The word wicked has surprisingly many meanings. It can mean “morally evil.” It is the name of a Broadway musical. And where you and I might say, “I do declare, your son is extremely adept at advanced calculus,” a Boston resident would say “your kid is wicked smaht.”
There is another context for the word: wicked problems. A wicked problem is “difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize."[i] Such challenges “tend to be ill-structured with messy boundaries and connections.”[iii] (Indeed, some experts call them “social messes.”)[i]
Public planning and policy are full of wicked problems, including global climate change, the pandemic, homelessness, social injustice, poverty and inequality, criminal behavior, and environmental pollution. As Rob Knapp points out, “[i]ndeed, every building project and most social action, down to the smallest scale, has elements of wickedness. In each case, the interests in play, the intangibility of key values, and the elusiveness of key information mean that a commonly agreed base for problem solving is not objectively available.”[iv]
Wicked problems cannot be fixed, and there is no single solution. [I] So we shouldn’t focus on solving wicked problems, but rather making our best effort to intervene. This doesn't mean doing more (or less) of what we’ve been doing but rather, innovating.
Call me a nerd (that’s not an insult in my world), but I get giddy when I read things like:
“City governments are ushering in a new era of local public sector innovation that promotes experimentation and flexibility within the administration, while at the same time seeking to engage residents in new ways and promoting well-being.”[v]
I find the idea of urban innovation exciting because I don’t usually think of entire cities as hubs of innovation. But the past two decades have shown that cities can be the perfect places to test out innovations in the public sector. The ideas and best practices emerging in cities across the U.S. and the world show real promise of positively impacting people’s lives – I’ll describe some in future posts!
How do we go about innovating interventions to wicked problems? Collaboration is likely to deliver the best results. [vi] This shouldn’t be surprising: Collaboration gives people a sense of ownership and commitment; it engenders trust and transparency; it creates a culture in which a wide variety of stakeholders (citizens, city leaders, city staff, private sector players, etc.) are motivated to bring forward possible solutions.
Can you envision a culture of urban innovation in Stillwater? Yes, this is a small city, but even here, we grapple with homelessness and housing affordability, social inequity, pollution, and congestion/parking challenges.
Besides its iconic lift bridge, historic architecture, and gorgeous natural assets, could Stillwater also become known as a model city for its innovative approaches to addressing wicked problems?
[i] R.E. Horn and R.P. Weber (2007). “New Tools For Resolving Wicked Problems: Mess Mapping and Resolution Mapping Processes.” https://www.strategykinetics.com//New_Tools_For_Resolving_Wicked_Problems.pdf
[ii] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
[iii] Ackoff, 1974; cited in Head, 2019; Moura e Sa et al., 2020
[iv] R. Knapp. Wholesome Design for Wicked Problems. http://publicsphereproject.org/content/wholesome-design-wicked-problems
[v] Office of Economic Co-operation and Development. Enhancing Innovation Capacity in City Government. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/f10c96e5-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/f10c96e5-en&_csp_=9df7d840e6010fdb58752b0833b880eb&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book#execsumm-d1e89
[vi] Roberts, N.C. (2000). "Wicked Problems and Network Approaches to Resolution". International Public Management Review. 1 (1). International Public Management Network.
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