Design thinking and public sector innovation: The divergent effects of risk-taking, cognitive empathy and emotional empathy on individual performance

Traits that predict whether an employee will generate promising new ideas do not necessarily predict that they will also implement those ideas. This is especially relevant within the public sector, which is typically more risk averse than the private sector, and where barriers to innovation include staff resistance, rigid organizational structures, and a lack of shared innovation goals. To shed light on why some public sector employees are better intrapreneurs than others, we examine the role of risk-taking, emotional empathy, and cognitive empathy on the likelihood of innovation implementation. Using a sample of public sector employees who attended a prominent design thinking bootcamp run by the Bangladeshi Prime Ministers Office, results indicate that individuals are more likely to implement their innovative ideas if they have higher cognitive empathy and risk-taking propensity, but lower emotional empathy. We find evidence for the ‘empathy divergence thesis’ within a public sector setting, extending growing evidence from neuroscience and psychology that cognitive and emotional empathy are distinct processes with divergent effects on behavior. In sum, we provide a nuanced understanding of the overall effect of three important individual level traits on the likelihood of innovation implementation among public sector employees.