What is it about?

Review paper on public sector innovation. More specifically, review of the following two books: Jacob Torfing and Peter Triantafi llou , eds., Enhancing Public Innovation by Transforming Public Governance ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2016 ) . 368 pp. $110 (cloth), ISBN: 9781107088986. Patria de Lancer Julnes and Ed Gibson , eds., Innovation in the Public and Nonprofi t Sectors: A Public Solutions Handbook (New York: Routledge , 2016 ). 276 pp. $46.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9780765644589.

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Why is it important?

Public sector innovation is a relatively new subfield, so there is not much established or well-developed research, theories, and cases that inform us of the conditions, types, measurement, outputs, and outcomes of innovation in the public sector context. In other words, despite its importance and the promise, many questions on public sector innovation remain unexamined, such as how the sources of innovation affect types of innovations (Demircioglu, Audretsch, and Slaper 2017 ), outputs of innovation (Demircioglu 2017 ; Demircioglu and Audretsch 2017 ), and innovation complexity (Demircioglu and Audretsch 2017 )

Perspectives

Both of the books are timely, well-written, and offer a lot of lessons and insights. They also confirm that we have still very limited knowledge and understanding of public sector innovation and the potential for future research and applications. I highly recommend these two edited volumes for anyone seeking to understand the importance, inputs, process, and outputs of public sector innovations. I believe that this is an opportunity for scholars to contribute their knowledge and understanding of public sector innovation and this is an important gap overlooked by the field. I hope and expect that future research may focus on public sector innovation while also considering the linkages with employee attitudes and behavior

Mehmet Akif Demircioglu
National University of Singapore

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This page is a summary of: Reinventing the Wheel? Public Sector Innovation in the Age of Governance, Public Administration Review, July 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12821.
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