PPPs--Public Private Partnerships

Earlier yesterday, Forbes published an article called “What’s Driving Demand For Infrastructure and Innovation,” which got me thinking about what kinds of things government can do to actualize real policy changes that foster social innovation. The author Jonathan Refoy argues that governments must focus on creating sound infrastructures first before tackling policy changes to foster social innovation. Should these things be mutually exclusive and ranked against each other in terms of priority? While there are good points in his article such as the need to establish strong Public-private partnerships (PPPs), I disagree with the fact that infrastructure improvement and policies to further innovation cannot happen simultaneously.

We cannot just sit back and wait for traditionally slow governments to get their house in order to fix infrastructure issues. There must be equal efforts by government and the private sector to better progress in the field of social innovation, which can surely be mutually beneficial.

Public-private partnerships is one method to get private business ventures working with a partnership of governments to expediently address public needs—usually infrastructure projects. In the relationship of a PPP, the private party usually assumes financial and/or operational risk in the project. Taxpayer money is not used from the government side; instead the user of the service foots the bill. For example, toll roads are often PPPs.

Plenary Group, a Canadian PPP is one such group. Focusing on privately funding public infrastructure projects, Plenary Group is based in Canada but is expanding world-wide. When businesses like the Plenary Group work with governments to provide solutions for otherwise grid-locked public issues, social innovators and incubators will be more inclined to gravitate towards cities that promote creative problem-solving.