At the 2021 BiiG Network Innovation Conference in February, IPAA Queensland’s breakout session on day 1 focused on the WHAT of public value, reimagining value and better policy solutions for clients and communities.
Michael Eales, Strategy Designer and Managing Director, Business Models Inc ANZ, kicked off the session with a keynote address – Reimagining trust in public purpose work – which took participants on a journey to reimagine the way we look at public purpose work and new ways for creating greater value.
So your challenge is to reimagine your capacity, the capacity of your team and your whole organisation … to think beyond the binary separation of public and private, to think toward how we can mobilise private activities towards the achievement of public goals and doing this in a sustainable and scalable way.
He called for public purpose workers to drive collaboration across sectors, to create community around policy issues and to build trust with collaborators and clients.
With these messages and the scene set, participants heard stories of creating public value in action through Global Collaboration Laboratories (CoLab). The Global CoLab Movement is a movement for reimagining (structural) change, resetting and restarting.
Excerpts from two of the case studies are shared here.
The Housing Action Lab (HAL) – a unique opportunity for unusual suspects, non-sectorial and sectorial to sit together and focus on solutions that can be operationalized on the ground
Rachel Watson Co-Lead of HAL and Director at Watson & Associates.
Rachel began – What transformative actions can we take together today, to deliver the housing solutions of tomorrow for all ages and life stages? We need solutions as complex as we are!
The future of housing is changing. Think pre and post covid, climate change and carbon framework, size of the typical family, the need to work and live in the same place; ages and life stages … We can look back, but we need to be constantly moving forward.
Progress on housing has been slow and not moving as fast as we want although not for want of passion or knowledge … We get tied up in MOUs, policy levers, governance, partnership agreements, delegation processes, and it all becomes too hard.
Hear from HAL participants about the challenges for housing the video here.
What is the HAL?
It’s an intentional process that creates actions. It’s an opportunity to bring attention to solutions. What it is not is a hackathon or a talk fest!
CoLabs are not a container. Colabs offer the space and environment for a diverse group of people to come and share about the content and need to get to a solution. Talking about what solutions could be. It’s about innovation in action … It’s about everyone with ideas, with passion and who want to get their boots in – so it could be anyone of us.
Collectively we got to this situation, collectively we will get ourselves out.
Government has a role to lead, but not to lead the content, process or thinking, but to lead the culture of co-working. And to be really comfortable in the vulnerability that brings when others are also leading.
Five focus areas
Read more about the HAL story in action here.
The Circular Economy (CE) Lab Creating impact from a social, economic and environmental lens
Ty Hermans Managing Director, Evolve Group shared his perspective, as an industry partner of the CE Lab.
Evolve Group is in the manufacturing (plastics) business. We design and develop solutions for a range of industries including mining, food, agriculture, automotive, and recently pivoted to health to deliver facemasks for the Queensland Government.
We were one of the original members of the CE Lab. We started our CE Lab journey before we knew what a CE was. We started to pivot out of single use plastic some time ago and assist our clients this way too.
What is the CE Lab?
An experimental and collaborative environment with a mission to accelerate the circular economy in Queensland. It’s a platform for multi-party innovation where 27 industry participants (including government agencies) explore emerging opportunities and co-author circular solutions.
Our Solution: United for Change
Along with the Evolve Group, CE Lab partners included COEX (Container Exchange), EverLedger, RioTinto, Astron Sustainability.
We didn’t know each other but the CE Lab provided a way to connect, understand each other’s problems and challenges, and together as a team focus on solutions that are commercially viable.
The CE Lab ended with something that could be commercialised – including the Container Exchange program, which now sees 3 million containers a day being collected and thereby monetising the waste stream.
Watch the COEX video here
For more information on the projects and partners happening at the CE Lab, click here
About IPAA Queensland
IPAA Queensland advances the professionalism, capability and integrity of public administration and public purpose work and promotes pride in service.
If you’re a public servant or engaged in public purpose work, we encourage you to get to know and connect with IPAA Queensland. Find out more about us by reading more on our site or through joining as a member here.
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