Top picks from Raccords and our guests

Our contributors, Geoff Mulgan and Stéphane Vincent, share some favourite resources for further exploration of public-sector experimentation:

The Medium page of Lindsay Cole, founder of the City of Vancouver’s Solutions Lab (Canada) and adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia
Stéphane Vincent invites us to discover Lindsay Cole, whose work has been an important inspiration for La 27e Région’s public innovation laboratory and research-action partnership. She opens up some very original and promising avenues which are useful for any innovation community in the public sector!
« Les promesses » a film by Thomas Kruithof
Released in France in 2022 (and hopefully soon in Quebec!), this film tells the story of a suburban mayor nearing the end of her term. With the help of her chief of staff, she works tirelessly to save a city of some 3,000 people. But everything changes when she’s offered a ministerial position. Stéphane Vincent sees this film as a representation of the everyday realities of the exercise of political and administrative power. The film manages to move us, he believes, even as it questions the state of our democracy.
The website of Nesta, a foundation for innovation in the United Kingdom
It’s impossible to discuss experimentation for innovation in the collective and public spheres without mentioning Nesta, a British organization that is an international leader in this field. From 2011 to 2019, Geoff Mulgan was its director. The organization’s website is a treasure trove and contains numerous toolkits for experimentation, as well as explanatory videos and a variety of accessible articles that will help you learn more about public and social R&D.
“Collective Intelligence for Sustainable Development: Getting Smarter Together”: a report by the United Nations
Geoff Mulgan invites us to check out this 2021 report by the United Nations Development Program in collaboration with Nesta. It includes a wealth of case studies where collective intelligence is validated and disseminated to help us solve complex societal problems in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Why there’s no innovation without experimentation” an article by Emilia Saarelainen, Innovation Fellowship Programme Manager at UN Refugee Agency’s Innovation Fellowship Program
For its relevance and clarity, this article is a favourite of the Raccords team! Emilia Saarelainen clearly and succinctly explains what makes experimentation a fundamental part of innovation, and why it is essential to embrace it. The traditional approach of design followed by execution isn’t sufficient to deal with the complexity of the stubborn problems we face. It’s experimentation that paves the way for innovation and sustainable change.

Read the other sections of this issue

THE PODCAST

Recognizing the capacity of municipalities to innovate

Stéphane Vincent, founder and executive officer of La 27e Région presents public and social R&D as a means of activating, with communities, outcomes that are concrete, rapid, and sustainable… Read more and listen to the podcast

THE INTERVIEW

Could experimentation on the social R&D front be a game-changer for the future?

For Geoff Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London and former Chief Executive of Nesta, it is high time to collectively invest in a well-structured system for social R&D experimentation… Read more

THE ART WORKS

Works from “Possible Futures” art show

“Possible Futures,” an exhibition embodying a posture of exploration and conceptual investigation, reflects the ways in which the imagination faces humanity’s uncertain destiny… Read more and view the art works