INNOVATION

Innovation teams unlock
the capacity within city
governments to tackle big,
challenging urban issues.
neighborhood leaders from Peoria’s north
and south sides, and its east and west bluffs.
“We’re using those leaders as touchpoints…
to start building a network within the neighborhoods,”
says Shackelford. This outreach
involves education: explaining what green
infrastructure is, what its benefits can be,
how installation would work, and “making
sure that neighborhoods are actively engaged
in deciding what that installation looks like,”
Green adds.
A huge piece of the puzzle will be the
development of a workforce training program
within the combined sewer area, training
residents to take on the operation and maintenance
of the new infrastructure. “They would
be the public face of this program,” Corso
stresses. “They are the best people to be the
advocates and owners, so that peer-to-peer
and neighbor-to-neighbor, [we’re] engaging
people… to be part of the solution, to take
ownership and to get workforce training—and
to actually be paid to be part of the process.”
TIME FOR CONSIDERATION
“Some of these [initiatives] obviously will take
much longer than a year,” Corso says. “That
was one of the first questions we got: ‘You
have a 20-year project. How do you deliver
and adapt in one year?’” And Bloomberg’s
model does allow for some flexibility based
on a city’s unique challenges. Take budgets,
for example.
“We don’t have a budget yet,” says Corso.
“We don’t have a consent decree yet—two of
the big drivers in actually driving these larger
initiatives. But we can move forward with
grant applications and working to develop
partnerships.” Peoria’s green solution will
encompass a suite of smaller initiatives, what
Shackelford describes as “low-risk, high-return” opportunities.
Like a revamped street tree program, Corso offers. “It doesn’t
sound super-sexy, but it actually has a pretty big impact on both
stormwater management issues and the walkability of the streets in
the combined sewer area.” And that’s not all.
“If it’s a street tree program and a municipal nursery and a training
area and a workforce corps focused on green infrastructure and
landscape maintenance… you start to really add some resiliency to
the whole thing. Then if one piece falls out, you still have some synergies
between some of the efforts.”
Such initiatives will be the i-team’s focus in early 2016 as it looks
to external partners to co-develop implementation plans with the
right metrics to launch, hand over and measure progress. As it moves
ahead, the team will also continue to carve out the time necessary to
innovate.
“You need time to step back and reevaluate things,” says Shackelford.
“It’s in that time… when you’re taking a bigger look that you
realize, ‘Now I can see shortcuts!’ or ‘I see things that could function
better if two people just got along.’ You may recognize these things
working in the bureaucratic system, but there are not many opportunities
where you can step back and… change something about it.
“The biggest enemy of progress is ‘We’ve always done it this way,’”
she concludes. The Bloomberg grant gives Peoria a chance “to look
critically at ourselves—with the help of some of the greatest minds
and leaders in the country—to solve problems.”
As the leader of an innovation team, Corso is often asked to define
the term, and for him, the generic definition just doesn’t cut it.
“Ultimately… It is a new idea, or an old idea that’s been adapted to
a context that creates some value for a community,” he says. “Sometimes
it’s a process; sometimes it’s a deliverable; sometimes it’s a coollooking
thing that you build.”
But more importantly, he suggests, true innovation lies in the
approach. “The challenge of the i-team is to carve out that space to
shut the door… brainstorm for a day, sleep on it, come back, investigate
some other things, talk about it again. It’s just like design—well,
good design,” he adds, smiling, “where you develop something… and
come back and say, ‘How can this be improved, and who else needs
to be at the table? How can this be more effective?’… You’re never
completely reinventing the wheel. You’re recombining best practices
to try to get a better benefit.”
60 InterBusiness Issues -- January 2016