INNOVATION PRACTICES THROUGH KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS: PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION IN THE BRAZILIAN NAVY MANAGEMENT SCHOOL Érica Von Raschendorfer Bastos Maia 1 , Felipe Maia Braga 2 and Liliane Magalhães Girardin Pimentel Furtado 1 1 PPGAD - Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Mário Santos Braga, S/N, 4º andar, Prédio 1, Campus do Valonguinho – Centro- Niterói – RJ, Brazil 2 PPGDEI - Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio, Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225 casa XV – Gávea – RJ, Brazil ABSTRACT The New Public Governance paradigm, which arose as a response to the needs of a public management that is oriented towards the satisfaction of real demands from citizens, has at its core the defense of networks as an essential element to the creation of public value. Assuming that an enabling public management environment, typical of this new context, permeates the management of the social capital, it is the social relations in the public sector that comprise an invaluable source of value creation. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating how the elements of the intellectual dimension may be articulated by public organizations in the process of solving real management problems, by means of knowledge networks. To this end, there has been carried out a participant observation (PO), which entailed the structuring and monitoring of the discipline “Improvement of Navy Logistical Support Processes”, conducted at the Br azilian Navy Management School and taught within the graduate certificate program for supply officers. The research results show positive impacts of knowledge networks as a source of public value creation, confirming previous studies on the development of practices of public governance, with a focus on the coordination of resources of human, social, and organizational capital. KEYWORDS New Public Governance, Innovation, Knowledge Networks, Participant Observation 1. INTRODUCTION The complexity of the operating environment of current public organizations has demanded equally complex solutions. According to Lindsay, Osborne, and Bond (2014) and Osborne (2017), the operating context of public organizations in the 21st century translates into a multidimensional, dynamic environment in which the co-production becomes intrinsic to the processes and practices of public management, making the greatest (and longest-term) contribution through the sustainable public services which characterize the newest paradigm of Public Administration and Governance called New Public Governance (NPG) (Osborne, 2017). This new conceptual view has been progressively discussed on the literature related to public management, which reveals wider concerns about governance of more complex service delivery systems to citizens, in line with a more transactional view, extrapolating the limits of economic performance, characteristic feature of the managerial view, and including social and environmental aspects imposed by the relation with the actors involved. In the Brazilian context, this new reality points to an overhaul in the public management and governance practices, bringing to light the importance of innovation and knowledge as essential elements to public value creation and bringing up the discussion of the “creation of state processes that enable agreement generation between actors, in the face of contexts where there is not any possible technical solution” (Fontes Filho, 2014). The Brazilian Navy (MB, by its acronym in Portuguese), placed in the context of public organizations in the 21st century, seeks innovation models and practices focusing on real problems solving as a means of creating public value, in a sustainable way, highlighting the strategic importance given to the linking of resources of intellectual capital, which are People, Organizational Aspects, Procedural Aspects, Knowledge and Relational Aspects (Raschendorfer, 2019). International Conference on Applied Management Advances in the 21st Century 2020 (AMA21 2020) 119