What do DARPA, American Express, NASA, the Knight Foundation, the State Department, and PepsiCo have in common? These were just some of the organizations that came together for a recent public-private strategy session hosted by the Case Foundation and the White House to explore the promise and pitfalls of promoting innovation and igniting public participation through prizes, challenges and open grant making.
What started as a small idea to gather a few leading cross sector innovators in a room for discussion on these issues grew into a day-long, roll-up-your sleeves, get-to-work gathering of nearly 200 executive branch employees representing more than 25 agencies, senior White House leaders and dozens of experts from the private and non-profit sectors. The conversations were rich, challenging and stimulating, ranging from panels on public-sector success stories featuring the likes of the Department of Education and NASA, private-sector trail blazers like the Joyce Foundation and the X Prize, interactive case-study round table discussions and “ignite” sessions moderated by US CTO Aneesh Chopra, where select government and private sector innovators pitched brand new ideas giving their colleagues in the room a chance to critique and guide.
What was even more exciting for us was that while the size of the room and location of the event limited the number of participants, hundreds of people participated from all around the world through our CaseSoup live stream discussions with several key speakers from the event – and the discussion did not and will not stop there.
In his Strategy for American Innovation and the Open Government Directive, President Obama has mandated that federal agencies use this type of public participation to spur innovation and new ideas. The Office of Management and Budget helped breathe life into this work when the nation’s chief performance officer, Jeff Zients, released a comprehensive memo detailing employees exactly how agencies can navigate complicated federal law to make these strategies work.
In the coming weeks and months, our government will be launching all sorts of new programs and innovations taking advantage of this model – just like the Department of Commerce’s new i6 Challenge, which will award up to $1 million to each of six winning teams with the most creative ideas on how to make different innovative technologies profitable in their regions. And in the wake of our strategy session, a community of practice has been developed where public and private sector colleagues can continue to learn from and challenge each other. We will continue to take part in these discussions and we we want YOU to be involved as well.
You can start by…
- Watching the videos from all panels and keynote presentations and check out the photos.
- Checking out all of the CaseSoup sessions, which have been recorded and split into chapters based on questions asked during the interviews to make it easy for you to navigate.
- Continuing to watch and read our Citizen-Centered Solutions page for new articles with leading “open innovation” trail blazers, links to exciting new efforts, and the top resources in this space.
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MDS11: The Importance of the Next Generation with Jean Case
