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Local Government Studies

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Public Sector Innovation and

Entrepreneurship: Case Studies from
Local Government
D. Bartlett & P. Dibben
Published online: 14 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: D. Bartlett & P. Dibben (2002) Public Sector Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Case
Studies from Local Government, Local Government Studies, 28:4, 107-121, DOI: 10.1080/714004159

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Public Sector Innovation and

Entrepreneurship: Case Studies from
Local Government

D EA N B A RT L E T T and PAULI NE DI BBEN

This article draws together the literatures around innovation and

entrepreneurship in the public sector and presents a detailed
discussion of the nature of public entrepreneurship based upon 12
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case studies of innovation in local government. The article

identifies two important and distinctive aspects of public
entrepreneurship which relate to the independent roles of a
‘champion’ and their ‘sponsor’ and which combine to constitute
entrepreneurial government. The analyses suggest that it is useful
to distinguish between at least two types of entrepreneurial
government which focus upon external public needs and internal
managerial empowerment respectively. The article concludes by
considering how each of these models deals with the conflict and
risk which we see as necessarily associated with innovation in the
public sector and how each of them is differentially responsive to
different stakeholders, both inside and outside of the innovating
organisation.

The extensive reforms in local government that have taken place over the
past decade or more have introduced a wide range of new structures and
practices aimed at improving efficiency and performance. Much of this
reform has been based upon what is generally viewed as a move towards
managerialism and the new public management (NPM), however there has
been much criticism directed towards this model of public management (for
example, Rhodes, 1996; Smith, 1998). In particular, the focus upon
performance measurement which it has been seen as inevitably engendering
has come in for severe criticism (for example, Sanderson, 1998; Edwards,
1998). This article adopts a different approach towards the analysis of recent
changes in the management of local government. Drawing upon empirical
case studies of innovations in local government it suggests that the role of

Dean Bartlett, London Metropolitan University; Pauline Dibben, Middlesex University.

Local Government Studies, Vol.28, No.4 (Winter 2002), pp.107–121

PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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108 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

performance management can be viewed not as a driver of change, but as a

tool at the disposal of the public sector entrepreneur which, if required or
desirable, can be used to embed and institutionalise the innovative changes
driven forward by the ‘champion’ of an innovation in response to the needs
of the public or service user.

T H E M A N A G E M E N T O F I N N O VAT I O N I N T H E P U B L I C S E C TO R

Interest in innovation processes in the public sector has grown substantially

in recent years (for example, Osborne, 1998a; Borins, 2001a). Under
conditions of increased fiscal pressure, it is necessary not only to maximise
efficiency in the provision of services, but also to innovate and discover new
ways of doing things in order to ‘achieve more, with less’. In the UK local
government context, service innovation and improvement has become
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strongly linked to the NPM movement and also to Best Value legislation,
which aims to improve the performance of local government. Generally,
these reforms have been cast in terms of a movement away from the
bureaucratic foundations of local government and its hierarchical governing
structures and towards a more market-oriented corporate governance or
managerialist model through decentralisation and developments such as
compulsory competitive tendering, the introduction of internal markets and
a more commercial style of management (for example, CIPFA, 1994).
There were many reforms throughout the 1980s and early 1990s which
aimed to increase efficiency and generally involved evaluation of
performance by government organisations against targets. This also
occurred in other countries – both in the US and Sweden, Switzerland and
Austria, for example – where there was also evidence of increasing concern Reforms in US to
enhance public sector
for efficiency in the public sector (Flynn and Strehl, 1996). In the United efficiency
States the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) 1993
introduced the use of strategic plans combined with annual performance
plans for federal agencies (Breul, 1996).
It is also important to note that local authorities are encouraged to place
performance management within a community strategy framework.
According to DETR guidance (DETR, 1999) the community strategy for
each area requires ‘consultation processes which identify and balance the
needs of the community as a whole’. It is this new mandate for
responsiveness that constitutes one lever through which the public sector
entrepreneur can attempt change and innovation in the design and delivery
of services to the public, although some writers have argued that political
differences in attitudes towards participation mean that there is still scope
for the participatory agenda to become marginalised (for example, Leach
and Wingfield, 1999).
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PUBLIC SE CTOR I NNOVATI ON AND ENT R E P R E N E U R S H I P 109

