Chris Schreiber
Discover how public sector technologists drive meaningful innovation through necessity and collaboration, solving real problems with limited resources.
I remember the day I changed my mind about innovation. After decades working in tech—half in public sector institutions and half advising companies selling to them—I visited a midsize school district in the Midwest facing what seemed like an impossible challenge.
Their students needed a secure digital learning platform that worked on decade-old computers, unreliable home internet, and could meet strict privacy requirements without a seven-figure budget. Big tech firms would have declared this dead on arrival.
The district’s three-person IT team delivered in four months.
That’s when it clicked for me: we’ve been looking for innovation in all the wrong places.
The narrative that meaningful technology innovation happens in startups and tech giants has dominated our collective thinking for too long. It’s a convenient story—the brilliant founder, the garage-to-riches journey, the disruptive technology that changes everything overnight.
Reality tells a different story.
In my 30 years spanning both the technology vendor and public sector worlds, I’ve witnessed consistent patterns. Public sector technologists accomplish more with less, while startups burn through millions chasing solutions to problems that don’t exist.
Consider cybersecurity. While venture capital pours billions into flashy security startups with slick dashboards and AI promises, university security teams protect massive, diverse technology environments with a fraction of the resources.
I once asked a state government CISO how his team secured hundreds of applications with just four security engineers.
“We don’t have the luxury of buying every shiny object,” he told me. “We had to develop our own risk assessment framework that works because it’s built specifically for our environment.”
This isn’t an isolated example. I’ve seen similar patterns across education, healthcare, and government technology teams. When resources are scarce, the resulting innovations are more useful and long-lasting than those developed with unlimited budgets.
The explanation boils down to this: necessity continues to be a powerful motivator for innovation.
Startup culture celebrates rapid growth, disruption, and the coveted exit. Public sector innovation follows a different motivation—sustainable impact.
A healthcare CIO spent three years developing a telehealth system for rural patients. This wasn’t just about video calls. The solution had to work with 3G connections, accommodate patients with limited technical skills, and integrate with ancient medical record systems.
This hospital system built something robust for their specific community needs.
They weren’t building this to flip a company and exit with millions of dollars. They were solving a real problem for people who would otherwise have no access to the healthcare they need.
This motivation changes everything. When you measure success by solving problems for your community instead of achieving a billion-dollar valuation, innovation takes a different shape.
I’ve observed this countless times. Public sector technologists optimize for:
This isn’t sexy innovation. It won’t make headlines or attract venture capital. But it solves real problems for real people.
Here’s something people miss about public sector innovation: the power of cross-institutional collaboration.
Startups fiercely protect their intellectual property. Public sector organizations share it.
I’ve sat in rooms where technology leaders from competing universities exchanged information about security approaches, cloud migration strategies, and custom software solutions. The collaborative mindset creates a massive multiplier effect.
I once watched a community college IT director demo a student success platform her team had built. When a vendor attending the session asked if she worried about other colleges copying it, she laughed.
“We’ve published the entire architecture online and shared the code with three other colleges,” she explained. “They’ve each made improvements and shared them back. It’s better than anything we could have built alone.”
This happens all the time in public sector technology. Solutions evolve through collaboration and iteration across organizational boundaries. The result is more robust than what emerges from closed innovation environments.
No investor pressure means freedom to share. No competitive threats means willingness to collaborate. No exit strategy means focus on long-term viability.
Public sector technology teams face challenges in scaling solutions that startups may not face.
A state government CIO handles systems serving millions of citizens with different needs, technical capabilities, languages, and access methods. The solutions must work for everyone—not just profitable market segments.
He couldn’t build for the ideal user or the perfect use case. His team has to create systems that function for rural residents with dial-up internet, older adults unfamiliar with technology, and people accessing services via decade-old computers in public libraries.
This requirement to serve everyone—not just profitable or convenient user segments—forces a unique form of innovation. It demands solutions that are more adaptable, accessible, and durable.
I’ve watched startups pivot away from challenging market segments to focus on easier, more profitable customers. Public sector technologists don’t have that luxury. They must innovate for everyone or fail their mission.
Don’t misunderstand me. Startups and technology companies innovate. But they represent just one model of innovation—one that gets disproportionate attention.
Schools, hospitals, and government agencies with under-funded IT departments are surprisingly innovative. It happens without fanfare, without huge budgets, and without exit strategies.
After working in both technology firms and higher education, I saw patterns:
These aren’t limitations—they’re innovation catalysts that produce more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable solutions.
I’ve worked with both well-funded technology companies and resource-starved public institutions. I’ve observed a paradox: constraints often produce better innovation than abundance.
Unlimited funding can lead to bloated products, feature creep, and solutions searching for problems. Tight budgets force clarity, prioritization, and creative problem-solving.
A municipal IT director once told me: “When you have no money while facing many problems, you get really good at separating what matters and what doesn’t.”
I’ve seen college technology teams develop custom analytic dashboards that outperform million-dollar commercial systems because they focused on what institution leaders needed rather than what would demo well or please investors.
This clarity of purpose drives a different approach to innovation. You can’t afford to chase shiny objects or develop features nobody needs. You must focus on what delivers actual value.
It’s time we recognized the mythology we’ve created around innovation—the idea that it requires massive funding, genius founders, and freedom from constraints.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Actual problems are often solved when smart, dedicated people with limited resources innovate to find solutions that work. Their goal isn’t disruption for its own sake, but sustainable solutions that solve ongoing problems.
I’m not arguing that public sector innovation is always better than innovation from tech companies and startups. Both models have strengths and weaknesses. But I am suggesting we’ve overvalued one model while under-appreciating the other.
After three decades working in both worlds, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: we need to look beyond Silicon Valley’s narrative to recognize important innovation that happens out of the limelight.
These innovators will never ring the bell at the stock exchange. They won’t appear on the cover of business magazines.
Despite this, they develop solutions that help all their stakeholders, not just the profitable ones. And they accomplish this with a total budget that venture capital-backed startups might consider a rounding error.
That’s the innovation we should celebrate and learn from.
Because in my experience, public sector technology innovators don’t just talk about changing the world.
They actually do it. One under-funded, resource constrained, mission critical solution at a time.
And maybe that’s the innovation lesson we all need right now.
