Exnovation: the timely shift for public sector transformation
The challenge for public design and design in government is to dive into the field of managing decline and broaden the notion of exnovation as an intuitively understandable counterpart to innovation. Where innovation has a normative approach to improve an existing status quo, through shifting the focus from ‘termination of policies’ to ‘policies for termination’, exnovation has the ambition to support a just transition.
This blogpost is based on a workshop Politics for Tomorrow contributed to the States of Changes Learning Festival in May 2020, where we promoted and emphasized the relevance of exnovation in public sector innovation.
What is exnovation?
Exnovation is the necessary counterbalance to innovation. It is characterized by the deconstruction of systems, practices or technologies that are no longer effective or in line with strategic development. The concept of exnovation is crucial for the design of mission-oriented transformation. Yet despite its central role, exnovation often remains a blind spot in current innovation efforts.
In a socio-technological context, phasing out, dismantling or eliminating existing structures or practices often has a negative connotation associated with decrease, “losers” of development and economic instability. Exnovation aims to manage these processes in a strategic and conscious manner in order to make way for innovation.
Like innovation, exnovation is inherently a systemic concept that may concern the individual (practices), organizational (processes), systemic (technologies) as well as inter-systemic systems level (infrastructures). As with innovation, exnovation may look different on the personal, organizational and systemic level.
In its essence, exnovation can be described as a methodical dismantling of “the unnecessary” or “extraneous” — symbols, things, actions, technologies that previously made sense, yet are no longer relevant. Laws that were made to foster the use of coal or stabilize inequalities between gender and race are of limited use when trying to regulate renewable energies and enable social justice. While the concept is quite easy to grasp, in reality it is a massive challenge to phase out laws, products or practices that are increasingly inhibiting and preventing new and less harmful paths forward.
Where does exnovation play a role?
We first considered the notion of exnovation in 2016, within the context of the Energiewende (energy transition policy) in Germany. Researchers looked at how renewable technologies could be systemically stabilized by laws and new social norms. They discovered that stabilizing the new is not enough to achieve systemic change. In order to embed innovation in an existing “regime” or status quo, non-sustainable technologies and the related systems, infrastructures and livelihoods around these technologies had to be phased out in a deliberate and socially responsible way.
“Innovations are important for sustainability transformations, yet often prove insufficient for replacing established unsustainable structures. The promotion of renewable energy, for example, has been insufficient for pushing coal out of the energy market. The prevalent “innovation bias” should be overcome by complementing innovation politics and research with a stronger occupation with the purposive termination of unsustainable technologies, products and practices.” Dirk Arne Heyen, 2017
The example of a global energy transition is only one of many systemic challenges that illustrate the need for exnovation. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, combining the European Green Deal with a Just Recovery as well as getting rid of systemic inequality and racism are all issues where the solutions will depend on exnovation efforts and participatory processes that “steward loss” and manage the replacement of current path dependencies. This mainly concerns vested interests and routines, particularly the material and idealistic interests of established actors and therefore must address path dependencies on many different levels.
With regard to public sector innovation, how might exnovation contribute to better results in your work?
This blogpost will be followed with insights from the workshop. The focus will be on collaborative deconstruction, as exnovation requires collective intelligence and empathy.
Thanks
Nicole Barling-Luke, Jesper Christiansen, Brenton Caffin and James Oriel of States of Change for giving us the opportunity to contribute to the festival. More informatione can be found at: https://festival.states-of-change.org/
Literature:
Clausen, J. & Fichter, K. (2019). Governance radikaler Umweltinnovationen: Theoretische Grundlagen und Forschungskonzeption. Borderstep Institut: Berlin.
Heyen, D. A. (2018). Exnovation und ihre Gestaltung: Die unterbelichtete Seite der Transformationsmedaille
Heyen, D. A. (2016). Exnovation: Herausforderungen und politische Gestaltungsansätze für den Ausstieg aus nicht-nachhaltigen Strukturen
Heyen, D. A. (2017). Out of the Comfort Zone! Governing the Exnovation of Unsustainable Technologies and Practices, Wuppertal Insitute
About us:
Sabine Junginger, Chair & Co-Founder, Politics for Tomorrow, Berlin: Sabine is an internationally recognized expert in human-centered design and its role in innovating private and public organizations. Her work is valued by researchers and practitioners in interaction design, service design, design management, engineering and is noted in business, management, law and policy concerned with systemic changes, new ways of working and sustainable innovation. She is the author of Transforming Public Services by Design: Re-Orienting Policies, Organizations and Services around People (Routledge 2017). As a senior design expert, she works with government innovation labs in Austria, Chile, and Brazil; the EU, the European Forum Alpbach and the OECD. She heads the Competence Center for Design and Management at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and chairs the board of Politics for Tomorrow. She holds both a Master and a PhD in Design from Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Caroline Paulick-Thiel, Director & Co-Founder, Politics for Tomorrow, Berlin: Caroline is a strategic designer and expert in facilitating responsible innovation. Trained in Design (BA) and in Public Policy (MPP), she is experienced in developing and leading participatory processes to address public challenges. In 2012, she co-founded nextlearning, an association supporting societal transformation processes through experiential learning formats. Since 2015, Caroline is the Director of Politics for Tomorrow, a non-partisan initiative fostering human-centered design approaches in public innovation, working with German political-administrative institutions from local to highest federal level. In 2018, she initiated the Creative Bureaucracy Festival Academy — a dedicated space for learning by doing and finding creative answers to public challenges.
