Challenger Cities EP36: From Corporate Innovation to Council Budgets with Charlie Rowat

What happens when you take someone fluent in corporate innovation and drop them into the world of council-led adult social care? A surprising amount of clarity on what actually counts as value.

In this crossover episode, Iain Montgomery is joined by his usual SIDEBAR co‑conspirator, Charlie Rowat, to explore how innovation changes when you swap corporate executives for councillors, consumers for citizens, and quarterly shareholder updates for public accountability.

Charlie has spent the past few months working with councils in London and Essex on an adult social care innovation programme with Rainmaking and Thames Gateway — an area that consumes roughly 40% of local government budgets and still isn’t enough. It’s a space where “innovation” isn’t a buzzword but a lifeline: prediction over reaction, prevention over crisis, survival before strategy.

We discuss: – Why corporate and civic notions of “value” are worlds apart – How urgency and constraint shape innovation in public life – Why planning consultations are broken (and how imagination could fix them) – What Shoreditch teaches us about regenerating cities like Bradford – The courage it takes for councils to make change that can’t be ignored

“Lots of will, lots of appetite, no real budget. I mean, literally they are struggling to keep the lights on.”

This one’s about guts, trade‑offs, and what it really means to innovate when the stakes are human.