Innovation Capacity of City Administrations: A Best Practices Approach

Abstract

Despite the fact that the transformation of the public sector has been underway for several years, public sector innovation remains a concept that is debated both within the scientific community and among practitioners. Even if evaluating innovation processes is a major concern for academics and companies, monitoring the innovation process through a formalized evaluation is relatively new in the public sector. The determinants of innovation are studied in depth in the literature but the link between these concepts and empirical observations still need further investigation to explain the evaluation processes of innovation management at the local level (city administration). This paper provides some insights into this gap by proposing an innovation capability evaluation framework that relies on best practices. This framework is based on an innovation metric initially dedicated to companies. It has been adapted to the city administration, combining a systematic literature review and an empirical co-construction approach with practitioners from the city of Nancy (France).