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Collaborative innovation is a new method for creating public innovation that both takes issue with the traditional appraisal of innovation heroes and with the idea that public innovation is primarily a result of stable bureaucratic procedures or market-based competition. The strength of collaborative innovation is that the interaction between public and private actors sharpens the problem definition, generate more and better ideas and build ownership to new and bold solutions. However, there are many barriers to collaborative innovation in the public sector and there is, therefore, a great need for innovation management in order to remove or at least reduce the barriers. The article delineates three new roles for innovation managers that will help to support processes of collaborative innovation. The argument is illustrated by an empirical case study of the formulation of an exit strategy for gang members in Copenhagen, who want to leave a criminal environment and establish a new and safer life. The conclusion evaluates the collaboration innovation method in the light of the transition from New Public Management to New Public Governance.

Political attempts to reform existing policies often fail to bring about substantial change. When they succeed, the new policy is heavily influenced by the pre‐existing policy path. This is confirmed by the story of Danish welfare reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, which can be explained in terms of their path dependency. In order to understand better the mechanisms of path dependency I draw on the fundamental insights of the new institutionalisms: rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and social constructivist institutionalism. The article begins with a brief presentation and comparison of the three new institutionalisms. It then discusses the dialectics of path shaping and path dependency before seeking to explicate the mechanisms of path dependency. Finally, the various accounts of path dependency are applied in an empirical study of the failure of welfare retrenchment in the 1980s and the relatively successful restructuring of the welfare state in the 1990s.