrations, that are partly responsible for delivering such services in the City of Stockholm, face currently also various challenges such as a demographical development. A central strategy for innovation currently exists, but as such is equally important as systematical processes in order to build a long-term lasting capacity for innovation, it was unclear to this point if systematical processes are used at the district administrations to actualize innovation. Therefore, this research investigated how innovation was actualized at the district administrations in the City of Stockholm in order to identify if systematical processes were used, as well as to find which factors potentially hinder innovation from being actualized with systematics. Only the implications of the top-management were examined and the research was conducted as a case study of qualitative sort where interviews with top-executives, projects leaders and managers were conducted in the process. This research found that the district administrations neither address nor facilitate innovation in a systematic manner, as systematical processes were found to be absent for such purposes. Innovation is rather actualized in an unstructured manner, as no systematics was found to be used in relation to any of the stages in the innovation process. Among the factors that were found to affect the use of systematic processes was the absence of a climate that facilitates innovation, the lack of know-how knowledge for managing innovation, as well as communication deficiencies. Internal strategies were found to be absent and continuous learning was found to not be facilitated adequately, as well as knowledge in general was found to not be sufficiently enhanced. Heavy workloads and emergency driven operations cause difficulties to actualizing innovation with systematics. Finally, as much of the daily work at district administrations is budget-driven and as innovation is not referred to as explicit objectives, innovation is overshadowed by the tasks that are related to the daily operations at the district administrations.