Small bets for digital transformation
Almost exactly a year ago I shared some thoughts about optionality and digital transformation.
I’ve been thinking about this again with the recent focus in UK government on test and learn. I shared some thoughts about that last week in response to Pat McFadden’s speech.
Optionally is a really important concept. It is government’s ability to try lots of small things, or to make lots of small investments in “higher-risk-higher-reward” situations.
I think this aligns with the current UK government missions, where what’s really needed is lots of smaller experiments and pockets of innovation to create momentum and progress in each of these areas. Then you can distribute, share and scale what works.
I heard a great example this week from Stu Pearson about how a local team working with AI started small, with their work now being shared and implemented nationally*. It can be done, and this works best when it starts locally. It’s the type of thinking we need, but it needs to be funded and incentivised, especially at that local level.
Small bets can be the radical option to make progress. It’s how government can act like a start up.
I don’t mind the start up idea because I think that meaningful progress can be the result of making lots of small bets. Some will work, some won’t. If that does empower and equip local organisations and place, then I think it’s the injection of optimism and belief we need to reenergise the systems the missions are designed to impact. It’s also how society will feel any real progress. In the end, society has to feel something, for the missions to mean anything.
Think of small bets as a stimulus package—not intended to break things, but to send a series of new electrical signals designed to trigger a system response. I believe this is the tonic we need to avoid “boiling the ocean” and to tackle the complexity and scale of these challenges.
*Update: This post has more details about Caddy, an example of innovation which began as a generative AI prototype designed and developed within Citizens Advice SORT (Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale, Trafford).
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