Champions of local authority innovation revisited

This article revisits the concept of the public sector innovation champion. Reflecting changes in sectoral and wider contexts and conceptual advances in the innovation literature, it suggests that much of the underlying thinking behind the original article is of continuing relevance and suggests a number of directions in which this could now be extended, particularly in terms of the nature of innovation and the role of champions therein. It concludes by considering how innovation champions of the future will require a new skillset which draws on new and emergent technologies to align diverse sets of stakeholders in networks of ‘open innovation’.