In this Governing article, John Donahue warns against asking how much involvement the private sector should have in solving public problems. “The right question concerns not ‘how much’ but rather ‘how’ the private sector should be involved. There is a vast, variegated, and under-examined menu of options. … There is no single right answer for ‘how’ to involve the private sector any more than there is a single answer for ‘how much’ to involve it. But reaching the right answer, case by case, requires asking the right question.”
“The question of how to collaborate across boundaries admits no easy, universal answer. There are, however, striking similarities between the types of challenges that different collaborations face. From 2018 to 2020, the authors of this article—researchers from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“From climate change to terrorism, the difficulties confronting policy makers are unprecedented in their variety, but also in their complexity. Our existing policy tool kit seems stale and outdated. Increasingly, it is clear, we need not only new solutions but also new methods for arriving…
“To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together. Data—specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments,…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…
“When it partnered with Kentucky for new bridges across the Ohio River, Indiana exercised its authority to use a public-private partnership (P3) contract, as explained in this article that discusses this groundbreaking deal. The Lewis and Clark Bridge is a cable-stayed tolled bridge that is…
“Successful social innovation at scale requires partners from the public, private, and social sectors to work together through flexible models that evolve to meet shifting requirements and address changing risks.”
“Over the years, more and more funders, program directors, public officials, and scholars have pushed for collaborative approaches to achieve significant social change. The impetus for this has largely been the realization that despite multitudes of initiatives dedicated to issues such as improving educational outcomes…
“For years, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have promised to help governments do more for less. Yet, the discussion and experimentation surrounding PPPs often focus on outdated models and narratives, and the field of experimentation has not fully embraced the opportunities provided by an increasingly networked and…
“Over the last couple of decades both academics and practitioners have been more systematically focused on examples and prescriptions where the sectors work together to address public problems. This is much broader than contracting out or public-private partnerships, as typically these more traditional arrangements involve…