Paper by Yiling Lin, Carl Benedikt Frey & Lingfei Wu: “Theories of innovation emphasize the role of social networks and teams as facilitators of breakthrough discoveries. Around the world, scientists and inventors are more plentiful and interconnected today than ever before. However, although there are more people making discoveries, and more ideas that can be reconfigured in new ways, research suggests that new ideas are getting harder to find—contradicting recombinant growth theory. Here we shed light on this apparent puzzle. Analysing 20 million research articles and 4 million patent applications from across the globe over the past half-century, we begin by documenting the rise of remote collaboration across cities, underlining the growing interconnectedness of scientists and inventors globally. We further show that across all fields, periods and team sizes, researchers in these remote teams are consistently less likely to make breakthrough discoveries relative to their on-site counterparts. Creating a dataset that allows us to explore the division of labour in knowledge production within teams and across space, we find that among distributed team members, collaboration centres on late-stage, technical tasks involving more codified knowledge. Yet they are less likely to join forces in conceptual tasks—such as conceiving new ideas and designing research—when knowledge is tacit. We conclude that despite striking improvements in digital technology in recent years, remote teams are less likely to integrate the knowledge of their members to produce new, disruptive ideas…(More)”.
GovTech in Fragile and Conflict Situations Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities
Report by the World Bank: “This report takes stock of the development of GovTech solutions in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS), be they characterized by low institutional capacity and/or by active conflict and provides insights on challenges and opportunities for implementing GovTech reforms in such contexts. It is aimed at practitioners and policy makers working in FCS but will also be useful for practitioners working in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) contexts, at-risk countries, or low-income countries as some similar challenges and opportunities can be present…(More)”.
Design Thinking Misses the Mark
Article by Anne-Laure Fayard & Sarah Fathallah: “Nonprofits, governments, and international agencies often turn to design thinking to tackle complex social challenges and develop innovative solutions with—rather than for—people. Design thinking was conceptualized by designer Nigel Cross more than four decades ago, notably in the 1982 Design Studies article “Designerly Ways of Knowing.” The approach was later packaged for popular consumption by global design and innovation consultancy IDEO. Design thinking quickly became the go-to innovation tool kit in the for-profit world—and, soon after, in the international development and social sectors—because of its commitment to center communities in the collaborative design process.
IDEO’s then-CEO Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt, who was then lead of the IDEO social innovation group that became IDEO.org, championed design thinking for the social sector in their 2010 Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “Design Thinking for Social Innovation,” which has become an important reference for design thinking in the social sector. Embraced by high-profile philanthropists like Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation cofounder Melinda Gates and Acumen founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz, design thinking soared in popularity because it promised to deliver profound societal change. Brown even claimed, in a 2014 Harvard Business Review article, that design thinking could improve democratic capitalism.
However, design thinking has not lived up to such promises. In a 2023 MIT Technology Review article, writer and designer Rebecca Ackerman argued that while “design thinking was supposed to fix the world,” organizations rarely implement the ideas generated during the design-thinking process. The failure to implement these ideas resulted from either an inadequate understanding of the problem and/or of the complexities of the institutional and cultural contexts…(More)”.
Social Economy Science
Open Access Book edited by Gorgi Krlev, Dominika Wruk, Giulio Pasi, and Marika Bernhard: “Lack of progress in the area of global sustainable development and difficulties in crisis management highlight the need to transform the economy and find new ways of making society more resilient. The social economy is increasingly recognized as a driver of such transformations; it comprises traditional forms of cooperative or solidarity-based organizations alongside new phenomena such as impact investing or social tech ventures that aim to contribute to the public good. Social Economy Science provides the first comprehensive analysis of why and how social economy organizations create superior value for society. The book draws on organizational theory and transition studies to provide a systematic perspective on complex multi-stakeholder forms of action. It discusses the social economy’s role in promoting innovation for impact, as well as its role as an agent of societal change and as a partner to businesses, governments, and citizens…(More)”.
