innovation

Explores how the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) promotes the delivery of cost effective social services in Scotland that will support the achievement of positive outcomes for people accessing support. It identifies a number of principles that underpin the work of IRISS and suggests how these facilitate innovative evidence-informed practice. The approach to evidence-informed practice comprises four pillars of activity.

Paper that aims to look at the potential of research methodologies to test a social policy intervention or social service models. It takes a particular interest in the evaluation of cost- effectiveness, impact and transferability. Research evidence is absolutely vital for social work, yet there are barriers at the interface between research and practice:

The Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme seeks to support the development, testing and sharing of more effective ways of supporting children who need help from children’s social care services.

The documents on this page provide further information about the programme.

Report that uses theoretical, empirical and practice literatures and case studies to reflect on the links between evidence and innovation in the context of Scotland's social services. It bridges two of the core work streams at The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS); evidence-informed practice and innovation and improvement.

A series of ten blogs exploring evidence-use in social policy contexts. The second of these explicitly considers the relationship between evidence and innovation.

Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive at NESTA, shares how he thinks NHS innovation will be achieved in the future. Challenges to this will be shifting the concentration of health care out of hospitals, adapting a combination of existing innovations, and being able to open up to newcomers to the field with radically different ideas.

Nothing is original, says Kirby Ferguson, creator of Everything is a Remix. From Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, he says our most celebrated creators borrow, steal and transform.

Charles Leadbeater went looking for radical new forms of education -- and found them in the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.

What is a mistake? By talking through examples with his improvisational Jazz quartet, Stefon Harris walks us to a profound truth: many actions are perceived as mistakes only because we don't react to them appropriately.

This is interesting in relation to debates concerning innovation and creativity.

This is an article from the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell that looks at innovation and creativity in the context of the development of computers and printers.