Festival of Ideas - bringing the right people together in the right way

For me, one of the big questions at SIX was: How do we engage the government?

Randomly put, at Innovation Exchange, we often ask ourselves: How do we get those who talk to listen and those who listen to talk?

In the UK, we have a really dynamic third sector (not-for-profits, social enterprises and charities). Innovation Exchange provides brokerage support to third sector innovation. John Craig, the Director of Innovation Exchange, argues that the third sector is teeming with great ideas but too few of them change the world. Why? Because innovators, commissioners and social investors often lack each other's phone numbers and the capacity and incentive to collaborate. As a result, great innovations get a start but struggle for the connections and resources to sustain and scale. At Innovation Exchange, we are working hard to tackle this problem.

One of our strands of work are Festival of Ideas events (http://innovation-exchange.org/blog/festivals-of-ideas/). We hold a one day event in partnership with a public sector organisation bringing together public service commmissioners, social investors and the third sector innovators around a compelling social challenge. There was a great deal of interest in this work at Lisbon and since then we've held three Festival of Ideas events in different parts of England. We thought it might be a good idea to share the work we've done so far (and don't forget to check out our learning paper which has a great section on Festival of Ideas http://innovation-exchange.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/first-lea... )

Better Mental Health: A Festival of Ideas - http://bit.ly/8Qk11j
Adult Social Care: Personalisation and Provideris - A Festival of Ideas - http://bit.ly/5llQwu
Innovation for Personalisation: A Festival of I deas - http://bit.ly/7Aqvle

The event is a rich learning experience for all participants. For innovators, it's a chance to talk about their work, understand the concerns of commissioners and other stakeholders and think about how these could be resolved. For commissioners, it's an opportunity to flag up their concerns, provide tips and advice and even think about how they can help innovators to take their work forward. For social investors, it's an opportunity to learn about what is happening and what they could do to strengthen the work. Check out the links above and let us know what you think.

We would be really interested in hearing about the work of other organisations trying to engage government organisations in innovative work. What are you doing? How are you doing it? And what lessons have you learned so far? Let us know at http://innovation-exchange.org/

I would say we haven't found the answer to the above question - yet. But we're certainly working on it.