Is Creative Bureaucracy getting anywhere? (Publication)

Some years have passed since ‘The Creative Bureaucracy & Its Radical Common Sense’ was published (2017) and the first Creative Bureaucracy Festival took place (2018), and the path is towards a growing creative bureaucracy movement. At the 2024 festival, Laura Sobral, a researcher and urbanist who has been following the initiative, released an inspirational step-by-step guide to creative bureaucracy, reflecting on hot topics and attempting to answer the question of what has been achieved by the growing initiative. Here Laura shares some highlights:

What is Creative Bureaucracy?

You can’t have a creative city without a creative bureaucracy. Cities cannot be comprehensively successful, alert, agile, attractive, and sustainable without an imaginative and engaged bureaucracy that is resilient and proactive in finding better solutions. It requires harnessing the collective imagination and capacities of those who work within the city, as well as capable outsiders and partners—in short, leveraging both people and knowledge.

Creativity is about finding good solutions without breaking the law and not just sitting back and saying, "well, it's the process." It's about walking fine lines where you still respect the bureaucracy, using your professional background, and understanding the systems well to be a creative bureaucrat. Creativity involves using bureaucracy in the best way possible to develop solutions that citizens, companies, and society as a whole need.
Lene Krogh Jeppesen, senior consultant at Danish National Center for Public-Private Innovation, Copenhagen, Denmark

Is Creative Bureaucracy Getting Anywhere?

After several years, there is certainly a growing movement – with ever more meetings, presentations, and collaborations under the creative bureaucracy umbrella. One notable achievement is that many fantastic people now identify themselves as creative bureaucrats and are actively promoting the concept. Many have built new, relevant relationships through the Creative Bureaucracy Festivals, some of which have evolved into productive work partnerships. Some have also implemented new methods or approaches aligned with creative bureaucracy in their professional contexts. Committed creative bureaucrats have even taken the initiative to organize their own local Creative Bureaucracy Festival Hubs, events, and programs, such as in the Czech Republic and South Africa.

Reflections and Learnings

Impactful changes depend on systemic shifts, requiring many individuals in various positions to embrace a common vision. Here are some thought-provoking questions to challenge existing paradigms and assumptions: How can trust-building be fostered in the public context? How can colleagues become allies, and how can the mindset of those resistant to innovation be changed? How do you find the right language to communicate between different worlds? These discussions, along with other pertinent public innovation insights, were featured at the Creative Bureaucracy Festivals. Some of the hot topics include:

• Failure is inevitable
• Cooperation is essential
• Slower can be better
• Transformation needs resources
• Learn from the past by inhabiting the future
• Re-framing the welfare state
• Adapting to a digital world is not just about digitizing processes
• Possible futures as a developing field
• Politicians must be on board

Find out more about these topics and explore Laura Sobral’s suggested step-by-step guide to creative bureaucracy as a strategy of influence in the free publication below!