We are living through such a momentous time of rapid transformation, the big question is: how will we enter the next era? — In February this year I was browsing in a bookshop in Gatwick Airport (an act that seemed so normal at the time) and I came across a copy of The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. …

Getting from the “what” to the “how” of mission-oriented innovation policy — a research proposal. — This is an introduction to my PhD (initiated in July 2018) at UCL-IIPP — please feel free to contact me at rowan.conway@ucl.ac.uk if you would like to find out more or discuss this in more detail. …

As we seek to make sense of the pandemic, many are pinning their hopes on an “entrepreneurial state” to champion innovation to solve the crisis. But it is one thing for governments to announce big investment plans, it is quite something else to convert them into innovations that will tackle the virus and rebuild the economy. In our haste for answers, how do we avoid the trap of short-term solutionism?

Successive transformation plans have sought to inject dynamism into government. Last month, Dominic Cummings upped the ante with a call to recruit “assorted weirdos”. But will it be the answer? — In his now infamous blog, Dominic Cummings put out a call for “weirdos and misfits” to join him at Number 10. In it he laments Whitehall bureaucracy and its unexploited “trillion dollar bills lying on the street”. …

Here’s a short review of the work the RSA did on digital citizen engagement in 2017 with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. For this project, Clare Devaney and I did research to understand more about the innovative ways that cities and regional governments are engaging with citizens to talk about inclusive growth. Below is a summary of digital and data-driven methods in cities were pionneering then to enable citizens to inform policy.

How an RSA programme blended action research and exploratory design methods to support the development of “impact entrepreneurs.” — At the RSA you meet a lot of people who want to change the world. Some are social entrepreneurs and many spend their lives relentlessly trying to change systems. …

There are some who can only see the future of work through the prism of automation. But from this vantage point, the discussion can often descend into robot panic… — Some call it the “singularity”, others prefer the “fourth industrial revolution” or the “age of artificial intelligence”. But what is notable in its absence is the human experience of work. …

For generations a job for life has been the norm. Today, while paid employment is still a reality for most, digital trends have sparked a revolution in how we work, and for some this means that work — and life — is more precarious… — Employment in the UK has reached a record high of 32.75 million. Despite this fact, there is a rising concern that the labour market is fragmenting into low paying, poorly protected jobs and some economists believe the jobs market has become increasingly precarious for people. Many new jobs are now…

In this blog series we are looking at how to be a public entrepreneur — a practitioner in government who wants to move fast and fix things. Here, we break down some thoughts on how to foster an entrepreneurial culture in government. — In the RSA Lab’s recent report on how to be a public entrepreneur we lay out seven ways to foster an entrepreneurial culture in government, using the RSA’s “think like a system, act like an entrepreneur” model of change as a guide. As Graham Leicester, author of Transformative Innovation says…