Some writers have suggested that the entrenched cultures and their
associated problems which are resistant to NPM can be more responsive to
transformation into a ‘citizen-oriented culture of performance’ (Claver et
al., 1999), through the use of entrepreneurial management (for example,
Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). Hence there is an obvious link to be made
between user-led innovation in public services (for example, Dibben and
Bartlett, 2001) and public entrepreneurship. In this connection, Best Value
is distinctive in its degree of concern with ensuring responsiveness to the
community and in providing a legal basis for consulting citizens and the
local community in relation to the better management of local government
functions, although evidence about the effectiveness of this approach is only
just starting to emerge (for example, Tunstall, 2001).
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THE PUBLIC SECTOR ENTREPRENEU R

Osborne and Gaebler’s (1993) seminal publication introduced the notion of

the public sector entrepreneur, while others (for example, Leadbetter and
Goss, 1998; Moon, 1999; Morris and Jones, 1999; Borins, 2001b) added
further insights into the concept. Morris and Jones suggest at least three
differing conceptualisations of the public sector entrepreneur. First, the
pioneering trailblazer who is concerned with introducing innovations in
order to promote efficiency and better serve the public. Second,
entrepreneurship may be conceived of as a by-product of the application of
strategic management and leadership principles to public enterprises (for
example, Nutt and Backoff, 1992). Third, entrepreneurship as portrayed in
the reinventing government literature (for example, Osborne and Gaebler,
1993) suggests entrepreneurs as ‘empowered employees who are able to
effect innovative solutions to “customer” problems and needs’ (Morris and
Jones, 1999). Other classifications and descriptions of public sector
entrepreneurs exist (for example, Borins, 2000) but as Moon (1999) points
out, ‘while there are extensive interdisciplinary studies on entrepreneurship
and there continue to be attempts to introduce entrepreneurship in the public
sector, we still lack rigorous empirical studies about entrepreneurship’. The
small number of studies which do exist (for example, Morris and Jones,
1999; Hartley and Bennington, 1998) are often not from the UK, come from
the study of national rather than local government and offer only limited
insight into entrepreneurship in the public sector.
While Hartley and Bennington (1998) do offer a study of UK local
government, their analysis suggests that the political leadership and the
managerial leadership of the organisation did not work together to reduce or
manage the external and internal uncertainty faced by the organisation
during this period of extensive change. In fact, Hartley suggests that while
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110 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

this may be the primary goal of the managerial leadership, the political
leadership may have an interest in maintaining uncertainty because this
would be conducive to maintaining the cohesion and stability of the
controlling group of politicians, which could not be taken for granted but
had to be worked for in retaining under conditions of uncertainty. This is in
some ways contrary to some of the assumptions underlying certain
descriptions of public sector entrepreneurship, where managers are
described as needing to persuade politicians of the ‘safety’ of potential
innovations because it suggests that politicians may be able to handle
uncertainty to a greater degree than managers.
It is, then, within the policy context and limited empirical research base
which has been described, that we attempted to further elucidate the concept
of the public sector entrepreneur in local government through our analysis
of 12 empirical case studies described below.
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very detailed research method

