Systems Innovation Blog Series - Part Five: Five Questions to Consider to Make Systems Innovation Happen in International Development Organizations
By Benjamin Kumpf (OECD), Nina Strandberg (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and Robbie Barkell (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). Illustrations by Vidushi Yadav.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog series are the authors’ own and do not reflect the official positions of their home organizations, and not of the International Development Innovation Alliance.
In this five-part blog post series we share some of our lessons on advancing systems innovation practices in bilateral development organizations. With this, we seek to advance conversations on improving innovation efforts in the international development sector. In the first post, we describe what systems innovation is. In the second post, we make the case for systems innovation. The third post discusses some lessons from international development cooperation that inform our approach. In the fourth post, we present promising practice and building blocks of systems innovation. This final post shares five questions to help advance systems innovation practices in international development organizations.
“If we wait for the moment when everything, really everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
(Ivan Turgenev)
In the previous posts, we shared why we deem it necessary to diversify innovation investments and efforts. We pointed to the business case for systems innovation, some paradigms we challenge, lessons we identified and building blocks we identified.
In this last post, we share some initial lessons and questions. These are the results of our work over the past years, in pursuit of advancing systems innovation practices. Some of us focus on transformations on city levels to advance circular economies, others on changing education systems, on working with partners to shift gender norms, and others again on digital access and - inclusion in low and middle-income countries. What all of our efforts have in common is the shift from single experiments and a focus on technology to the design of portfolios that entail diverse forms of innovations at their core to address complex challenges.
To make tangible progress on advancing systems innovation, we are learning it is conducive to have clarity on the following questions:
1. What has to change in your agency to enable systems innovation practices? Systems innovation seeks to introduce new ways of working, new ways of financing, new ways of thinking – combined and meshed with existing processes, modalities and mental models. In fact, we have learned that most development practitioners bring deep commitment to better address complexity and power dynamics. Conversations and collaborations on systems innovation helped to bridge formerly isolated innovation endeavors that were often seen as ‘boutique’ initiatives with core strategic work streams in agencies.
To operationalize systems innovation, a key question is whether you intend to transform the entire organization, or whether you seek to carve out sufficient political support for systems innovation practices – in addition to business as usual of your organization. One of us sets out to change the mothership, inspired by the journeys of organizations such as the UK foundation Lankelly Chase. Colleagues from this charity embraced a systems transformation perspective on multiple levels several years ago, including a person-centered approach to care and deep and practical reflections on the foundation’s privilege and power. This resulted, among others, in decision-making power over funding shifting to people who are in the networks and fields Lankelly Chase is investing in, and no longer in the hands of trustees. Setting out to transform the entire organization is evidently a much more daring undertaking and requires much closer attention to compatibility with the organization governance and identity.
Creating the space to make systems innovation happen within a bilateral development agency as one component of how business is done has analogies to our work on establishing political spaces for adaptive management and for more adept ways of going about monitoring, evaluating and learning. Moving forward, some of us will test the value of a portfolio management model to carve out space for systems innovation. As one element in a diverse innovation portfolio that provides the opportunity to assess the social return of investments across the entire portfolio. This intends to offset expenditures on hard-to-measure interventions related to coalition- and movement-building, various forms of building and strengthening social capital, enhancing notions of agency - against investments that are measured with more traditional metrics. These include ‘number of lives improved’, as outlined in our joint initiative the ‘Million Lives Club’.
2. Which role and functions should your organization have in a shifting system? This is about critical reflections of what is often coined as ‘comparative advantage’ of a development agency. Many of play the role of ‘insiders-outsider’. We act as conduits, connecting changes in our organizations to emerging ways of operating that are forming outside. This also serves to critically re-examine dominant narratives on the organization’s ‘comparative advantage’. We learned that advancing systems innovation practices requires a deep understanding of the current capabilities of the agency, to assess which interventions in a larger, cross-organizational portfolio can create combinatorial effects. It requires an understanding of trends in development finance. And the capability to push back on the tendency of some senior manager’s preferences for tech experiments and to invest in ‘low hanging fruits’. Some of us encounter directives on innovation that are rather nonsensical, for example to position the agency as a ‘leader on AI’. All of us are working in environments that are shaped by political agendas and ambitions of decision-makers, which make it difficult to sustain commitment and to invest in non-glamourous work streams.
