Overview of UCL’s Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose’s MPA
In September 2019, UCL’s Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) launched its first Master of Public Administration (MPA) cohort. This is the experience of two of its students: Charles McIvor and Rachel Bentley.
Summary
The MPA brings together policy and economics with some ideas found in MBAs, like systems and design thinking, to help us work in purpose-driven organizations that confront the grand challenges of the 21st century in a more inclusive way.
IIPP brought in some of the top minds of innovation research and real policymakers to help us become future leaders in this space. The breadth and expertise of the many different lecturers was very impressive, and they were able to adapt their lectures to the realities of the day (e.g. incorporating their ideas about COVID-19 responses into the lectures).
The cohort was also incredibly diverse, attracting experienced policymakers from around the world who are inspired to think about their work in different ways, as well as people who are looking to break into the space through the MPA’s work placement. If you want a program without any math, but want to discuss economic theory and its applications in new ways, this is the program for you!
The People
IIPP was founded by world-renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato, who wrote the book the Entrepreneurial State. The faculty is comprised of a number of other impressive academics and practitioners, from a variety of disciplines, including the Deputy Director Rainer Kattel, who has a focus on innovation policy and how it is governed, Head of Research Antonio Andreoni, who focuses on various aspects of industrial policy, Head of Teaching Kate Roll, who has done multidisciplinary work in political science and business at Oxford, Head of Finance Josh Ryan-Collins, who works on the interaction between the financial sector and housing markets, and Head of the Mission-Oriented Innovation Network Rowan Conway, who was the Director of Design and Innovation at the RSA.
IIPP brought in several high-profile visiting/honorary professors, including Mike Bracken, who founded the now world-renowned UK Government Digital Service, Dan Hill, who has worked on design thinking for the innovation agencies Vinnova and Sitra in the Nordics, Francesca Bria, who has been praised for her work on digital and data rights at the city of Barcelona, Hilary Cottam, who is a leading light on redesigning the Welfare State for the challenges of the 21st century, and the very passionate Carlota Perez, who studies the socio-economic impact of technical change. There were many more great guest lecturers IIPP brought in but there isn’t enough time to list them all!
The cohort consisted of about 45 people from around the world — including from across Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Africa — with a broad range of different backgrounds and experiences. Some of our colleagues came directly from their undergrads, while others worked in innovation policy for a number of years, others had worked in consultancy and political campaigns, and others had 20 years of work experience and were looking to make career shifts. Most of the students were full-time but a handful are doing the degree part-time over a few years. Each student had a personal staff tutor from IIPP who was the first port of call for guidance and advice.
Outside of the classroom
In addition to the normal course work, IIPP and UCL’s other departments held some fantastic guest lectures throughout the year. The first night of the orientation, a number of us went to a talk from IIPP on surveillance capitalism, which featured the acclaimed Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, as well as a number of the people from the Great Hack Netflix documentary on the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Other groups at UCL held talks throughout the year, like the Department of Political Science on universal basic income and universal basic services, the Institute of Americas had one on AI, and the Department of Engineering brought in the founder of Wired to talk about the future of tech. London is also home to many other institutes and universities that held great talks open to the public. Some of us went to the Alan Turing Institute to hear about using AI for government consultations, the Francis Crick Institute to hear from the UK’s Chief Science Advisor, and LSE for a talk on AI and the future of work.
These opportunities didn’t end because of COVID-19, and IIPP held some fantastic zoom talks over the summer of 2020, including several star-studded panels that discussed how to respond to COVID-19, and, among others, one on competition policy from Thomas Philippon.
Throughout the year, the students also held their own talks on the side. Charles hosted a panel on Challenge Prizes, Rachel hosted a talk with former MP Paul Farrelly, who was also featured in the Great Hack, and we had a field trip to Brighton to chat with the SPRU MPA students — which is a similar program.
IIPP also has a podcast, which has brought in the MPA students to discuss their experiences with the MPA, and relevant policy issues.
Finally, IIPP hosted a bunch of evening events with students and faculty, including a holiday party and a bar politica where we spoke about policy issues in a more ‘relaxed’ setting (drinks and snacks and sometimes dancing).