RESEARCH METHODS

Given the potentially rich conceptualisations of the public sector

entrepreneur which have been advanced in the literature, but the relatively
small empirical base upon which one is able to draw, we decided to adopt
an inductive qualitative approach. Furthermore we decided that a case study
approach would constitute a suitable research design as it affords the type
of exploratory conceptual analyses which are required in this area. Other
writers (for example, Coopey et al., 1998) have suggested that this approach
is well-suited to the complexity of studying the innovation process within
the types of organisations encountered in a local governance context as it
permits inductive analyses at multiple levels of analysis. It thereby
facilitates the development of grounded theoretical and conceptual
contributions that are sensitive to both the organisational-level phenomenon
of innovation and the individual level of the public sector entrepreneur. For
similar reasons our data analysis procedures were based loosely upon the
canons of grounded theory (for example, Strauss and Corbin, 1990) and we
adopted a purposive sampling strategy using criteria based on
considerations of geographical representativeness, authority type, service
area and organisational characteristics, such as the specific types of user-
involvement mechanisms in place.
One of our main concerns over sampling involved ensuring that the
sample of cases was sufficiently innovative and that it was relevant to the
emerging policy agenda of consulting and involving citizens in service
provision. Therefore we examined the innovation literature and adopted the a definition adopted
definition of service innovation provided by Osborne (1998b) in his from an earlier scholar
to examine the case
classification of service innovations. We also decided that user involvement studies
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must be clearly evident for a case to be selected and adopted criteria similar
to those suggested by Barnes (1999) to evaluate this. The sampling process
began by sending out a brief questionnaire to 100 local authorities, based
upon considerations of geographical spread and authority type. Of those that
replied, the sample was further refined by sorting through the responses
trying to find examples of where councils had engaged in genuine and
interesting innovations which had actually involved users. Around 30
potential local authorities were contacted and from these, a final sample of
12 case studies were selected based upon the previous criteria and what
appeared to be an overall theoretically interesting mix. In this respect, we
tried to ensure that the cases represented different organisational and policy
contexts (for example, a community care case and a regulation case) which
permitted interesting comparisons to be made. Although this article draws
upon the qualitative coding from all 12 of our case studies, we extensively
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illustrate our analyses with only a limited subset of them due to space
limitations. Table 1 summarises the 12 cases.

TABL E 1
S UMMARY OF T HE CASE STU D IES

Case The Innovation Engagement with Users

A New service for disabled people Innovation instigated by users

B Neighbourhood care scheme
C New service for mentally ill tenants
D Transfer of council housing stock to
a new housing company
E A new recycling service
F Changes to regulatory activity
G Recycling in the community
H Community safety initiative
J Improved services for housing benefits
and council tax clients
K Improvements in sports services
L Improved housing service
M A new bus route
Community development work
Community development work
Tenants recruited into user panel
User groups
Meetings with user representatives
Community development work
Community development work
Customer (user) surveys
User panel with elected politicians also present
Letters, public meeting and a ballot
Advert in local press

D ATA C O L L E C T I O N A N D A N A LY S I S

Each case study consisted of around ten or so semi-structured interviews

with those individuals who were most closely involved in the innovation,
including local authority employees, service users, politicians and
partnership agencies. We also interviewed the chief executive in each local
authority. This resulted in over 120 interviews, each of which were up to an
hour long and were fully transcribed. While semi-structured interviews were
the main method of data collection, other sources of textual information,
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112 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

including relevant documentation, field notes and research memos, were

scanned into the computer. The data was analysed using a piece of qualitative
analysis software called NUD*IST. We supplemented our inductive analysis
with the use of deductive coding categories which developed out of team
meetings and group discussions. Furthermore, a detailed ‘event history’ was
generated for each of our cases and a focus group involving all of the
informants in each case was conducted towards the completion of each case.
This gave us a chance to explore tensions and conflicts and also to verify
event histories and initial interpretations and analyses, thereby providing a
degree of analytical triangulation to our findings.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Based upon the inductive analyses that were conducted on each of our
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cases, we did not feel that the distinction between the managerial and
political leadership of innovation offered by Hartley and Bennington (1998)
fitted our case study data. Rather, we identified two prevalent coding
categories which related to the role of ‘champions’ of the innovation and
their ‘sponsors’. Further analysis suggested that, while in some of our cases
the role of champion was adopted by a senior manager and that of sponsor
was adopted by a leading politician, this was not necessarily so. In some of
our cases the sponsor function was provided by a more senior manager, such
as the chief executive. In others, the champion was a politician who drove
the innovation through.