Science and the State
Introduction to Special Issue by Alondra Nelson et al: “…Current events have thrown these debates into high relief. Pressing issues from the pandemic to anthropogenic climate change, and the new and old inequalities they exacerbate, have intensified calls to critique but also imagine otherwise the relationship between scientific and state authority. Many of the subjects and communities whose well-being these authorities claim to promote have resisted, doubted, and mistrusted technoscientific experts and government officials. How might our understanding of the relationship change if the perspectives and needs of those most at risk from state and/or scientific violence or neglect were to be centered? Likewise, the pandemic and climate change have reminded scientists and state officials that relations among states matter at home and in the world systems that support supply chains, fuel technology, and undergird capitalism and migration. How does our understanding of the relationship between science and the state change if we eschew the nationalist framing of the classic Mertonian formulation and instead account for states in different parts of the world, as well as trans-state relationships?
This special issue began as a yearlong seminar on Science and the State convened by Alondra Nelson and Charis Thompson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. During the 2020–21 academic year, seventeen scholars from four continents met on a biweekly basis to read, discuss, and interrogate historical and contemporary scholarship on the origins, transformations, and sociopolitical
consequences of different configurations of science, technology, and governance. Our group consisted of scholars from different disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, history, political science, and geography. Examining technoscientific expertise and political authority while experiencing the conditions of the pandemic exerted a heightened sense of the stakes concerned and forced us to rethink easy critiques of scientific knowledge and state power. Our affective and lived experiences of the pandemic posed questions about what good science and good statecraft could be. How do we move beyond a presumption of isomorphism between “good” states and “good” science to understand and study the uneven experiences and sometimes exploitative practices of different configurations of science and the state?…(More)”.
Open Government for Stronger Democracies
A Global Assessment by the OECD: “Open government is a powerful catalyst for driving democracy, public trust, and inclusive growth. In recognition of this, the OECD Council adopted the Recommendation on Open Government in 2017. To date, it remains the first – and only – internationally recognised legal instrument on open government and has guided many countries in designing and implementing their open government agendas. This report takes stock of countries’ implementation of the Recommendation, its dissemination, and its ongoing significance. It is based on an OECD survey carried out in 2020/2021 among all countries that adhered to the Recommendation and other partner countries, as well as on further data collected through a perception survey with delegates to the OECD Working Party on Open Government…(More)”.
A Blueprint for Designing Better Digital Government Services
Article by Joe Lee: “Public perceptions about government and government service delivery are at an all-time low across the United States. Plagued government legacy systems—too often using outdated programming language—are struggling to hold up under the weight of increased demand, and IT modernization efforts are floundering at all levels of government. This is taking place against the backdrop of a rapidly digitizing world that places a premium on speedy, seamless, simple, and secure customer service.
Government’s “customers” typically confront a whiplash experience between accessing services from the private sector and government. If a customer doesn’t like the quality of service they get from a particular business, they can usually turn to any number of competitors; that same customer has no viable alternative to a service provided by government, regardless of the quality of that service.
When Governor Josh Shapiro took office earlier this year in Pennsylvania, the start of a new administration presented an opportunity to reexamine how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania delivered services for residents and visitors. As veteran government technologist, Jennifer Pahlka, points out, government tends to be fixated on ensuring compliance with policies and procedures frequently at the expense of the people they serve. In other words, while government services may fulfill statutory and policy requirements, the speed, seamlessness, and simplicity in which that service is ultimately delivered to the end customer is oftentimes an afterthought.
There’s a chorus of voices in the growing public interest technology movement working to shift this stubborn paradigm to proactively and persistently center people at the heart of each interaction between government and the customer. In fact, Pennsylvania is part of a growing coalition of states transforming their digital services across the country. For Pennsylvania and so many states, the road to creating truly accessible digital services involves excavating a mountain of legacy systems and policies, changing cultural and organizational paradigms, and building a movement that puts people at the center of the problem…(More)”.
Why the future might not be where you think it is
Article by Ruth Ogden: “Imagine the future. Where is it for you? Do you see yourself striding towards it? Perhaps it’s behind you. Maybe it’s even above you.
And what about the past? Do you imagine looking over your shoulder to see it?
How you answer these questions will depend on who you are and where you come from. The way we picture the future is influenced by the culture we grow up in and the languages we are exposed to.
For many people who grew up in the UK, the US and much of Europe, the future is in front of them, and the past is behind them. People in these cultures typically perceive time as linear. They see themselves as continually moving towards the future because they cannot go back to the past.
