In this research seminar Dr Ludwig Berdejo will present 'Implications of local governments’ learning strategies for delivering innovations to citizens: A Global South perspective'
Numerous studies have explored local governments’ innovation to meet citizens’ growing demands for more efficient, higher-quality, and higher-valued public services. However, less attention has been paid to how local governments' internal learning strategies—namely, absorptive capacity (AC) development and innovation capability accumulation—implemented as responses to windows of opportunity, impact the delivery of innovations to citizens, especially in the Global South.
This paper explores this set of relationships through an in-depth study based on first-hand evidence from three local governments in Brazil. Findings suggest that despite operating under similar institutional and economic conditions, these local governments pursued different learning strategies as responses to institutional, demand, and technological windows of opportunity, leading to variations in the scope and quality of innovations delivered to citizens. Learning strategies based on the intensive use of external and internal learning mechanisms—as dual AC development proxies—accumulated higher innovation capabilities, allowing them to deliver more relevant innovations, while learning strategies based on intermittent use of a narrower scope of these learning mechanisms exhibited limited innovation outcomes. By bridging public sector innovation and learning strategies frameworks, this study provides novel insights for researchers and policymakers into how municipalities can increase their capabilities to deliver impactful innovations to citizens, especially in the resource-constrained Global South.