C H A M P I O N S O F I N N O VAT I O N

Our analysis allowed us to distinguish between two different types of

champion, which we labelled the ‘public champion’ and the ‘empowered
champion’. Both types were important in seeing through the innovations in
their local authority and we illustrate each type with data from a number of
our cases. In local authority A, the champion was a manager who had
recently joined the authority and was interested in changing the service to
better meet the needs of the public. She therefore listened to what current
service users had to say and embarked upon a change process based upon
the service users ideas about what was needed to satisfy their wants and
needs. We labelled her type a ‘public’ champion. She championed their
proposal for a new service through the council decision-making procedures.
In contrast, those champions that we labelled as ‘empowered’ champions
were motivated by more personal concerns which tended to relate to their
desire to ‘make a mark’ and their enjoyment of the change process itself.
This is evidenced by a manager from local authority B who we identified as
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an example of an empowered champion and who had a strong self-concept
as being unconventional and as enjoying the challenge of change in the
authority:
Rather than being if you like a control freak I’m more of a change
freak. I can see that we need to change, always need to change, always
improve, so I’m almost not satisfied unless I’m … doing something
that requires change [B4: 334–43].
We began noticing a pattern in our cases when considering the role of
champions and this revolved around the importance of a new person coming
into the local authority. This was the case in authority A, as described above,
and also in authority E (where the champion in this case fitted our notion of
an empowered champion):
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I came in with all guns blazing saying that ‘If you’re not going to do
this, I will …’ It was really their trying to keep me at bay that forced
them to go with it, because they had no other option. So I was really
sort of saying, ‘If a third party can do that, why can’t the DSO?’ that
then set the ball rolling. But it also ruffled fur, I was still in my first
six months of being here, and taking hold of something that they
dearly wanted to happen and making it happen [E1: 194–203].
This conceptualisation of public sector innovation emphasises the way
in which the champions act as vehicles for change and this would suggest a
meta-model of innovation which, in contrast with the diffusion model which
sees the innovation itself as lying at the heart of the process, places greater
emphasis on the ‘people’ aspects of innovation. In this sense, our analysis
supports the views expressed by Hailey (2001) that it is the human resource
management (HRM) aspects in particular which are important in the use of
innovation as a strategic trigger for corporate renewal. From this
perspective, the valuable ‘human capital’ of champions and, in particular,
their mobility, constitutes an important source of the spread of innovation
within an industry or sector (in this case, local government). Upon
examining the rest of our cases, we found that the champions were new to
the authority in nearly half of all the cases. However, our analyses revealed
that it is not merely the ‘knowledge’ component of this human capital that
is important in the innovation process although, as previously mentioned,
knowledge of how things are done elsewhere combined with mobility
within the sector would suggest the importance of this particular component
within a diffusion model of innovation. There is also a cultural component
with respect to people joining an organisation, in terms of the set of
expectations placed upon such newcomers. We would also emphasise the
personal skills and attitudes of champions as important factors. Exploring
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114 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

further the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the champions in public sector
innovation would be therefore one of the key areas which we would
recommend as the focus of future research efforts in the area.

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS

In examining the role of contextual factors in each of our cases, we noted a

bias in the cultural and structural characteristics of some of the
organisations we studied. In local authority E, for example, one person was
employed solely to bid for lottery funding, both for authority projects and to
help community organisations win funding (E1: 526). While this is not
necessarily a bad thing, an over-emphasis on getting in the funding and
getting ideas ‘authorised’ can lead to a neglect of the latter ‘implementation’
functions in the innovation process which are of critical importance in
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seeing an innovation through to successful outcomes. An overall finding of

