Third Place Organizations, Networked Governance, and Mission Oriented Innovation

There is a growing realization across sectors of the value and imperative of systemic approaches to organizational transformation, societal change, and innovation in all its forms. With this comes questions about how, in practical terms, we organize ourselves to achieve mission-oriented innovation, cultivate ecosystems, or scale collective impact on our most pressing challenges.

In the last month, I have been included in discussions focused on building innovation ecosystems at the national, regional, and provincial levels. Colleagues across sectors continue to explore ways of solving the intractable problems of our time, challenges only exacerbated by the polycrisis. Companies are seeking new and better ways to create value, universities are increasingly challenged with a need to stay relevant, and governments need to find creative and ethical ways to extend their capacity and demonstrate their capabilities to deal with today’s challenges. Traditional organizational models are unable to deliver in this context. This is where adopting network governance models and practices can help by linking the distributed capabilities of organizations and individuals across sectors and disciplines to achieve lofty missions.

The Rise of Mission-oriented Innovation

Mission-oriented innovation focuses on setting ambitious goals and mobilizing diverse actors to work collaboratively toward achieving those goals. This approach recognizes the need for cross-sector collaboration, shared resources, and collective intelligence. Network governance aligns with the principles of mission-oriented innovation by providing a framework for engaging diverse stakeholders, fostering collaboration, and leveraging collective expertise. By embracing network governance, governments can tap into the full potential of mission-oriented innovation and address pressing challenges in a more agile, inclusive, and effective manner.

For over four years, I developed and managed an organization dedicated to advancing a networked governance approach to policy development: the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network (NBSPRN). From 2010 to the present, NBSPRN hosted conferences, forums, workshops, expert panels, and meetings; it supported research and knowledge mobilization through granting, training, and practical connections; and it counted more than 1,200 members from the public sector, academia, private sector, and social sectors with consistently high satisfaction reported by its members and event participants.

In an interview with Christian Bason for the GovMaker Podcast, he discusses the value of ‘third place’ organizations like NBSPRN and how rare it is to create them. These intermediaries, what Christian calls ‘third places,’ have the potential to drive meaningful change by uniting diverse stakeholders around shared long-term goals. Unlike individual organizations that may face challenges in influencing others due to their inherent interests and positions, these intermediaries can pool resources, leverage diverse expertise, and forge connections between government and across sectors to tackle problems from multiple angles.

The circumstances and novelty of NBSPRN’s mission meant that widely-adopted models or best practices did not exist for the organization to adapt. Discovering the most effective form, functions, and activities required experimentation. What emerged over the organization’s 12 years in existence can be framed as a portfolio of experiments meant to uncover a model for networked governance in the province of New Brunswick. The result is an organizational design that emerged over time; the necessary pieces existed but never at the same time as a cohesive whole.

As more organizations seek out new models to tackle complex problems and achieve mission-oriented innovation, there is an opportunity to share the lessons from these experiments to help others accelerate the development of more ‘third place’ organizations.

So I am taking some time to document lessons from the NBSPRN experiment and develop a guide for anyone:

• interested in augmenting your organization to be a better node in a networked governance model,
• establishing a backbone organization for collective impact,
• seeking to nurture an innovation ecosystem, or
• creating a boundary organization to mobilize knowledge for policy impact.

Related Terms

Networked governance is sometimes referred to by different names or related terms that capture similar concepts. Here are a few alternative terms you may come across:

Boundary Organization: This is an intermediary entity that bridges the gap between different sectors, disciplines, or communities to facilitate collaboration, knowledge exchange, and problem-solving, usually between the scientific community and government.

Collaborative Governance: This term emphasizes the collaborative nature of decision-making and problem-solving processes among multiple stakeholders, fostering shared responsibility and collective action.

Multi-level Governance: This term highlights the involvement of multiple levels of government, non-governmental organizations, and other actors in the governance process, emphasizing the importance of coordination and cooperation across different levels.

Participatory Governance: This term emphasizes the active participation of citizens and stakeholders in the decision-making process, often involving public consultations, citizen engagement, and deliberative processes.

Co-governance: Co-governance refers to a collaborative approach where different actors, including government agencies, civil society organizations, and private sector entities, share responsibilities and jointly participate in decision-making processes.

Open Governance: This term emphasizes transparency, openness, and inclusivity in governance, promoting public access to information, citizen participation, and accountability.

Collective Impact: Collective impact is a term commonly used in the social sector to describe collaborative efforts involving multiple organizations and stakeholders working towards a shared goal or addressing a complex social issue.

Networked Collaboration: This term focuses on the collaborative relationships and connections between organizations, individuals, and entities, highlighting the importance of network structures and partnerships.

Integrated Governance: Integrated governance emphasizes the coordination and integration of policies, strategies, and actions across different sectors, levels of government, and stakeholders to address complex challenges.

These terms may have slightly different nuances or emphasize different aspects of collaborative governance, but they generally share the common theme of fostering collaboration in decision-making among multiple stakeholders.

What questions do you have about networked governance? What experiences do you have with networked governance that you would like to share? HMU!