Co-creation in commissioning complex public services: towards an adaptive system for continuous improvement

This article explores co-creation to address complex societal problems in the interconnected domains of health, welfare, and security. An instrumental case study examines the innovative outcome-based commissioning of public services for people engaging in problematic drug use in a Finnish city. We apply abductive content analysis to interviews with public and private stakeholders, documents, and statistics gathered from 2015 to 2021. The findings suggest that co-creation, co-production, and co-destruction combine to form an adaptive system that can foster continuous improvement in the provision of public value.