KCMO City Manager Brian Platt Earns 'Innovation' Love Letter

It's getting closer to Valentine's Day and we wanted to share this note that offers a glimpse at how local leaders develop all of their "innovative ideas" . . . Hint: Mostly by way of training from very rich people.

Here are the basics . . .

"Veterans of the Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded Innovation Team (i-team) program, in new roles—giving them fresh opportunities and greater resources with which to drive impact for residents."

Here's a peek at local efforts . . .

"If embedding a mindset for data-powered collaboration at the foundation of a brand-new agency is one way to spread innovation across city hall, another is to manage and lead almost every city agency with a spirit of de-risking and experimentation.

"That’s exactly what Brian Platt and Melissa Kozakiewicz are doing in Kansas City. As veterans of the i-team in Jersey City, N.J., they now serve as city manager and assistant city manager, respectively, in their new home. The city already had a long history of local government innovation, including a focus on data-driven decision making. But one thing Platt and Kozakiewicz have found is that being in a leadership role with a broad portfolio has given them the ability to work with everyone to take existing innovation efforts to the next level.

" 'Kansas City was already known as a place with a creative spirit inside local government,' Platt says. 'We simply helped harness that energy by working alongside city leaders, neighbors, and our Mayor [Quinton Lucas] and City Council to deploy new tools that ultimately are delivering real change.' And the impact of their city-wide focus on trying new things is accumulating. On the transit and climate fronts alone, the city has built 50 miles of protected bike lanes, converted nearly 100,000 street lights to LED—the carbon impact of which is equivalent to taking 6,000 cars off the road—and built up formidable EV infrastructure that rivals similarly-sized cities."

However . . . 

Sadly, none of this high praise will help KC's STALLED solar array that earned even more accolades for announcing but now seems like vaporware. 

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

The leaders bringing the innovation mindset into the mainstream

​ Kansas City , Minneapolis , A playbook for the next generation of city innovators Read More This city is putting its people in charge of public space Read More These cities are finding new ways to lead on homelessness Read More And the new ideas are often flowing from the ground-up, rather than the top-down, reflecting the passion and interest of civil servants in making government more effective and impactful.