Professor Jackie Hunter, Chair of the Cross-Sector Experience Awards Panel, highlighted a major obstacle during the Cross-Sector Experience Awards. “Too often, innovation is limited by structural barriers between sectors,” she noted. This nails the problem throttling innovation across every industry. Public institutions and private enterprises operate in separate worlds, creating silos that choke off the flow of good ideas.
The solution sits right at those boundaries.
In sectors where public institutions strain under resource pressures and private enterprises hunt for proven solutions, three pillars can transform the landscape. Knowledge transfer breaks down information hoarding; operational adaptation lets professionals slip seamlessly between institutional cultures; and ethical governance keeps everyone honest across those divides. When these three elements work together, boundary-spanning professionals don’t just bridge gaps. They dissolve the silos entirely and deliver results that neither sector could achieve alone.
To see why those silos matter, let’s map out how they actually slow everything down on the ground.
Structural Silos and Their Toll
These structural barriers create real problems that go way beyond bureaucratic inconvenience.
These divisions run deeper than department walls – they show up in funding formulas, performance targets and daily routines. Major public hospitals work within resource-constrained, throughput-driven environments. They focus on immediate patient care with whatever resources they’ve got. Private clinics? They run multidisciplinary, patient-centred models. This allows for more tailored care approaches.
The same contrasting pressures show up across consulting, education and infrastructure – public agencies chase compliance targets while private firms optimise for client outcomes.
Without deliberate bridges between these worlds, valuable insights and innovations stay trapped in one domain.
That’s a waste nobody can afford.
Cracking open those silos starts with one simple idea – sharing the right knowledge at the right time.
Knowledge Transfer in Practice
Healthcare systems worldwide tackle the hurdle of rolling out advanced surgical techniques across diverse institutional settings. This integration matters because it’s how patient outcomes improve and care quality becomes consistent.
One solution involves cross-pollination of proven methods, which accelerates service-delivery innovations. Of course, convincing a hospital administrator that a technique perfected in a private clinic will work in their resource-strapped public ward is like explaining quantum physics to someone who’s never seen an atom – theoretically possible, but you’ll need patience and very clear evidence.
Dr Timothy Steel provides an example of how this cross-pollination works in practice. Having trained across Australia, the United States and England, he joined St Vincent’s Public and Private Hospitals in 1998, where he continues to lead surgical innovation today. Through his extensive experience, Dr Timothy Steel has performed a wide range of cranial and spine surgeries over many years.
He’s performed over 2,000 cranial procedures, more than 8,000 minimally invasive spine operations and upwards of 2,000 complex spine surgeries. He’s contributed to departmental committees that establish surgical protocols and collaborated with pain specialists and physiotherapists to design integrated post-operative pathways.
Dr Timothy Steel applies methodical preoperative planning and insists on robust clinical evidence before introducing new approaches. This enables him to take minimally invasive techniques refined at St Vincent’s Public Hospital and scale them in the Private Hospital setting. His practice spans emergency and elective care, reflecting his ability to adapt techniques to individual patient needs and anatomical requirements.
This clinical cross-fertilisation reduces hospital stays and creates consistent, high-quality care across different settings. By sharing knowledge and practices between public and private institutions, specialists working across these boundaries help ensure patients receive optimal care regardless of where they’re treated.
Of course, swapping know-how is only half the job – you’ve also got to fit it into each organisation’s unique culture.
Operational Adaptation and Cultural Agility
Successful boundary-spanners don’t just copy and paste processes from one domain to another. They adapt processes and mindsets to fit completely different institutional contexts. Public-sector work revolves around access targets and resource controls. Private sector operations focus on multidisciplinary teams and ongoing recovery support.
This flexibility matters just as much in consulting work and infrastructure partnerships. Practitioners bounce between these environments constantly. They’re adjusting workflows and communication styles to make things actually work.
It’s like speaking two different languages. One involves procurement rules and committee approvals. The other runs on quick decisions and client deliverables. Most people struggle to manage their email in just one field.
