Bringing new ideas to fruition in complex bureaucracies is key to their success, and possibly to their survival. Irena Guidikova, head of Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Programmes at the Council of Europe and formerly in charge of their World Forum on Democracy has been doing that for over 20 years. Irena in conversation with Phil Wood will describe how you can seize opportunities for innovation by launching and growing pilot initiatives which allow you to stretch and push at the frontiers of bureaucratic rules and inertia and grow into transformative actions. How can this happen? Does it arouse suspicion, do you need a sympathetic boss and what happens when they leave, are sympathetic outsiders a help? How do you get resources? Is the first failure terminal? How do you embed new approaches into institutional behaviours?
Login or Register
You need to login!
Pushing Boundaries: Ground-Breaking Intrapreneurship in International Bureaucracies
A graduate of Political Science and Political Philosophy from the Universities of Sofia (BG) and York (UK), Irena Guidikova has been working at the Council of Europe since 1994. Her career has taken her from the Directorate of Youth and Sport where she developed and carried out a large research programme, through a transversal 3-year project on the future of democracy in Europe, the Private Office of the Secretary General where she was a policy advisor, to her present job as Head of Division of Cultural Policy, Diversity and Dialogue and Manager of the Intercultural Cities programme.
Phil Wood spent many years as a partner in the urban policy think-tank Comedia together with Charles Landry. He worked for 20 years in local government, community and cultural development and has advised the UK Governments Commission on Integration and Cohesion. He is co-author of the book: ‘The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage’.