Some of our agencies already act as funders that seek to bolster the capacities of local partners to address development challenges. We are seeing steps to move beyond technical capacity building, to funding conversations on systems dynamics and systems transformation, led by change makers from low and middle-income countries.
3. Whose voice is represented in imagining the future of a system? What power is your agency willing to give up? This refers not only to challenges of the entire organization in shifting decision-making power over what gets funded to the local level, but also to specific problems in the development innovation space. Over the last years, we have seen an increased appreciation of shifting power, including the localization agenda in humanitarian and development settings. We are far from having found actionable pathways that make real progress, and we are weary of some of the rhetoric. We do, however, see potential in the increased appreciation of the power of grassroots innovation. The support for South-South and Triangular co-operation, including on innovation, has increased. Support for innovators in low and middle countries often neglects power dynamics between funder and recipients, and dynamics within a country. Development actors, local NGOs, activists — whoever engages with individuals and communities who face discrimination and exclusion, introduces additional layers of complexity to existing power dynamics. It is our responsibility to do our best to understand them, navigate them and not pretend to have solved them. “Power relations are tricky, and we need to be aware of which kind of attitudes and behaviours we are reinforcing with our acts and presence,” argues Miriam Pastor of Designit. We invest in relationship building with activists and innovators from our partner countries who actively challenge the status quo of the development systems, and we set up forums that are designed as listening and learning opportunities and investments in reshaping global systems with local actors on the forefront. Systems innovation requires deeper listening and a genuine openness to being challenged and to change.
Working through the IDIA network, we established a network of country-based actors in the innovation ecosystem to work alongside IDIA to challenge our assumptions and identify opportunities for deeper listening and guidance from global actors. We learn from emerging dynamics such as the Global Fund and practices from players such as the Equality Fund. The colleagues invest in strategic scouting of feminist innovators in low income countries and works hard on channeling funding to activists and movements. We know that these activities are not bringing the sector, nor us, on the brink of a revolution. However, we intend to contribute to at least a reckoning.
4. What is the current mandate of the innovation function in your agency? To illustrate principles of systems innovation in action, we portrayed a programme of the UK FCDO to shape markets for contraceptives in Part Four. Innovation isn’t a prominent feature of this programme, and it isn’t marked as an ‘innovative programming’ in any reporting tool. This is quite symptomatic for many programmes across our agencies that operationalize systems innovation principles. Many good emerging practices are driven by entrepreneurial development professionals who appreciate complexity, are committed to results and are thus constantly learning and adapting. In our experience, it is necessary to shift the position of innovation within an agency, moving from an often-isolated position, such as a lab, right into the space where strategies are designed. We learned that it is conducive to find “internal clients,” teams that develop high-priority thematic programmes with high visibility and relevant budgets. Through advisory services in the design stage and by embedding diverse forms of innovation, especially novel processes for portfolio learning and sense making, we were able to demonstrate the value of innovation beyond the boutique experiment. This was a stepping stone to structurally move to a place that enables the innovation function to engage in the strategic design of policies and programmes from the get-go. In parallel, it is necessary to continue performing a horizon-scanning function and to work on the adoption of new ways of working and emerging tech on the organizational level.
5. What is the degree of compatibility of old and new practices? Introducing systems innovation practices, either in dedicated niches or as a new normal, requires changes to how business is currently done. The greater the degree of difference to current business models, rules and regulations, and mindsets, the greater the need for trialability and observability. We learned it is necessary to invest in not only understanding front- and back-office rules of our agencies, but also to invest in relationships with change- and decision-makers across all functions to operationalize systems innovation. Here are some of the key elements we are currently working on:
● Leadership: what signals from the top are conducive to advance systems innovation? We learned that top-down is often helpful and sometimes required, but it needs to be nuanced. Blanket calls to innovate, to ‘think outside the box’ are likely to either result in ideas for technological fixes. Or in frustration as issues such as severe lack of time and bandwidth, a pressure to implement funds within the programme period and ensuring reporting data is captured from implementers are major barriers to innovate.
