Academic literature on public innovation has principally centered on the dimension of novelty, placing less importance on the scope of the adoption of every innovation. This chapter explores both dimensions as a means of proposing a typology of public innovation with four possibilities: eccentric, discrete, flat and transformative innovation, explaining them based on examples of recent practices including some associated with the response to the COVID-19 virus. While not proposing a theory of Public Innovation, the chapter allows for advancement in the exploration of causal connections included within both dimensions of public innovation, based on the typology. The conceptual relations between Public Innovation, on the one hand, and the literature on the Entrepreneurial State, mission-oriented innovation and inclusive development, on the other hand, are also addressed. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Toward a Typology of Public Innovation. Eccentric, Discrete, Flat and Transformative Innovation