In June 2018, the 3rd Annual Conference of the Global Forum on Productivity — co-organised with the Bank of Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada — brought together senior policy-makers, high-level academics and experts to address some of the leading questions on these themes. The Conference explored
- the policy and economic implications from new technologies,
- structural changes from disruptive technologies,
- technology creation, adoption and impacts on institutions, (iv) intangibles, skills and disruptive technologies and
- the state of knowledge on the productivity slowdown. In addition, this 3rd Conference was an opportunity to assess the extent to which the Global Forum on Productivity has helped uncover the factors behind the productivity slowdown.
During this event, Mr. Anthony Arundel, a Professor of Innovation at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia and concurrently a Professorial Fellow at UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, gave a rather inspiring presentation regarding the issues and obstacles met between social innovation and the public sector.
Within this topic, Prof. Arundel featured a variety of case studies and identified specific challenges that have to be addressed, while also proposing certain paths of action in order for stakeholders to do so:
- change social relationships: investment in collaboration between governments, citizens and NGOs
- exploitation of the opportunities that technology offers
- know when to look for larger scale consensus (barriers) and when to focus on “internally-driven” actions (obstacles)
- increasing interest in ‘co-creation’ and ‘design-thinking’ by governments to involve users in the design of social innovations.
Photo by OECD Global Forum on Productivity