What do you get if you cross bureaucracy with innovation?

Balcony herb gardens, a social network for dairy farmers and buyers, and a university food loyalty card, to name just a few.

Seriously. No joke.

Over the past year we’ve been working with Swansea University and NWSSP Procurement Services (who buy everything on behalf of the NHS in Wales) to tackle some persistent challenges to making public food procurement sustainable.

Procurement, if we’re honest, is not where we imagine a great deal of innovative thinking taking place. We’re not saying that it doesn’t happen; it’s just that it’s tough when there’s such a rigid process to follow, especially if you take EU regulations into account.

But a team of people from these organisations decided to step out of their comfort zones and embrace a different perspective. They also signed up to playing with lego, drawing, and talking to people they would never normally have met.

Their goal? NWSSP wanted to address the time honoured challenge of engaging SMEs in the public sector supply chain, and Swansea University dreamt of involving staff and students in food growing initiatives on campus.

Their ideas, generated during our Best Food Forward project, are proof alone that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Just because procurement is bureaucratic doesn’t mean that fresh ideas can’t be found when you take a different (people-centred) perspective.

On top of some great ideas, the teams have come out the other end with some other achievements. The process has allowed them to improve how they communicate, learn how to use different techniques to generate ideas and get excited about their work challenges, and the ability to see things through fresher eyes.

We want the ideas and the techniques to be shared and used far and wide. So see for yourself what happens when you cross a bureaucratic process with an innovative one here.