the research was that while local authorities are good at coming up with
innovative ideas and solutions to the problems generated by fiscal pressure,
they are less good at seeing these ideas through and this highlights both the
importance of positive cultural factors and the crucial relationship between
champions and sponsors in the innovation process. A champion working
without a sponsor and doing so in a culture which focuses more on
creativity than implementation is less likely to see innovations through to
successful implementation.
As advocated by writers such as Borins (2001b), we sampled a couple
of unsuccessful innovations that had either become stalled or had failed. In
case G, for example, the champion had secured the external resources and
got authorisation and was desperate to hand on the innovation but could not
find anybody to take on the actual implementation – the last we heard was
that the innovation was stalled. In contrast, we were told in local authority
C that: ‘M picked it up in such a committed way and such an intelligent way
… she has a vision … and she is terrifically good at bullying people and
saying “You have got to come along and do this”.’
In a number of our cases, the public champion was joined by what we
might call ‘secondary’ champions at later stages who made adjustments and
improvements – ownership of the innovation had spread beyond the
champion through ‘selling’ the idea to others based upon its value to users.
In contrast, the empowered champion tended to overcome the potential
problem of the innovation getting stalled by staying with the innovation at
all stages – acting as the ‘common thread all the way through’.
In considering the impact of cultural factors, we began comparing the
different types of champions we had identified with different cultural
characteristics. While there are many difficulties in analysing and
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differentiating between organisations in terms of ‘cultural types’, it may be
possible to identify ‘public’ and ‘empowered’ (or ‘empowering’)
organisations, or organisational cultures, in a way analogous to the ‘public’
and ‘empowered’ champions we have identified. Of course, the basis of our
differentiation between two differing types of champion is based upon the
motivation of those champions to innovate. Extending the basis of this
differentiation in a way analogous to cultures, there was some evidence that
there may be some tension between these two possible cultural types. In
discussing the motivations underlying innovation, one of our respondents
expressed the view that a ‘public’ motivation to innovate is perhaps being
supplanted by more financially-driven considerations which would appear
to be more in tune with an empowered champion model:
It ought to respond to the needs and expectations of service users …
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whether it always is, is another matter … and I think an increasingly

important motivation these days is actually that a lot of resource and
funding is, sort of, held up as a prize to people who are willing to
innovate and certainly the early rounds of the SRB [Single
Regeneration Budget], um, were really leaps in the dark for a lot of
councils, and they were being asked to put together projects and
partnerships and ways of working that are particularly new to us, and
you find a lot of innovative thinking, sometimes there’s a big prize, I
mean, we didn’t fit in round one, but we did in round two, and we’ve
got a nine million pound SRB project from the government, which in
the scale of a fairly small community, is a huge prize to have won [J2:
224–42].
However, whether or not these cultural characteristics are best viewed as
cultural types, with an implied level of mutual exclusivity between differing
types, or as different cultural dimensions, in which case an authority may
score highly on both, is of course open to question.
Our analysis suggested that there may be some interaction between the
type of champion and certain cultural factors. In case E, for example, we
had an empowered champion operating within a culture which was very
open to public involvement in policy-making, what might be termed a
‘public’ culture. In this case, then, it appeared that ‘contrary’ types
(empowered champion/public culture) operated in complementary ways to
bring the innovation through to the post-implementation stage successfully.
Interestingly, in this case there was also a highly developed performance
management system which was formulated as an integral part of the
innovation and this provided useful management information which was
used to help judge the success of the innovation. Indeed, one cultural factor
which was highlighted in this case was a high tolerance of failure and softer
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116 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

cultural components such as this need to have structures and processes

which support this attitude towards risk and which facilitate the
management of that risk, such as the developed performance management
system which was implemented along with the innovation in authority E. A
respondent in case H summed up the issue of culture thus: ‘It’s about trying
to create a can-do culture rather than a can’t-do culture, because for years
people have said “Oh you can’t do that”’ (H1–2: 689–91).