You need flexible project management to bridge these gaps. But here’s the thing – agility isn’t enough on its own. Dual-sector roles create conflicts of interest without consistent accountability. That’s why you need a solid ethical framework guiding specialists who work across these boundaries.
Building Trust Through Ethics
When organisations stretch across multiple domains, maintaining ethical standards gets tricky. Organisations must ensure their operations uphold integrity across all fields they touch.
Establishing comprehensive ethical frameworks addresses this obstacle. These frameworks maintain trust and provide clear guidelines for practitioners navigating dual roles where competing interests might pull them in different directions.
Kevin Burrowes shows how to implement such frameworks effectively. After building his career at PwC London and serving in leadership roles at IBM Consulting and Credit Suisse, he rejoined PwC in 2009 and later served as the global banking and capital markets leader.
As Chief Executive Officer of PwC Australia, Burrowes implemented a comprehensive Action Plan that emphasises high ethical standards and cross-border collaboration to rebuild trust following past governance hurdles. This plan applies private-sector governance protocols to public-sector collaborations and uses the firm’s network to serve government and corporate clients.
By adapting private-sector integrity protocols to public-service collaborations, organisations maintain ethical standards across different domains.
This approach lets practitioners navigate the complexities of dual-sector roles while keeping public trust intact.
Managing Tensions and Trade-Offs
Divided loyalties and external scrutiny demand transparent policies and proactive safeguards. Surgeons handle emergency public admissions alongside elective private cases. Consultants balance lucrative corporate mandates with public-sector commitments. These tensions can’t be wished away.
Mitigation measures help manage these pressures. Disclosures, strict recusal policies and joint steering committees provide structure.
It’s like juggling chainsaws – impressive when it works, career-ending when it doesn’t.
These measures ensure practitioners can operate transparently and maintain integrity across their roles.
The interlocking pillars of knowledge transfer, operational adaptation and ethical governance reduce friction and uphold professional integrity. By addressing these hurdles head-on, boundary-spanning specialists continue delivering value across domains without compromising their credibility.
Recruiting Talent Across Sectors
You can’t build bridges between domains if your team’s never worked on both sides. Institutions need to completely rethink how they hire, develop and support their people. Recruit practitioners who’ve actually worked across different fields – not just read about it in textbooks.
Here’s what works: set up secondments where your people spend real time in other domains. Create rotation programmes that aren’t just box-ticking exercises. Build multidisciplinary training that reinforces all three pillars we’ve discussed.
The goal isn’t collecting impressive CVs. It’s finding people who understand how different fields actually operate and can spot opportunities others miss.
Institutionalising Collaboration
Cross-sector fellowships, joint task forces and shared governance boards aren’t theoretical constructs. They’re formal mechanisms that embed cross-pollination and keep knowledge flowing between domains. These models give us concrete templates for making collaboration work.
The pillars we’ve discussed – knowledge transfer, operational adaptation and ethical governance – come alive through these structures. Take the Australian Government’s Industry Reference Committees, which bring together public agencies and private industry leaders to design training standards. Or consider the UK’s Academic Health Science Networks, where NHS trusts partner with universities and private companies to accelerate medical innovation adoption.
When you institutionalise collaboration this way, innovation keeps accelerating across public service and private enterprise. It’s not left to chance or individual relationships that might fade over time.
Accelerating Innovation Through Collaboration
Boundary-spanning practitioners don’t just work around silos when they’ve got the right support. They tear them down completely. You need three things: knowledge transfer that actually works, operational agility that adapts fast and ethical governance that keeps everything on track.
Professor Jackie Hunter’s observation about structural barriers limiting innovation? That’s not a roadblock. It’s your starting point for real change.
Look at Dr Timothy Steel in healthcare and Kevin Burrowes in consulting. Both show how boundary-spanning specialists can apply knowledge transfer, operational adaptation and ethical governance across different domains. They’re not doing anything magical. They’re just working systematically across traditional boundaries.
So here’s the real question: how might you reconsider your own cross-sector practices to unlock similar innovations in your field?