The Innovation Fallacy, Part 4
I promised in the last post that I would present some suggestions that have come out of reader comments as to how the humanitarian community might generate more successful innovation. Bear in mind that I’m not promising that any of these suggestions are guaranteed to work – they’re not – or that, if they do work, they’lll be spectacularly successful.
- Overcome fear. “Many humanitarian organizations, especially larger NGOs and the UN, fail to embrace failure. Innovation requires a willingness to fail, perhaps repeatedly. For every successful innovation there are numerous failures… People who are afraid to fail don’t innovate. They follow the rules. They preserve the status quo. The bosses who brought the best out in me were the ones who let me take risks and even fail. They didn’t punish failures other than those that were due to negligence.” – Kevin Toomer
- Create incentives. “So, how do we know what we know and judge it, use it, teach it, reward it? Paul (and the comments/replies) wrote a whole lot about that, but some of this comes down to simple professionalism/best practice (which sometimes goes AWOL on an institutional level particularly) and some of it is that we do need a cultural change. A recognition of innovation as necessary, worth sharing, celebrating. Spectacularly hard when it’s really the grinding day-to-day of just getting stuff done or just surviving that’s most aid work, let alone the brick-wall-headbutting of preparedness in and by local communities.” – Nigel Snoad
- Look out! “Perhaps pursuing innovation within organizations from the start is the barrier. Innovation is happening outside traditional structures, where those creative types can act as individuals, collectively .. in open source projects, mailing lists, unconferences. The loose network of creative technological humanitarians is growing, and growing more exposed. We can concentrate our efforts there for now, to the point where they can’t be ignored.” – Mikel Maron. However bear in mind that “Folks that haven’t spent time in the field have a very hard time understanding the nuances so they develop solutions that will never hold up. They waste all of our time chasing ghosts and fixing things that they think need fixing. In the mean time all we can do is watch them run around in circles.” – Jon Thompson
- Only Connect. “I agree that the answers lies in better connections between field offices and head offices, among organizations AND ALSO between different field offices. I think that head offices could play a better role in facilitating the transfer of solutions between field offices. Currently all the interaction I have with head office and field offices in different countries has been based on personal relationships with people I have met. I do think that INGOs could do a better job of connecting their staff around the globe.” - Michael Howden
- Technology > Network. “I’ve been involved with a number of projects that demonstrate innovation, all focused on introducing new technology to the sector, with varying degrees of success. None of these projects were technologically innovative themselves – their innovation was in using existing technology more effectively for the benefit of the sector – and all of them relied on network effects to create the value that make their innovation more or less successful. As soon as their focus on or their leverage from networks lapses, their success starts to disappear… What made it possible for each of them to create those networks in the first place was technology, creating the possibility of overcoming many of the organisational problems that plague the sector, from organisational silos to staff turnover to insecurity in the field. It is not that technology will solve these problems, but it does offer us the possibility of working together more effectively to solve them ourselves.” – Paul Currion
So there’s a starting point based on actual practitioner experience. All of these recommendations are realistic, and can already be found in various organisations, so the question then becomes – how do we implement them in our own organisations, and spread them across the sector? Approaches will vary from organisation to organisation, location to location – but in 2009 we’d better get the message out there, because otherwise the traditional humanitarian sector is going to be left behind.
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Great string, Paul. I want to include in a Innovation story cluster on TrackerNews.net next week. Would it be possible to drop in links to all the previous posts at the bottom of this post so that anyone making the jump to read post can easily go back to reach the entire discussion? thanks. – janet
J A Ginsburg
13 Dec 08 at 14:11
…when will I learn never ever ever to hit the send button until *after* I’ve had my morning cup of coffee? Forgive the typos above… – janet
J A Ginsburg
13 Dec 08 at 14:35
I know I should go back and read everything before posting, but I can’t help myself…
Innovation is not the answer.
We know what we need to do. We need to GO DO IT.
Discipline is the answer. (I will allow that it might take innovation to figure out how to achieve discipline.)
Here’s a concrete example. We know how to reduce maternal mortality: increase access to ante-natal care. So the question becomes: “what innovative community mobilization techniques will get pregnant mothers to come in for ANC?”
The difference is important — we don’t need new whizzy technology and techniques. We need new whizzy ways to get people to concentrate all of their energy on doing the OLD whizzy things that we already KNOW work.
-jeff
PS: Here are some other things we KNOW work, that we already DON’T DO enough of:
* to reduce poverty, reduce the birthrate
* to reduce the birthrate, increase women’s access to education
* to reduce under 5 mortality, increase access to clean drinking water
* to mitigate the impact of measles, get your child vaccinated (this means YOU, G20 mothers: http://blog.nella.org/?p=323)
* to reduce the impact of malaria, use bed nets, reduce breeding sites, and ensure access to ACT
* to reduce corruption, increase transparency (this means YOU, G20: http://bailoutsleuth.com/)
Jeff R. Allen
13 Dec 08 at 16:47
Jeff – you need to read the whole series
However I would say the following:
1) We don’t always know what we need to do – for example, there is very little literature or expertise in responding to urban disasters in developing countries (from the point of view of the “traditional” humanitarian community).
2) Where we do know what we need to do, we don’t always know how to do it effectively. The list of things that you give at the end are good examples – we know what to do, but not how to do it.
3) Where we do know what we need to do, and do know how to do it effectively, we need to make sure that everybody knows – not just a few sectoral experts or key organisations. Kevin talked about “open sourcing” organisational knowledge, which is critical.
Here’s a concrete example. We know how to reduce maternal mortality: increase access to ante-natal care. So the question becomes: “what innovative community mobilization techniques will get pregnant mothers to come in for ANC?”
I think we agree. I’m not arguing that innovation is inherently good – in fact I’ve argued that it can be a negative influence – and I’m not arguing that we need innovation solely in technology – but organisational methods that improve delivery..
Paul Currion
13 Dec 08 at 17:36
Can I add a point 6?
It is engage with people (affected by emergency and disasters). Based on my practitioner experience this point should be point 1!
For a start, more engagement with people would be an innovation in its own merit: the humanitarian sector has been quite insular, and less keen to work out a course of actions and check out results with “beneficiaries” than other sectors. Of course there are many exceptions to this sweeping statement, and there are positive steps in this direction, like “the good enough guide”, pushing for better accountability. But even this guide shows an idea of accountability that is little more than consultation, and not the strong engagement which could really challenge practice. The debate “affected people should be seen as powerful agents and not as victims” has been going on for ages, but the reality is that much assistance is still designed to be delivered to passive recipients.
There is an untapped source of innovation that lies in better engagement with people, and in rethinking the role and relationship that humanitarian organization have with the people they work with.
Silva
14 Dec 08 at 10:11
[...] the last post in this series, many moons ago, I listed five practitioner-based approaches to successful innovation – but are [...]
The Innovation Fallacy, Part 5 | humanitarian.info
19 Feb 09 at 8:47