Product Champions in Government Agencies

Abstract

Innovation can bring productive change to the way business is done—a concept not easily accepted by government agencies. Barriers combine to stifle innovation and include the difficulty in providing services and programs to customers with competing interests, the leadership void created with recurrent turnover in top management, an emphasis on risk avoidance, and a focus on internal processes. Product champions are individuals who are committed, dedicated, willing, and able to take an innovation and carry it through the barriers that exist with the bureaucracy of government agencies. Only through active participation of product champions at all levels of the organization can productive innovation take place: top managers as the chief executive product champions, midlevel managers as the business innovation product champions, and employees at all levels as the technical innovation product champions.