|  | | | PARTNERS OVERVIEW |
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| | THE INNOVATION UNIT |
| | | | | | The Innovation Unit is an innovation intermediary in public services. It is devoted to stimulating, incubating and accelerating innovation to achieve transformed services with better outcomes for citizens.
The Innovation Unit has made a key contribution to the evolution of public service innovation and improvement through the development of a new, disciplined approach to stimulating, incubating, and accelerating innovation (the Next Practice Innovation Model), which is strongly driven by users' needs. This approach is known as Next Practice. Next Practice has been developed from the evidence base on innovation in public services and from the pioneering work The Innovation Unit undertook with OECD and other parties on Futures Literacy.
We believe passionately that the creativity of public service practitioners, working collaboratively and with service users, holds the key to this transformation. We support the process by bringing evidence-informed, disciplined methods to innovation.
Major strands of our work include the Next Practice in Education Programme in schools and Children's Services; and the Innovation Exchange for the Third Sector. Internationally, The Innovation Unit continues to work closely with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and will be involved, representing England, in a new programme in 2008 entitled 'Alternative Models of Learning'.
A further important element of The Innovation Unit's work is associated with knowledge management. Among other developments, The Innovation Unit has established knowledge management systems to bring the education community's combined expertise to bear on the development of solutions through its online Next Practice Acceleration Space which encourages contribution from its innovation community.
The Innovation Unit is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee working in partnership with customers to co-construct a range of solutions to meet their needs and the needs of their users. Our service offers focus on schools, school Governors, parents and carers, Local Authorities, National Agencies and Educational Foundations, multi-school Trusts and collaboratives, Government departments, businesses and international customers.
Since November 2006, we have been a separate and independent entity from the DCSF (formerly DfES) and we receive no grant funding. The Innovation Unit is a proud partner of the Baby Matterz program and is driving its roll out in the UK. | | |
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