phd.Nana

English abstract
Different theories have dealt with notions like cocreation, swarm creativity, innovation
partnerships, open innovation as ways of collaborating about creating something new and
valuable (Pralahad & Ramaswamy 2000, Gloor 2006, Chesbrough 2006). Many of these
theories can be viewed as pointing out phantasms, as they connect specific ways of
collaborating with more or less specific ideas of a ”goodness to come”. But these quite popular
theories all take their point of departure in the private sector, and deal with the circumstances
characterizing this sector.
However, collaboration, cocreation, partnerships, user involvement, and user driven
innovation have also become key concepts in public sector innovations strategies (Bason
2007, Bason et al 2009, Greve & Hodge 2010, Kristensen and Voxted 2009, Sørensen &
Torfing 2011), and therefore this thesis sets out to examine the implications of such ambitions
specifically in a public sector context. The background for this choice is partly that the public
sector has traditionally ”inherited” ideas and concepts from the private sector, even though a
number of differences between the two sectors often make it impossible to draw direct
parallels and transfer ideas successfully from one sector to the other (Røste & Miles 2005,
Hauknes 2005). For this reason, it is important to gain insights, building specifically upon
experiences with innovation ambitions in a public sector setting.
Because different variations of partnerships (Greve & Hodge 2010, Skelcher 2005) and
different forms of user involvement (Bason 2007, Bason et al 2009, Kristensen & Voxted
2009) have been important elements in the ambitions of spurring innovation in the public
sector, these two aspects have been central in the choice of cases.
The project sets out to investigate which ”cults” and phantasms these ideas of collaborative
innovation hook up with. It is also an explicit object of investigation to examine which
assumptions about human interaction, these phantasms rely upon, and to analyze the social
implications that these phantasms have – not least in combination with other phantasms and
logics, dominating the public sector.
Through the thesis, two cases from the Danish public sector are analyzed. One case concerns a
project where a municipality and several private companies form partnerships in order to
cocreate new welfare solutions within elderly care. In the other case, a number of public
sector actors collaborate with each other and partly with young people and their parents with
the aim of finding new and better ways of preventing abuse of alcohol and drugs among young
people.
Based on empirical findings, the notions of innovation, collaboration and steering are
examined in a post-­‐structural post-­‐Marxist perspective of logics. This approach is inspired by
Glynos and Howarth (2007). The analytical methods include thick description (Geertz 1993)
and extended case method (Burawoy 1998). In a number of theoretical extensions the
empirical findings are brought into conversation with various theorists in a reflexive
knowledge project in line with Glynos’ and Howarth’s approach.
On this background it is demonstrated how all three concepts (innovation, collaboration, and
steering) play crucial roles in political processes, where actors strategically attempt to use, or
ascribe meaning to these (and other) concepts in order to influence a process in direction of a
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