What Do Governments Need Most?

I have often engaged in intense discussions about the value of entrepreneurship skills and whether these can apply in diverse industries and sectors. To my mind, a very capable entrepreneur could run other institutions in either the public or third sector. In spite of that, it is clear that people with such diverse skills are few and far between. 

Looking at the story about Andrew Flanagan who runs a children's charity in the UK leads me to the view that it is indeed possible to find people who can cross from private sector firms and into social and policy entrepreneurship.  As Randeep Ramesh of the Guardian states, there are universal principles and good sense that allow for managerial efficiency to lead to improvements. These changes may include staffing, operational issues and financial management. The most profound one though is the very perceptive reasoning that charities should not seek to supplant or supplement government in provision of public services. Flanagan argues correctly that instead, these charities should see themselves as think tanks that generate and test new ideas that may be recommended for wider implementation. 

Implicit in that profound and correct finding is the fact that citizens should require that failure in the provision of public services is sometimes as much a failure of good ideas than the absence of material resources.