Many claim to be seeking "what works" when looking for the solutions that will meet certain social goals. This quest for evidence-based policies, programmes and practice has gained a renewed momentum, with the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Haywood's calls for a "NICE for social policy" and the forthcoming creation of an Early Intervention Foundation. Yet we don't want "what works". What works is bad for innovation, and by extension, bad for service users.
The following is an extract from the blog posted on The Guardian on 2 May 2012.
At the Centre for Challenge Prizes launch last week we were lucky enough to bring together some brilliant individuals and organisations from a range of sectors. As well as great speeches from Jason Crusan, Director of the new Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation at NASA and David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, we also had some great discussions thanks to the wealth of expertise, interest and ideas in the room.
Yesterday we launched the new Centre for Challenge Prizes, with the Minister David Willetts, Jason Crusan from NASA and Cristin Dorgelo from the White House. This is an exciting and ambitious initiative which we hope will inject some creative energy into problem solving.
For the last few months we have been busy articulating a new practical programme to respond to the challenges and opportunities that an ever more ubiquitous, larger and smarter digital environment creates for education.
Today we launch the Centre for Challenge Prizes at Nesta.
Jonah Lehrer calls himself a translator - of ideas for people who will turn them into actions
Laura Bunt outlines Nesta’s new report the ‘Art of Exit’ – exploring the role of creative decommissioning in public services – and reflects on some of the key themes emerging from the launch event.
Just how many minutes did you spend commuting last year? How did that pint last night affect your sleep? What area of New York City is most likely to trigger an asthma attack? And how did that cup of coffee affect your mental performance this morning? Somewhere, people are asking themselves these very questions.
There is huge interest around the world in new tools for speeding up the generation and development of ideas. Many of them are in use in and around Nesta, including crowdsourcing, design methods and collaboration platforms of all kinds.
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