THE ROLE OF SPONSORS

In local authority F there was an empowered champion (once again

someone who had recently arrived in the authority), but there was no
sponsor to provide support at a political level:
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Regulatory issues are fairly low on the agenda of that committee and
consumer protection, my own area, are even lower because we’re a
new service and we don’t have the members. The most active
members, the best aware, whatever, have been on the city council for
a number of years and have already got their teeth into the issues of
environment and all these issues. There aren’t many councillors out
there who are looking for an interest [F1: 516–23].
When asked about the impact of this lack of political will, the respondent
replied:
Can I deliver the service without that? The answer is yes, I can
probably deliver a service. Should I? No, because I think all the time
there is a sort of issue about accountability and the democratic
element that there ought to be councillor involvement and
accountability and some sort of input from there and I’m sure it would
have an impact, it would change some of the issues that we were
addressing and raise some things to priorities or whatever [F1:
528–39].
It seems that this respondent is describing the essential role that a sponsor
plays for the champions of particular innovations by providing a mandate or
political support. In contrast, in local authority E where there was political
support present, the role of the champion was one of stewardship while that
of the sponsor was one of freeing up time for the champion to work on the
innovation: ‘I suppose in reality I got behind it and shoved it … there is a
councillor … who can also be seen as a champion. I mean the political
environment here was perfect … for such a scheme’ [E1: 156–82].
The empowered champions in two of our cases in particular (local
authorities B and E) would appear to come closest to the ‘intrapreneurship’
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pattern suggested by American writers (for example, Peters and Waterman,
1982; Pinchot, 1985), whereas the public champion in local authority A
differed from her management predecessors by listening to public demands
and needed ‘political’ help from her sponsor. This was also the case in local
authority F, although in this case the political help was not forthcoming and
our analyses would suggest, therefore, that this type of champion may have
more trouble with organisational politics.

CONFLICT IN THE INNOVATION PROCES S

In all of our case studies some kind of conflict or tension was present in the
innovation process and it could well be that such conflict is inevitable
during innovation. We compared the main form of this conflict or tension to
the type of innovation and the type of champion involved and found that
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public champions appeared to encounter mainly internal conflict. This may

be due to resistance from organisational interests representing the status
quo, as was the case in local authority C, or it may be due to opposing
responsibilities, for example between support to service users and rationing
of resources, as was the case in local authority A where internal role conflict
was experienced by the professional administering the service in question.
Conflict was also manifest in the difference of opinion between those higher
up the management line that supported the innovation and those further
down who saw the innovation as encroaching on their professional territory.
Conflict with sections of the community or public that are losing out
because of the change was encountered by a number of our empowered
champions. There were winners and losers among the public/service users
in local authority B and the champion experienced some conflict with those
who felt they were losing out. In the case of local authority D the conflict
was also external but in this situation it was manifested most sharply
between the council and representatives of the user group. In another of our
cases, local authority E, an empowered champion encountered external
conflict, but in this case the conflict was only with some sections of the
population. Furthermore, it was due to operational difficulties, what may be
described as ‘teething troubles’, which arose during initial implementation
of the innovation, rather than a disagreement in principle. The ‘public
culture’ in this case may have ameliorated the conflict by providing a
mandate for the innovation and the specific way in which this public culture
was operationalised – public involvement in policy-making – perhaps
ensured that any conflict that did arise was likely to be at an operational, as
opposed to a strategic, level.
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118 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

R I S K A N D I N N O VAT I O N

Finally, we examined our cases in terms of the type of stakeholder they were
responding to, the sorts of risks and risk management strategies they
suggested and the models of innovation management that they implied.
The nature of risk was different in each of our models of entrepreneurial
government. The public champion obviously runs the risk of failure to
better meet public needs, while the empowered champion can run the risk
of revolt on the part of dissatisfied stakeholder groups. In some of our cases,
needs were well articulated (for example, A and B), while in others (for
example, C) the champion was responding to perceived needs among an
inarticulate section of the community. In local authority A, the managers
responded to users’ needs in favour of responding to central government
and indeed subsequently became involved in lobbying central government
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for a change in the law. In contrast, the innovations in some of our cases (for
example, B and D) were responsive to a new government policy or scheme
which acted as the trigger for change. While we were not able to draw firm
conclusions about which type of entrepreneurial government is best suited
to the differing models of innovation management, we did find that piloting
was found to be very useful in helping see through innovations based on
responsiveness to public need, while in another of our cases we found the
use of negotiation between the council and individual stakeholders was
beneficial. In both the public and empowered models of entrepreneurial

