Innovation and Big Public Policy Problems: Exploring the Problem-Solution Nexus

How do governments and societies attempt to solve big policy problems? Across the world, nations face problems that are "big" in scale, scope, frequency, the complexity of their policy subsystem, or the unevenness of their impacts across society — and declining trust in government has only sharpened the pressure to be seen to act. This has produced a growing expectation that governments innovate: in policymaking processes, in public service delivery, and in the public sector itself (its governance, structure, and capacity). Yet innovation attempts — whether incremental or radical, fast or slow, local or transnational — do not reliably produce their intended effects, and we know surprisingly little about why some succeed, some do nothing, and some make problems worse. This paper develops a conceptual framework linking attempts at innovative solutions to big policy problems, addressing: what makes a problem "big"; what forms innovation takes and where it is located (problem framing, policy design, implementation, evaluation, or the public sector itself); and how, and how successfully, innovative solutions become coupled to problems. We survey existing approaches to problem-solving and solution-making in the policy sciences. It forms the foundation to describe innovative approaches to the coupling of solutions to problems. The problem-solution nexus is the space where the dimensions of a problem's "bigness" (i.e. its scale, scope, frequency, the complexity of its policy subsystem, and the unevenness of its impacts across society) meet the design of an innovative response. This paper examines how well, and in what ways, innovative solutions are matched to these dimensions, and what this reveals about the prospects of an innovation actually addressing the problem it targets. The framework offers a diagnostic tool for analysing this fit or misfit across past cases, and a basis for more deliberate innovation design going forward. To construct this framework, we address: 1. What makes a policy problem "big"? 2. What types of innovation are used in attempts to solve big policy problems? 3. What is the locus of innovation — is it about policymaking (framing, design, implementation, evaluation), the public sector's processes and services, or the public sector's own governance, structure, and capacity? 4. How are innovative solutions connected to big policy problems? 5. What do we know about the success and failure of attaching innovative solutions to big policy problems — do they tend to achieve the desired outcome, make no difference, or make the problem worse?