In some other cultures, however, the location of the past and the future are inverted. The Aymara, a South American Indigenous group of people living in the Andes, conceptualise the future as behind them and the past in front of them.
Scientists discovered this by studying the gestures of the Aymara people during discussions of topics such as ancestors and traditions. The researchers noticed that when Aymara spoke about their ancestors, they were likely to gesture in front of themselves, indicating that the past was in front. However, when they were asked about a future event, their gesture seemed to indicate that the future was perceived as behind.
Analysis of how people write, speak and gesture about time suggests that the Aymara are not alone. Speakers of Darij, an Arabic dialect spoken in Morocco, also appear to imagine the past as in front and the future behind. As do some Vietnamese speakers.
The future doesn’t always have to be behind or in front of us. There is evidence that some Mandarin speakers represent the future as down and the past as up. These differences suggest that there is no universal location for the past, present and future. Instead, people construct these representations based on their upbringing and surroundings.
Culture doesn’t just influence where we see the position of the future. It also influences how we see ourselves getting there…(More)”.
Overcoming the Challenges of Using Automated Technologies for Public Health Evidence Synthesis
Article by Lucy Hocking et al: “Many organisations struggle to keep pace with public health evidence due to the volume of published literature and length of time it takes to conduct literature reviews. New technologies that help automate parts of the evidence synthesis process can help conduct reviews more quickly and efficiently to better provide up-to-date evidence for public health decision making. To date, automated approaches have seldom been used in public health due to significant barriers to their adoption. In this Perspective, we reflect on the findings of a study exploring experiences of adopting automated technologies to conduct evidence reviews within the public health sector. The study, funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, consisted of a literature review and qualitative data collection from public health organisations and researchers in the field. We specifically focus on outlining the challenges associated with the adoption of automated approaches and potential solutions and actions that can be taken to mitigate these. We explore these in relation to actions that can be taken by tool developers (e.g. improving tool performance and transparency), public health organisations (e.g. developing staff skills, encouraging collaboration) and funding bodies/the wider research system (e.g. researchers, funding bodies, academic publishers and scholarly journals)…(More)”
What causes such maddening bottlenecks in government? ‘Kludgeocracy.’
Article by Jennifer Pahlka: “Former president Donald Trump wants to “obliterate the deep state.” As a Democrat who values government, I am chilled by the prospect. But I sometimes partly agree with him.
Certainly, Trump and I are poles apart on the nature of the problem. His “deep state” evokes a shadowy cabal that doesn’t exist. What is true, however, is that red tape and misaligned gears frequently stymie progress on even the most straightforward challenges. Ten years ago, Steven M. Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, coined the term “kludgeocracy” to describe the problem. Since then, it has only gotten worse.
Whatever you call it, the sprawling federal bureaucracy takes care of everything from the nuclear arsenal to the social safety net to making sure our planes don’t crash. Public servants do critical work; they should be honored, not disparaged.
Yet most of them are frustrated. I’ve spoken with staffers in a dozen federal agencies this year while rolling out my book about government culture and effectiveness. I heard over and over about rigid, maximalist interpretations of rules, regulations, policies and procedures that take precedence over mission. Too often acting responsibly in government has come to mean not acting at all.
Kludgeocracy Example No. 1: Within government, designers are working to make online forms and applications easier to use. To succeed, they need to do user research, most of which is supposed to be exempt from the data-collection requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act. Yet compliance officers insist that designers send their research plans for approval by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) under the act. Countless hours can go into the preparation and internal approvals of a “package” for OIRA, which then might post the plans to the Federal Register for the fun-house-mirror purpose of collecting public input on a plan to collect public input. This can result in months of delay. Meanwhile, no input happens, and no paperwork gets reduced.
Kludgeocracy Example No. 2: For critical economic and national security reasons, Congress passed a law mandating the establishment of a center for scientific research. Despite clear legislative intent, work was bogged down for months when one agency applied a statute to prohibit a certain structure for the center and another applied a different statute to require that structure. The lawyers ultimately found a solution, but it was more complex and cumbersome than anyone had hoped for. All the while, the clock was ticking.
What causes such maddening bottlenecks? The problem is mainly one of culture and incentives. It could be solved if leaders in each branch — in good faith — took the costs seriously…(More)”.