External sources for innovation in public organisations

This article's objective is twofold: First, to provide a framework for understanding the role of external information sources in service innovation, with particular attention to innovation in public organisations. The second part of the article's objective is to test the proposed framework. Method of analysis is based on data at European level from the 2010 Innobarometer Survey on Public Innovation. Data is used for estimating a bivariate probit with sample selection, where the selection variable indicates whether or not organisations have recently implemented service innovations and the estimated variable indicates whether organisations have introduced services that are new to the whole public sector. Results indicate a significant relation between the use of both internal and external sources of information and the implementation of innovations by public organisations. External sources are shown to be more relevant for the implementation of services that are new to the public sector.