Theme for Innovation Month 2016: ‘Disrupt, Develop, Display’

[Originally published on the Australian Government Public Sector Innovation Network under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY AU licence]

We’d like to share with you the theme for Innovation Month 2016 – ‘Disrupt, Deliver, Display’.

Innovation Month 2016 will run from 4-31 July and planning is already underway for a number of activities. We find it helps to have a theme that can help guide us in thinking about what events, activities or issues are explored during the month.

Why this theme?

We think it captures some of the key issues facing innovation in the public sector at the moment.

  • Disrupt – there are disruptive technologies and big changes accompanying them. How do government agencies engage with or respond to this disruption? How much might we need to disrupt ourselves and our own processes?
  • Develop – innovation is about ideas that have an impact. Ideas need to be developed from nascent things into thought out proposals and tested projects. How do we best work – as individuals and across agencies and with others – to develop new ideas and innovative responses?
  • Display – we need to ‘show the thing’ – to show what we’ve done so that others can add to it, as well as learn from it. Innovation is also about our behaviours – are each of us displaying the behaviours that will help? Government agencies can be leaders in innovation – but a part of that is leading by example which requires displaying what we’ve done. How can we best display innovative behaviours and practices, as well as the results and lessons that trying something new can bring?

You can find out more about Innovation Month 2016 on the landing page.

If you would like to get involved, please get in contact. Involvement might be that you:

  • Suggest event and activity ideas for the month (in line with the theme)
  • Support one of the planned headline events
  • Help put together an event in your organisation
  • Volunteer to be part of the organising committee for Innovation Month 2016
  • Help organise/pull together events in your region if you’re outside of Canberra.

Or in the spirit of Innovation Month you may have other ideas – how do you think you can best ‘Disrupt, Develop, Display’ in Innovation Month 2016?