Inside the classroom
The first semester, most of us took two classes, which focused largely on IIPP’s philosophy, and Mariana’s past works, while the second semester was more practical and allowed us to take a couple of electives. Some of us took one elective that lasted both semesters. For the final semester, students had the choice to either take a work placement or to write a dissertation.
Each of the courses involved one lecture a week, and a seminar where we discussed the materials or did a hands-on exercise. The courses switched online for the last few weeks of the semester due to COVID-19. Each class involved one big final paper, and then a combination of smaller term papers, group projects and presentations. Detailed summaries of the courses are hyperlinked in their titles, but below are some quick overviews. Charles also wrote one line summaries of the readings he found the most interesting.
Public Value and Public Purpose
This course looked at the ideas of value, who creates it and who benefits from it. Mariana’s core argument is that innovation has a rate and a direction, and that the Government has shaped this direction to create new markets, like nanotechnology, biotechnology, nuclear power, and more. As a result, it should not shy away from this role, but it should also receive some of the benefits from its investments, and certainly not be charged high fees for using the technologies it helped create — especially when it comes to things like pharmaceuticals. This thinking is found in a number of IIPP’s pieces, but this one provides a pretty good overview of its thinking.
Going forward, governments should take a broader market shaping role to tackle grand challenges — these are big problems that no one actor or silver bullet solution can fix. To set the challenges requires an inclusive approach to build buy-in from society and other relevant actors who can help with the solutions. Governments then set missions, which are more tangible and time-bound but take bite-sized chunks out of the broader grand challenge. Solutions then bring together relevant actors from across and outside government. An example of a mission in the UK is “ensuring that people can enjoy at least 5 extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035, while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest”.
Grand Challenges and Systems Change
There was a lot of cross-over with this course and the previous one, but this course delved more into the ideas of systems-change. In a complex system, there are many places and ways to intervene. Governments often use similar methods, but as problems get more complex we need to think more creatively and consider bottom-up solutions. A great example was to tackle fires, you can either use a fire truck approach by employing more and more firefighters to fight fires, or a fire alarm approach, by requiring everyone to get a fire alarm to prevent fires from getting out of hand.
One of the most interesting readings for the year was for this course, which suggested 12 different intervention points in a system. I think this is a really useful way to look at problems, because instead of relying on funding, we can look to change the goals government organizations work towards or look to reduce the delays in their processes. IIPP also held a talk on how UCL is partnering with governments around the world to apply this approach to innovation policies, including the UK for its Industrial Strategy and the UAE to measure the direct and indirect benefits of its space program.
Carlota Perez also lectured a couple of times for this course, who spoke about her theories of technological revolutions — this piece is a good overview of her thinking. We’ve experienced 5 different technological revolutions over the last few hundred years, which led to creative destruction and displacement of old skill sets, regions and industries. This has consistently created more unemployment and inequality across society until government regulations and institutions caught up and allowed all of society to benefit from the new technologies. We can see this today with the changing regulations for data.
This course focused on how government works, and then included some issues-focused lectures. It spoke about different models for public administration, and then practical issues regarding coordination, ethics, and more. We also had some great lectures from Francesca Bria on how smart cities can regain control of citizen data from big tech companies, and then from Hilary Cottam on how the welfare state needs to tackle care and poverty differently by empowering local communities.
IIPP had a special lecture on COVID-19, which focused on a mission-oriented approach to unleash a smart, green, healthy deal. Governments should use outcomes oriented policies that use industrial strategies, infrastructure investment, procurement, and more, to improve the health system, boost care infrastructure, and address other problems in the economy as they recover from COVID-19. At the same time, this crisis is bringing to light many of the patches in the welfare system that we need to fix to properly recover and boost our competitiveness.
This course was broken into two very distinctive parts.
The first part was very focused on design thinking and again this idea of tackling various intervention points across a system. It included a number of case studies from Dan Hill and Rowan Conway on how this approach works in real life. The final project involved mapping out and pitching a potential design process for a problem.
The second part of this course was focused much more on digital governance. Mike Bracken gave three lectures on how he founded the UK’s Government Digital Service and then his philosophy for digital government — using design principles to make a standard look and feel for government services, using simple language, and focusing on making it easy for citizens to be able to access any website in a simple way. He talked about his experiences in applying this approach around the world, and how just focusing on simplification can bring huge cost savings.
