Entrepreneurship emerged as a key theme at last week’s CSW seminar ‘Sharing assets, skills and rewards – working in partnership with the private sector’.  But what does being entrepreneurial mean in the context of the civil service and is it really that important for organisations that don’t have an overt profit motive?

Entrepreneurship is simply about taking a new approach or idea and exploiting it to achieve a beneficial outcome.  True, in most instances, entrepreneurs are focused on profitably exploiting a market opportunity and growing a business on the back of this success.  However, adopting a fresh approach to running a business is no less relevant for the public sector – it is just that the emphasis is on meeting the needs of citizens rather than consumers.  A customer-orientation is still required, sound financial discipline still needs to be applied, suppliers and partners still need managing and above all staff still need to be motivated and engaged in the new direction of the organisation.

The seminar reinforced the message that efficiency is vitally important but alone it is not enough.  Taking a more radical, entrepreneurial approach to delivering services will be critical in this age of tight budgets, ‘Big Society’ and increased private sector involvement.  However, this will not be easy: a recent survey conducted by CSW revealed that many civil servants saw perceived conflicts of interest as a key barrier to greater commercial engagement.  In addition, very few civil servants could give a specific example of service innovation from the UK public sector and a significant minority of respondents cited deep reservations around greater engagement with private sector partners.

And it is not just the culture of the civil service that will have to change.  Suppliers will need to be more flexible: being able to respond to quite different demands as well as being measured (and paid!) on results.  Furthermore, new contractual models (e.g. social impact bonds) will be a crucial enabler of service innovation but patience will be needed as the transition to these models will not take place overnight!

So, in summary, entrepreneurship will be one of the most important competencies in the UK public sector in the years to come.  However, not all civil servants will immediately embrace it as relevant and significant changes will also be needed in suppliers, partners and contractual models.  Further information on public sector innovation, including the CSW survey, can be found in a report just written by Cranfield School of Management: ”Public Sector Innovation - the role of commercial partnerships”.

To download presentations from the event, please follow this link:

Public Service Innovation: Commercialisation and the role of Commercial Partnerships.

This presentation covers brand new research on civil servants’ views of private sector partners, discussed by Dr David Baxter of Cranfield School of Management and Steria’s Dr Magnus Shoeman.

What Does Good Look Like? 

An example of commercialisation within the public sector, presented by Wayne Elliot, head of health forecasting at the Met Office.