Recognizing the capacity of municipalities to innovate

Do public administrations have the capacity to innovate socially? How can they overcome the complexity of bureaucratic systems so they can revisit ways of doing things that no longer work and explore new impact initiatives? And how can they address the major social and environmental challenges specific to their territories? Our guest presents public and social R&D as a means of activating, with communities, outcomes that are concrete, rapid, and sustainable.

Stéphane Vincent, founder and executive officer of La 27e Région, a public and social laboratory in Paris, works with local communities to transform themselves and help them build new forms of public action and services. He puts it well: “In R&D, the important thing is the ‘R’—but it’s also the ‘D’!” We don’t necessarily try to undertake decade-long studies through experimentation, nor do we seek to know everything before we start. Instead, we adopt an approach that allows us to generate long-term results as well as “quick wins”—in short, solutions that may be imperfect but that are sufficient to activate change.

It is by establishing this culture of experimentation and social and public R&D that we succeed in “moving the lines” and forging new solutions.