I have run many innovative projects, at INPS and before. But I never sought them out: I never set out thinking "I want to be an innovator". Innovation, in my experience, is not something you choose: it happens to you. You find yourself in difficult, complicated situations that demand a new approach — in how you solve the problem, or in the tools you use to solve it.
There's a scene in The Lord of the Rings that says it all: Sam, at the worst moment of the journey, observes that nobody voluntarily chooses to live an adventure — the adventure happens to you, and "we wouldn't even be here, if we had known". Well: my experience with innovation is exactly that.
What innovation is not
"Innovation" is one of the most abused words around, and often used carelessly. Innovating is not doing something new. It's not saying "let's do something innovative" — before the AI boom, I had the honour of hearing, more than once, "let's do something with the multiverse": the typical expression of someone trying to innovate without having understood what innovation is. It is purpose that creates the possibility of innovation.
For me, innovation in the public sector is not about doing new things, but about making something that has a real impact on people's lives work better. And it comes in increasing levels of complexity:
- Known problem, new tool — the simplest case: the organization knows the problem, and you solve it with a tool that didn't exist before;
- Unknown problem, known tool — innovation is also surfacing a problem the organization doesn't know it has, and then solving it with familiar means;
- Unknown problem, unknown tool — the hardest projects: neither the problem nor the way to tackle it is known.
Three INPS projects illustrate the scale well. The Sirio design system was the simplest case: the problem was known — 450 digital services, all different and hard to use — and what was missing was a tool. The rebranding was the opposite case: the organization wasn't aware it had an identity problem, and the innovative part was making it see one. The user-centred design process was the hardest: no awareness of the problem (INPS didn't perceive itself as a service provider) and completely new, unexpected tools.
The O.R.C.A. model
The recurring difficulties of an innovative project, in a large and complex organization, bear the name of an insidious cetacean:
O — (H)ostility. When you innovate, you step on toes: you break silos, and that generates conflict.
R — Resistance. The physiological resistance to change — amplified where the culture is one of compliance: "the legislator said this; we've won when we've done it".
C — Complexity. The hard part is not finding the new solution: it's making it work inside a complex ecosystem. It's like opening a mechanical watch to change one gear: the odds that everything will still mesh perfectly afterwards are low.
A — Anxiety. You live in a constant state of apprehension, because you are exploring unknown territory. Anxiety is not an accident: it is a constant of innovation.
The point is that O.R.C.A. is not a list of "public-sector problems": it is a map of recurring forces that anyone trying to innovate will face. Hostility, resistance, complexity and anxiety don't vanish through good will: they must be recognized and anticipated.
Design as radar
And that is exactly what design does, when used as a collaborative tool rather than merely a creative discipline: it makes visible the frictions that would otherwise remain implicit. A process map surfaces where a flow jams; a shared prototype immediately reveals misunderstandings or undeclared opposition; a workshop brings out differences in objectives that, ignored, would later become open hostility.
This is not "doing participation" for its own sake: it's about building contexts in which the people who work on a service can contribute before the project is too far along to change. That is how resistance becomes competence, complexity becomes useful information, and anxiety — which by definition is fear of uncertainty — decreases, because the working group is more aware.
The ecosystem level
There is also a broader level: hostility and resistance are not born only inside projects — they are born in separate worlds that don't talk to each other. This is why initiatives like Lo Stato del Design exist: not celebratory events, but places where public administration, designers, companies and academia can see their challenges represented and recognize common ground. Creating a shared language, telling real cases, showing how others handled complexity without hiding the trade-offs: without this level, every project starts from zero and fights, alone, the same O.R.C.A. as those who came before.
In short
Design works as a tool of collaborative intelligence when it helps people see early what they would normally understand too late. Hostility, resistance, complexity and anxiety don't disappear — but they become part of the work, rather than the reason projects stop.