NESTA Policy Breakfast:  'Public services, leadership & innovation' - Wednesday, 3^rd December, 2008

The performance of public services is a hot topic in UK politics.  Caught in the crossfire between rising public expectations and tightening spending, managers are seeking to drive innovation to improve service and reduce costs.  This requires a special kind of leadership and the development of new working relationships with non-traditional providers, including the third sector.  This latter development poses challenges too: increasingly seen by both parties as the potential saviour of public services, what is, in fact, the capacity of the third sector to innovate and deliver major public service goals?

On Wednesday 3^rd December, Ben Page, Managing Director, Ipsos MORI Public Affairs and Chairman of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute will present and discuss Ipsos MORI's latest research on these topics and what they mean for the innovation debate.

To find out more and to take part in the conversation, please join us at this breakfast event for what we are sure will be a stimulating and thought-provoking discussion.  Full breakfast will be provided.

When: Wednesday 3^rd December from 8–9.30am

Where: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

NESTA’s Policy Breakfasts aim to strengthen the innovation policy community and foster debate and new ideas.

Ben Page

Ben graduated from Oxford University in 1986, and was one of the leaders of its first management buyout in 2000. Ben is a frequent writer and speaker on leadership and performance management in the public sector, he has directed hundreds of surveys examining quality of life, service delivery, customer care, communications and the democratic deficit.

Named one of the "100 most influential people in the public sector" by the Guardian newspaper and "one of the 50 most influential people in local government" by LGC, Ben has worked on public services with both Conservative and Labour ministers, as well as a wide range of local authorities and NHS Trusts.

Ben has a chapter in a new book looking at Blair's Britain, 1997-2007.

NESTA’s Policy & Research Unit

The NPRU aims to help transform the UK’s capacity for innovation by:

* Building a relevant and coherent policy and research programme that resonates with national priorities, political realities, media interest and the research frontier

* Integrating policy goals within all NESTA programmes - using research to design programmes, and using the evidence base created by programmes to drive policy development

* Establishing a strong policy and research community around innovation