Sandford Borins

Sandford Borins is a Professor of Public Management in the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, and Department of Management, University of Toronto-Scarborough. He was the founding chair of the latter and served in that capacity from 1991 to 2003. He is currently a research fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.

The Persistence of Innovation in Government: A Guide for Innovative Public Servants

With this report, Professor Borins continues two decades of research analyzing winners of and applicants to the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government Awards. This report presents a comparison of the applications received by the program in the 1990s (1990 to 1994) with those received in 2010.

The Challenge of Innovating in Government

This report develops a tool-kit of practical advice for would-be public management innovators based on the experiences of successful public management innovators in a variety of countries. Through a survey of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) international innovation award winners, a series of tool-kit characteristics are generated of innovations and tactics used to build alliances of supporters and overcome obstacles.

Professor of Public Management
University of Toronto at Scarborough Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
(416) 386-0440

Sandford Borins is a Professor of Public Management in the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, and Department of Management, University of Toronto-Scarborough. He was the founding chair of the latter and served in that capacity from 1991 to 2003. He is currently a research fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School. He has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and Scholar-in- Residence in the Ontario Cabinet Office. He is the author of 10 books and numerous articles. The books include The Persistence of Innovation in Government (Brookings Press, 2014) Governing Fables: Learning from Public Sector Narratives (Information Age Publishing, 2011), Innovations in Government: Research, Recognition, and Replication (Brookings, 2008), Innovating with Integrity: How Local Heroes are Transforming American Government, (Georgetown University Press, 1998), and Political Management in Canada, coauthored with Hon. Allan Blakeney, former premier of Saskatchewan (University of Toronto Press, 1998). Professor Borins has had a wide range of professional experience. He is a frequent speaker on public sector innovation, with recent presentations to the Australian Department of Industry and Innovation, Australian National University, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), Roskilde University (Denmark), and Public Management Research Conference (United States). He was a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation, responsible for developing Ontario’s electronic toll road (Highway 407). He was the President of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration, the counterpart to NASPAA, from 2003 to 2007. He did his undergraduate studies at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He then took a master’s degree in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard.