Understanding innovation in Local Government: Evidence from an Italian case study

Innovation is considered to be a key to success in both private and public sector organizations and has been studied for a long time. In broad sense, innovation has been defined as the process by which new products or techniques are introduced by an individual or a social unit. Following this definition, authors have proposed to distinguish between innovations that affect the development of a new product or technology and those that change the organization’s rules, structures, roles and processes. On this issue, several studies have concentrated on the characteristics of people and organizations which affect innovation. However, while there is a large literature on how innovations occur in organizations, there is still much to know about what makes some public sector organizations more innovative than others. In particular, the diffusion of innovations among governments in different political and institutional settings has been much less studied than diffusion among organizations more broadly. This issue also raises the question of how important is politics in government innovation. This paper analyze a case of innovation in Italian local government that has been recognized by Italian innovation awards in order to shed light on how innovation occurs and can be developed in a context of several constraints. Several relevant patterns of innovation have been identified within the organization along with related influencing factors conducting to the success.