Creating innovative design labs for the public sector: A case for institutional capacity building in the regions of Ukraine

  • 829 Views
  • 322 Downloads

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Innovative design labs were created by public authorities of the USA, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, China, and other countries to accelerate changes and develop modern public service. This paper provides further insight to establishing external innovation accelerators for strengthening capacity of public institutions. The study aims to define the development opportunities for innovative design labs for the public sector in Ukraine’s regions by the case of the Laboratory of Intellectual Development for Empowering Regions (LIDER). The study was conducted at two stages: (1) exploring the features of innovation implementation in the public sector and outlining the main problems of innovation capacity of public institutions; (2) defining the development opportunities for the LIDER via SWOT-analysis. To substantiate the study results, the correlation analysis between autocratic, bureaucratic, competitive, self-protective, and participative leadership behaviors of CEOs and innovation index based on data from 18 countries was performed, as well as a survey of 195 public servants of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and an interview of 9 experts were conducted.
The following key development opportunities for the LIDER were detected: promoting the introduction of incremental innovations in public institutions by using design thinking methodology; assisting the development of pro-innovative culture and participative leadership via individual-centric and system-oriented approaches; developing effective tools for performance management and supporting public institutions in project activity; organizing the competitions for regional innovative projects; assisting in creation of radically human systems in public institutions.

Acknowledgment
The paper was prepared within the framework of the joint Ukrainian-Lithuanian R&D project “Competence Development of Lithuanian and Ukrainian Public Sector Employees Using Design-Thinking Methodology”.
The project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT, agreement № S-LU-20-5) and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (agreement № М/31-2020).

view full abstract hide full abstract
    • Figure 1. Visualization of correlation analysis between leadership behaviors and innovation index
    • Table 1. SWOT-matrix for analysis of the development opportunities for the LIDER
    • Table 2. Possibilities for using the strategic linkages from the SWOT-matrix for developing the LIDER
    • Conceptualization
      Dmytro Dzvinchuk, Mariana Orliv, Brigita Janiunaite
    • Investigation
      Dmytro Dzvinchuk, Mariana Orliv, Brigita Janiunaite, Victor Petrenko
    • Project administration
      Dmytro Dzvinchuk, Brigita Janiunaite
    • Validation
      Dmytro Dzvinchuk, Victor Petrenko
    • Writing – review & editing
      Dmytro Dzvinchuk, Mariana Orliv
    • Data curation
      Mariana Orliv, Victor Petrenko
    • Formal Analysis
      Mariana Orliv, Victor Petrenko
    • Methodology
      Mariana Orliv, Brigita Janiunaite
    • Visualization
      Mariana Orliv
    • Writing – original draft
      Mariana Orliv, Brigita Janiunaite, Victor Petrenko