Innovator Roles within and between public organisations

This paper examines innovator roles that can enhance innovation within a public organisation and between public organisations while focusing on the idea generation and idea promotion phase. To this end, we undertook a qualitative research approach, which has allowed us to study innovator roles. In total, 17 semi/structured interviews have been conducted. The sample was composed of 15 innovation ambassadors from the Netherlands Fire Services (NFS) and 2 employees from the Netherlands Institute of Public Safety (NIPV). Our results propose multiple innovator roles that can enhance innovation within an organisation and between organisations. The roles that are proposed in this research are; the orchestrator, idea generator, champion and gatekeeper. In addition, multiple personal characteristics and tasks are proposed that can enhance innovation. Based on these findings, we derive recommendations for individuals who fulfil an innovator role to enhance innovation within and between public organisations.