The changing organization of innovation in public services:The case of digital library

Based on a longitudinal case study of virtual library development, we highlight three important aspects that characterize the links between governance and innovation in public sector innovation. First, the examined case shows that the organizational complexities have increased in the transition from what could be considered as a spurious New Public Management approach, which incorporates elements of the traditional hierarchical model and elements of market-like competition, towards a “networked model” implying more emphasis on bottom-up decision making and a greater involvement of end users. Second, we provide evidence of increasing co-creation activities in which end users are involved not only in choosing out of a given menu of alternative solutions to given problems, but also in the definition of the menu itself, and in shaping and implementing innovative solutions. Third, the increasing involvement of users has created important innovation opportunities that are more and more characterized by their frugal/bricolage nature, hence more localized but not necessarily trivial and relatively easy to diffuse to different contexts.