Resources

One of the most pervasive paradoxes of coordinated action across the public and private sectors is the development of required resources and capabilities. In Anita’s conversation with Roger Martin, he gets excited about an idea that comes up toward the end of the conversation: Maybe the private sector’s role can be to take on risks during a phase of prototyping and experimentation that proves the viability of an initiative. Once the potential is proven, the public sector can take over to implement at scale. Roger gets excited about the idea of a private-to-public handoff as an exciting form of strategic collaboration that he encourages Anita to pursue. Anita’s lecture at InnovateUS a few weeks later (available here) describes how the George Kaiser Family Foundation worked with the City of Tulsa on this kind of model to implement and scale an initiative called Tulsa Remote.

In the Pi² project, we pursue this approach and augment it with other models, such as those described by Raja Roy in his conversation with Anita. Raja’s expertise is in the structure and performance of the US Space Programs coordinated by NASA, which developed extraordinary capabilities in managing private-sector partners. These and other insights about the kinds of resources and capabilities that can be developed in collaborations are at the heart of the frameworks and tools that Pi² offers in this area.