TABL E 2
CHAMP I ONS I N E NT RE P RE NE U R IA L G O V ERN MEN T

Type of champion
Public champion Empowered champion

Orientation to novelty and
innovation
Solution to problem of
getting stuck in the middle
Function of sponsor
Main locus of conflict as a
result of innovation process
Nature of risk
Management
Wants changes that are
different from status quo
Spread ownership –
possibly creating secondary
champions to make
improvements and
adjustments
Provide help with
authorisation and support
inside the organisation
Internal conflicts and
tensions
Failure to better meet
public need
Piloting
Is known for or wants to be
known for unconventional
changes (lover of change for its
own sake)
Involved from beginning to end
– a common thread
Create space for champion –
remove some of the routine
work responsibilities
Conflict with public or service
users’ representatives
Revolt
Negotiating with various
stakeholders
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PUBLIC SE CTOR I NNOVATI ON AND ENT R E P R E N E U R S H I P 119

government, the role of the champions and their sponsors is one of working
together to push forward innovations whilst taking account of both the
policy context and the needs of the public or service users.
In summary, we identified a number of key dimensions to the role of
champion in the entrepreneurial government organisation, including their
orientation towards change, the way in which sponsors were enlisted, the
types of solutions to blocks which were encountered and the locus of the
main conflict which is experienced as a result of the innovation process. As
well as those dimensions, we can also point to key differences in terms of
the stakeholder that is the primary focus of responsiveness, the nature of the
risks associated with the innovation and the strategies for managing that risk
which were employed. This is summarised in Table 2.
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CONCLUSIONS

Our cases sampled entrepreneurial organisations and identified the key roles
to be played by ‘champions’ and ‘sponsors’ of innovation. In doing so, this
study moves away from a bias towards individual characteristics of
entrepreneurs by focussing upon the roles played by people within
organisations and, in this sense, did not identify ‘an entrepreneur’ as such.
While the role of champion may come closest to that of the entrepreneur in
the public sector innovation literature, it may be better to think of the
champion and sponsor working together as a combined force and thereby
supplying the entrepreneurial input into innovation. Although we emphasise
two contrasting types of champions of innovation and entrepreneurial
cultures, it may be that further research will add further types of
entrepreneurial government. While we are not suggesting that the analysis
of champions and their sponsors in the innovation process provides a
comprehensive description of the public sector entrepreneur, it has allowed
us to establish the importance of a champion to the innovation process, to
distinguish between different types of champion, to establish the essential
complementary role of the innovation sponsor and to highlight some of the
possible interactions between different types of champion and cultural
conditions, conflict and responsiveness.
In conclusion, we suggest that, in contrast to the stereotype of local
government organisations as large bureaucracies which stifle innovation
and for which there is little room for the entrepreneurial spirit, the public
sector entrepreneur is critical to the successful implementation of recent
policy initiatives in an international public sector context. We see
entrepreneurship and innovation as necessarily going hand in hand in the
local government context and we have pointed towards the ways in which
the entrepreneurial roles we have identified serve to generate, develop,
implement and consolidate innovations in the public sector.
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120 L O C A L G O V E R N ME N T S T U D I E S

ACKNOW LEDGE ME N T S

This article was based upon research supported by an ESRC grant (L125251044). The principal
award holder was Professor Paul Joyce and the authors would like to acknowledge his
contribution to the ideas contained in this article, as well as those of the rest of the research team
(Aidan Rose, Paul Corrigan, Tony McNulty and Simon Franklin) who were based at the
University of North London.

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