Nor is there any question that the federal government has ideas. That is clear from the projects under way at the National Performance Review s reinvention laboratories. But the problem is getting the ideas adopted and keeping them alive afterwards. Look at any inventory of innovation from 10 years ago and many of the good programs will be long dead. Continual Change Federal agencies are not designed to innovate naturally.
Any organization can innovate once.
Just threaten enough layoffs or pour on a big budget crisis, and most agencies will innovate to survive. The real challenge is to innovate twice, thrice and more, thereby making it a more common event. Too often, innovation is something that heroic individuals produce in spite of relentless bureaucratic nit-picking, intense public pressure, faithless leadership and antiquated management systems. Once the heroes leave town or are ground down, their innovations quickly perish. It is death by a thousand paper cuts.