Co-creation in the public sector: a tool for innovation

The institutional mission of the Public Administration is the creation of public value for citizens and businesses. It is possible to improve public sector services by innovating and implementing new solutions to meet collective needs. This paper addresses the issue of co-creation as an indispensable tool to innovate the public sector from a Service-Dominant (S- D) perspective. With co-creation, the Public Administration would respond to the need to adopt a new approach to the creation of value through the delivery of public services, in which the production process of the service is no longer entrusted only to administrative bodies, but takes place in a participatory perspective: public administrations and users mutually share resources, responsibilities and results pursuing the goal of the "common good". The Service-Dominant (S-D) approach, in turn, can contribute to the innovation of organisational processes and the improvement of services to citizens, the promotion of social inclusion, the generation of wealth in territories and the creation of new jobs. The empirical strategy consists of case studies of co-creation example in the S-D logic from the RegioStars Awards, the most important EU award for innovative regional development projects, in the period 2014-2018. Indeed, RegioStars reward excellence in regional development and highlight original and innovative projects, that become the standard-bearer of regional policy and its achievements.