Building the future leaders of the Entrepreneurial State

By Kate Roll and Rowan Conway

As the first year of our Master of Public Administration (MPA) in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value comes to a close, we look back on an extraordinary year and look forward to the impact that this impressive cohort of students will have.

A t IIPP, our research and teaching are focused on rethinking the role of the public sector in co-creating value and driving change. The MPA curriculum teaches the dynamic skills and new thinking behind public purpose-driven organisations. Our commitment to our MPA students is to both teach them new ways of thinking about the state and provide them with practical opportunities to help them to grow into the next generation of leaders.

Importantly, the MPA students have the opportunity to undertake a final placement with a world-class public organisation from IIPP’s Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN). By taking part, students test and apply the ideas presented in their MPA modules and gain valuable insights into how organisations can tackle societal challenges. The placements also help students to strengthen their networks and chart mission-led careers within the public, private, or civil sector.

Within IIPP, these placements have come to exemplify what we hope for from our students: grit, adaptability, intelligence, and critical thinking. And they also exemplify what we wish for our students: an opportunity to demonstrate their excellence and to see their hard work embraced and affirmed. Students have emerged from these placements with new skills, new critical insights on what they have been taught in the classroom, and confidence in their abilities.

2020 placements

For the final term of 2020, students were placed into seven MOIN member organisations. For two months, students embedded themselves with their hosts to complete research-based projects on issues ranging from personalisation in digital services to capturing the value of design.

The Covid-19 crisis meant that the students had to undertake the placements virtually, which both students and partner organisations handled with impressive agility. In some cases, organisations shifted their work entirely to virus response. In Hackney Council and Camden Council for example, Covid-19 meant an immediate reappraisal of their work with vulnerable service users and the creation of new support services to meet a demand surge. Across every organisation, Covid-19 has driven a rapid change to digitally enabled working; seeing this and other changes first hand has given students new insights into public sector dynamism.

Here are three core lessons from this pioneering year of the IIPP’s MPA placement programme:

1. Learning-by-doing works

The placements provided a capstone for the MPA programme, bringing together the prior terms’ work in economics, design, politics and organisational studies. And, as faculty, we saw students thrive, demonstrating their abilities to immerse themselves in complex issues — how do you build a smart-mobility ecosystem? — while also stepping back during their supervisions to discuss the organisations themselves and how to run projects. This exemplifies immersive, multi-level learning, something that is impossible to achieve in a classroom alone.

2. Adapting to (dis)placement

Placements are supposed to be all about place: being there in the room, sitting in on meetings, or grabbing coffee after a presentation. The idea is to become part of an organisation through presence. Yet this idea of a placement — or of an organisation existing in a shared location — came crashing down in March with the advent of the Covid-19 lockdown. In its place, students became part of virtual organisations held together by their joint routines and goals. Despite the shift online, students were able to forge strong and productive relationships, becoming part of these organisations a moment of tremendous disruption. This alerts us to new ways of working more inclusively and globally in the future.

3. IIPP students excel

Midway through their placement, the Hackney team were asked to present their work on Hackney Council’s response to Covid-19 to dozens of professionals. This was an early indication that students were not only appreciated, but that they were also making substantive contributions to host organisations. Following the end of the placement period, multiple teams were extended, and others were asked to present a high level — including the team embedded in the Scottish Government who presented their project to the Scottish Cabinet Minister for the Economy. As a member of the Scottish Government commented:

“Watching the interim and final presentations was genuinely inspiring. Each organisation found the students had introduced new ways of thinking and working. In particular, the Scottish placement team presenting to the Scottish Government, was a phenomenal achievement.”

Through these placements, students engaged in real and lasting work.

As the academic year comes to a close, the placement programme has provided a capstone for the MPA programme, marking not only a critical synthesis of students’ hard work across the previous terms, but also the transition between the classroom and working life. As this first cohort moves forward, their placements will hold them in good stead.

As our first graduates of the programme, we look forward to seeing this cohort go on to help many organisations around the world become mission-led, driven by public purpose, and able to welcome and manage the explorative and risk-taking processes that innovation requires.