The famous (infamous) motto of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been the approach of a wide number of tech startups and businesses. The principle that to take a risk, try something and see what works is the best solution to ensure development and innovation, but how does that work in the public sector?

There are stark differences between the high tech startup innovators and the public sector, and I don’t just mean the office decorators (I’m yet to see a Council Chamber with beanbags and basketball hoops). The biggest difference is one of approach to risk.

The public sector abhors risks, we manage any project with the express aim of identifying and then mitigating risks wherever possible. We look to construct procurement contracts with the aim of minimising risk (often transferring it) and ensuring that we live in a “safe predictable world”. When things go wrong, we audit, report and investigate. It has to be recognised that we live in a political environment - success is lauded (and highlighted on election leaflets with pride) failure of any form is often equally used to try and ensure the demise of the incumbents political future.

Is this the right approach? Like the goldfish we don’t think about the water we swim in, it is just the reality. But that said there are good reasons for the public sector being more risk adverse. We deal with serious issues; when making decisions which impact on life or death, or which will impact whole communities for decades to come we have every reason to look at the risks and be mindful of them. But should we be paralysed?

Every decision we make has consequences - but the flip side of that is every decision we don’t take also has consequences. We just need to balance the risk of either taking the opportunity or letting it go past but we cannot exist in a world where consequences don’t exist.

So should we look to the tech innovators to learn lessons - I think we should, but not without remembering who we are.

The idea of moving fast and breaking things was not to cause trouble, but rather to see development as a process, and one where not everything will go right first time. After all it is a case of perspective rather than an absolute.

When Sir James Dyson was inventing his now ubiquitous vacuum cleaner he tested 5,126 prototypes before settling on something he was happy with. Thomas Edison is said to have remarked “I have not failed I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work”. Had either of these been so risk adverse to have avoided failure the world would have been a very different place.

So for the public sector I suggest that we need to take a balanced perspective - risk is there to be managed, and we need to embrace the fear and take risks.

We are stewards of the publics resources and trust, this is a bond we cannot ignore. But if we take that responsibility seriously we have to innovate to ensure that we can deliver in the future in ways that make the best use of resources.

So how can we do that? Firstly we have to be clear in what we are doing, clear on where a proposal is a risk and what the opportunities we are seeking actually are. We can learn a lot from the medical space where through informed risk taking and with clear responsible oversight significant risks are taken in early trials. Volunteers (often those with the most to gain and least alternatives) take part in research efforts, things are tried in a way which whilst a significant risk to the individual are of limited risk to the population. When things work they are tried again and again until it is shown that they are safe sensible and effective when they don’t lessons are learnt and the process of innovating and iterating continues.

The public sector has to take this approach without it we are doomed to either remain stagnant or at least miss the opportunity to provide the best approach to issues and the public we serve. That said I can’t say that introducing beanbags to Council chambers is likely to be a positive innovation.