Age of Stupid: How to (Not) Kill Creativity in Government

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ABSTRACT

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As the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated, complex times call for new governance approaches. In this paper, we review what’s required to enable the State - public authorities at all levels of governance - to promote social, political, policy and democratic innovation. The resulting “State as Catalyst” approach will help turn our back on the “Age of Stupid”, in which creativity is killed, to help an “Age of Smart” emerge, in which collective intelligence is harnessed to address public challenges. This requires the efficient combination by the State of three factors: expertise, creative thinking skills and motivation, as well as the ability to tackle complexity in its various dimensions: social, emerging and dynamic.