What is public

entrepreneurship?
 • Public entrepreneurship is an idea whose
time has come. As the challenges for
public services and society become more
public acute and complex, a concept with its
roots in the 1960s is being increasingly
entrepreneurship revisited as public leaders look to inject
entrepreneurial spirit and innovation
into the traditional structures and
processes of government.
 • While “social entrepreneurs” are people
outside government, public
entrepreneurs act within government
and, at their heart, are a blend of two
different roles: that of a public servant,
and that of an entrepreneur. The
public underlying premise is that these roles
entrepreneurship are usually distinct but the skill sets they
require need not be. Indeed, the future
public servant will increasingly need to
think and act like an entrepreneur –
building new relationships, leveraging
resources, working across sector lines
and acting, and sometimes failing, fast.
 • Within organisations, this means
stimulating innovation through a
problem-solving spirit and a natural bent
public for working more closely with citizens.
Across systems, it means building
entrepreneurship coalitions and crosssector collaborations
that can improve outcomes, control cost
and sustain access in ways that span the
traditional siloes of government.
 • Collaborating and networking.
Collaboration is fundamental to the public
entrepreneur, who seeks to build
key coalitions for change across government,
business and civil society, often knowing
characteristics of when to ‘let go’ in order for others to lead.
a public This ethos can be seen in Singapore’s
Yellow Ribbon Project, a successful
entrepreneur? crosssector partnership developed to
support the rehabilitation of ex-offenders
and their families within community
settings.
 • Working across systems.
Public entrepreneurs see themselves as
part of a system rather than just an
key organisation or department. This underpins
characteristics of the development of leading-edge health
and care systems such as the Netherlands’
a public Buurtzog model and the United States’
entrepreneur? accountable care platforms such as
Geisenger and Kaiser Permanente, all of
which have benefited from leaders who
manage change across multiple settings.
 • Building narratives for change:
Entrepreneurs persuade, influence and
key “sell”. They influence behaviour, showcase
characteristics of social innovation and persuade colleagues
(administrators, politicians and citizens)
a public that even in our increasingly blame-driven
entrepreneur? culture, where civil servants are
understandably risk averse, there remains
an upside of doing something differently.
 A great example of this is the UK’s annual
NHS Change Day. What began as a small
initiative now involves thousands of
key people working across the health service
characteristics of who make an individual commitment to
“make one small change” as part of a
a public collective commitment to improve patient
care. What begun as a small initiative now
entrepreneur? involves thousands of people working
across the health service on an annual
basis.
 Leveraging new resources:
A critical function of the public
key entrepreneur is to find new ways of
characteristics of financing public service and development
interventions. This could mean pooling
a public budgets, looking to public-private
entrepreneur? partnerships, utilizing digital technology,
or experimenting with new models of
social finance and impact investment.
key Focusing on outcomes:
Public entrepreneurship is about doing
characteristics of what it takes to get the right outcome,
a public even if that means abandoning traditional
career paths and confounding
entrepreneur? performance expectations.
 Adapting and learning:
An appetite for risk is woven deeply into
key the DNA of entrepreneurs, who are
minded to “fail quickly, fail fast and fail
characteristics of cheaply” – an attitude that can feel
a public antithetical to that of the archetypal civil
servant. Public entrepreneurs must take
entrepreneur? this attitude into environments with a
human as well as a financial cost, so
learning and adapting quickly is vital.
 Building government capacity for public
innovation:
Public entrepreneurs will need to play a
how will the particularly important role in the
developing world, where the capacity of
public states to act has been missing,
entrepreneurship underdeveloped or undermined by
corruption. In more mature welfare states,
agenda develop? the role of the public entrepreneur will be
crucial in continuing to unlock the
potential of citizens in the co-design and
co=delivery of public services.
 Building readiness for collaboration:
Working across siloes and sectors is not a
natural function of government or civil
how will the servants because infrastructure and
public incentives tend to constrain it. Public
entrepreneurs can, as Helen Bevan argues,
entrepreneurship “rock the boat without tipping it over”, but
agenda develop? if they don’t prepare their teams and
organisations for collaborating at scale,
they will struggle to bring innovation into
the mainstream.
 Leading across the sectors
We have arguably only scratched the
how will the surface in terms of the potential of public-
private-social sector collaboration (and
public certainly have many examples of where it
entrepreneurship has not worked!). Supporting sustainable
change in society requires a coalition of
agenda develop? actors, and this is where the public
entrepreneur can play a convening and
mobilising role.
 Digital technology and social media are
helping to provide new insights about
behaviour, motivation and decision-
Note: making – flipping our expectations about
how change happens and what public
servants are there to do.