Other electives are available, but these are the three we took…
(Elective) Social Diversity, Inequality and Poverty
Unlike the other electives, Social Diversity, Inequality and Poverty spanned terms one and two. This created a bit of extra pressure in term one, but made things a bit more manageable in term two when the other MPA students were juggling four courses. The course was hosted by the Bartlett Development Planning Unit and the class consisted mainly of overseas students who were working in the international development field which was quite different from most of the IIPP cohort.
The first term was quite theoretical digging into concepts like agency, power, social capital, diversity etc. In the second term, the focus shifted to how to measure poverty and inequality and included consideration of the impact of climate change and its link to poverty, as well as discussions around different dimensions of poverty including gender and urban poverty. The course is graded by a paper in the first term and an exam at the end of the second term (although this became an essay due to Covid related challenges).
(Elective) Science Funding and Governance
This elective is hosted by the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, or STEaPP. The class focused on the politics of science, and the political debates and considerations for science funding. It had one very useful reading that summarized the major debates of the science, technology and innovation literature over time, and then the different tools each one involves.
They brought in advocacy groups from the UK’s science community to discuss how they try to make change, and then the Department’s VP of research, Graeme Reid, lectured a number of times, bringing in his wealth of knowledge from chairing several government science reviews.
(Elective) Rethinking Capitalism
This class, which was also hosted by IIPP, was the most diverse in terms of lecturers because each lecture was broken into two parts, with a different academic and practitioner coming in each week. You can find last year’s version of this course on YouTube if you’re interested in it. They brought in some high profile speakers, including Francesca Bria again who went deeper into digital and data governance, Andrew Haldane who is the chief economist of the Bank of England and spoke about monetary policy, IIPP’s Josh Ryan-Collins who spoke about housing limiting investment, Simon Sharpe who is a Deputy Director at the cabinet office who spoke about shaping markets to tackle climate change, and Tony Curzon Price who is a Senior Advisor in the Cabinet Office and talked about his work on the UK’s industrial strategy.
A common idea from many IIPP courses was how investors are driven by their ‘animal spirits’, and do not think logically anymore because they are trying to make money instead of focusing on how the business is run. To decrease financialization and increase investments in the real economy, we need to look at how to discourage short-termism, whether that is through taxation, regulation of investments, or credit guidance from the central bank.
There is too much to summarize from the course, but another of the best readings from the year was for this class. The IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice, and its recommendations on economic reform after Brexit could be great inspiration for policymakers working on innovation and industrial policy. It recommends using tax credits just for young firms, creating a productivity advisory body for businesses, putting workers on boards to encourage long term investments and limit executive pay, and creating a Digital UK to unlock the power of publicly-generated data.
The dissertation and work placement
Students had the option to do a dissertation or a work placement during the third term. The dissertation was a 10,000 word paper, which students had until the end of August to complete. Students had a staff supervisor to support their work.
Over half of the IIPP cohort chose to do the placement at a partner organisation from the Mission-Oriented Innovation Network. The participating organisations agreed to host up to four members of the cohort. This was an opportunity for the students to put the theory of the first two terms into action and for the organisations to benefit from the students’ perspectives.
Partner organisations included Camden Council, the Design Council, the Royal Society of Engineering and the Scottish Government. Each student group was assigned a particular project and then given a fair amount of latitude on how to address the challenge. Many of the organisations were already focusing on how to build the IIPP concepts into their organisation and approach, and the Covid-19 pandemic added a new layer of consideration. Unfortunately due to pandemic, all of the placements had to be held virtually but each group found a way to work in the ‘new normal’, and many of the placements were actually modified to help the partner organisations deal with the Covid-19 impact.
The placement was marked on four areas: a peer assessment, a group presentation to the host organisation and IIPP (delivered via Zoom), a blog or vlog, and a written report of 5,000 words. This gave everyone a chance to demonstrate their knowledge in different formats and the opportunity to dig into both the practical and theoretical aspects of the MPA. Doing the placement virtually, also allowed some students to return to their home countries but still work remotely. While there’s no doubt that joining the host organisations in person would have been incredible, each group found the virtual placement in the heart of the Covid-19 lockdown rewarding and challenging in equal measure, and certainly an experience they’ll never forget!