● Planning and results measurement frameworks: What is the degree of flexibility and adaptability of the accepted planning instruments? What is framed as acceptable results and outcomes? Can learning be treated as an outcome? We have identified ways to measure the effects of innovation within IDIA, but which metrics could be adopted to measure progress of shifting system, such as these 15 principles to evaluate systems change efforts?
● Monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL): what mechanism are in place to monitor progress of linear interventions and of system dynamics? Are practices such as developmental evaluation already being in your organizations? Do teams explore how can we pick up weak signals of change in the system and whether we need to attribute these to our own efforts? Which learning and sense-making processes are already being used across programmes and country offices? What is appropriate in which context?
● Management processes: what are current examples of effective work across thematic silos? How can diverse and cross-sectoral perspectives be best included in portfolio design and management? What elements can we adapt in our agencies from approaches such as megaproject management or system transformations like the work of the UK Royal Academy on Engineering on the transition to a net-zero carbon industry?
● Partnership policies: which opportunities exist to work with partners and unusual actors that might not have the organizational requirements, language and lingo, or other attributes usually required to engage with international development organizations? What changes are needed to enable working with a new set of players? Are our organisations fit for partnering?
● Financing instruments: how can finance be programmed in a way that reduces the bias for single-project/single-intervention strategies and instead foster systems practices? Which emerging financing modalities could be tested and adapted by the agency to advance systems innovation? How can the notion of ‘social return on investment’ be advanced to encompass a broader set of returns? Which roles can the agency play in brokering financing agreements and supporting vehicles that provide flexible funding for system innovation over prolonged periods of time? On which innovation scaling stage can the agency make a useful difference, for which stages are other instruments needed, and how can these be activated?
● Organizational culture: what are the implications of a shift of ‘solution provider’ to ‘solution enabler’ or a capacity strengthener? What does working in complexity and in the context of uncertainty mean for individuals who have careers and identities as thematic experts? What does it mean for the organizational culture to innovate on systems level? In fact, what are the specific components of organizational cultures and how can they best be changed?
● Mental modes: what ‘inner work’ is necessary for us, for our colleagues in agencies and our partners to really shift to meaningful systems innovation practices? What are we willing to let go of ?
All of these components constitute work-in-progress. We commit to sharing lessons and reflections as they emerge over the next year, in our collaboration with the Systems Innovation initiative of the Rockwool Foundation.
While the organizational contexts and external environments in which we advance systems innovation are quite diverse, we all see a risk of isomorphic mimicry. The risk that some of our institutions might commit to systems innovation, or similarly framed endeavours, without going through difficult struggles and required deep changes. This includes altering how the organization understands its identity, and how it positions itself domestically and internationally.
None of what we propose is positioned as a panacea. While we work on diversifying innovation investments and efforts, and advancing systems innovation to better address complex challenges, we seek learning partners and productive challenge. Please reach out!
We would like to thank Ben Ramalingam for his kind and critical support throughout the drafting process of this blog. Huge thanks also to Aarathi Krishnan (United Nations Development Programme), Alan AtKisson (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), Ammaarah Martinus (Western Cape Government), Anne Germain (Global Affairs Canada), Asha Meagher (OECD), Angela Hanson (OECD), Antony Herrmann (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Constance Agyeman (Nesta), Dave Milestone (McKinsey) Dominik Hofstetter (Climate KIC), Emma Foster (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Karlee Silver (Grand Challenges Canada), Morag Neill-Johnson (Results for Development), Peer Priewich (German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH), Rahul Malhotra (OECD), Will Spencer (USAID Centre for Innovation and Impact) and Yara van Heugten (Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs) for critical and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this blog series.
