Governments Adopt Innovations as Public Policy

Many of the articles we’ve read focus on innovation to fight poverty in Indian, Africa and even here in the United States. One region that we haven’t paid much attention to is Latin America. Yet this region of the world is also focusing on scaling social innovation through government support. The ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean hosted the Experiences in Social Innovation contest in order to highlight outstanding examples of innovative solutions. The focus of showcasing the contest winners is to make their efforts visible to the governments where they are working. The overarching conviction is that creative endeavors will be more successful and able to scale if the governments adopt them into public policy. Currently, many of the programs that are being highlighted through the contest have only found success locally and only their immediate communities even know about them. Without the funds to expand, many of these solutions to complex problems will never have as far reaching effect as they could.

Governments often don’t have the ability to invest in the research and experimentation that is needed to develop creative ideas for public reform. By adopting innovative ideas that have already been tested locally, the government is able to address the needs of its people in a more efficient manner. Some projects are already in the process of being adopted. In Brazil, the Projeto Saude e Alegria (Health and Happiness Project) will become part of government policy in the next month.

Several of the articles we looked at this week spoke about the United States’ new office of Social Innovation and its goals to fund successful innovators. The model for Latin America is similar in its partnership with the government, yet has a few key differences. The ECLAC contest does not necessarily provide monetary sponsorship or awards. Instead, it creates recognition for innovators and basically gives them a stamp of approval so that governments and other private sponsors will be more likely to take a chance on them. The government isn’t doling money to help these programs but instead is incorporating the programs into the public sector. This procedure raises the question of where do initial investment funds come from? Like the US model, the government is more interested in ventures that have already proven themselves successful in some way. Could the lack of support and resources in the early stages be hindering even more creative innovations from beginning?