Virtual Seminar on the Adoption of Innovation

Join a discussion on institutionalising novel approaches and building emerging tech capabilities in international development organisations. This seminar is designed for international organisation colleagues who work on innovation, on organisational design and change management and all other experts who are interested in expanding the toolkits of international development organisations.

We will hear about findings of the OECD research, captured in the recently published Working Paper ‘The Adoption of Innovation: Lessons for International Development Organisations’ and from a great line of speakers:

• Rosie Collington recently published the book ‘The Big Con’ with Marianna Mazzucato. She will talk about how the consultancy industry weakens governmental capabilities and share pathways to building government capabilities for the 21^st century.

• Reena Nadler will speak about how the USAID Learning Lab team embeds strategic collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management in core business processes, as part of the ‘Collaborating, Learning and Adapting’ framework.

• Christof Hawle will outline how UNDP works on strengthening digital capabilities across organizational functions, moving work with digital technologies to the core of how business is done.

If you have been following initiatives to leverage approaches such as human-centred design or behavioural science for better development cooperation, and you have been looking at making emerging tech such as blockchain or AI work for better outcomes, then you might share a sense of frustration: too many initiatives did not unfold impact at an appropriate scale and in many organisations work with these approaches and technologies is still branded as ‘innovation’ – some of them more than ten years after initial work started.

At the discussion on 5^th September, we will learn about what works to strategically move what was once innovative to the core of the organisation. We will discuss findings from the OECD research on how some development organisations overcame this pitfall and what we can learn to improve practice collectively. You will hear from intrapreneurs from members of the OECD Assistance Committee and from the UN system who worked on testing novel ways of working and then moved these strategically out of the innovation niche and made it part of the organisation’s toolkit.