The author of this contribution is an experienced advocate for the community and voluntary sectors. Here he reflects on his experiences working with local government. Writing as an independent commentator, Toby Blume occupies a position as what could be thought of as a boundary spanner but what he calls a ‘view from the boundary's edge’. This clear-sighted view gives us insight into the human dimensions of working with more incompleteness in a complex policy and delivery environment; business as unusual. This contribution illuminates the scale of change required to translate a co-productive vision into a threedimensional reality. It puts forward examples and ideas of creative disruption techniques used to generate more co-productive relationships.

The case study is of the London Borough of Lambeth, and a story of groundbreaking work to reorientate its work along cooperative principles. It shows an attempt to introduce an explicitly asset-based approach into its decisionmaking processes about what local public services should provide, and how. Toby Blume's reflections on the process document just how much of a cultural shift co-production can be for large public institutions. It illustrates difficult choices about managing large-scale change processes internally and with citizens. The author makes a cogent argument that Lambeth Council's experiences suggest that co-production will need radical transformation not just in new forms of citizen vision and mobilisation – a participatory civic economy – but also across a huge and complex bureaucratic machinery.