R&D lessons @ International Rescue Committee
International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a humanitarian NGO which focuses on the long-term journey of those whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict. It has a $700 million budget and operates in 30 fragile states.
On Friday we met the innovation team (called Airbel) at IRC, based out of New York. The team prefer to talk about Research and Development (R&D) versus innovation because their view is ‘innovation’ in development gets people thinking they have to come up with something new. Airbel has created a ‘safe house’ to research, pilot and test innovation interventions. Here’s what we learned from them that is relevant to DFID:
- Innovation should not obsess on ‘new’ for new sake but instead ‘better’ results from the investment in development and humanitarian response. This chimes with our vision for * Better Results * @InnovateDFID
- Focus innovation effort on delivery systems for aid and development as well as new solutions i.e., designing and implementing (whole) business models versus designing and launching a solution
- Airbel’s goal is to catalyse 5–10 solutions that will have life changing effects on people in the next five years: product, services and delivery systems. Be ambitious about the impact, scale and success of development work
- Development organisations need a new set of skills to achieve better result: human-centered design, strategy and business modelling mixed with policy makers and technical expertise. Airbel has recruited people from IDEO, Mckinsey and Bain
- Allow for flexibility in the funding and cycle of innovation: idea generation, prototyping and adaptive project management. This sounds like agile and Lean Startup — Build, Measure, Learn — principles to us, which we advocate
- Create the space for innovation to happen in-country e.g., pay for an extra health worker resource to amplify the impact of health innovations in country, alongside their peer. This sounds like in-sourcing to us. Something I’ve been pushing for at DFID. Instead of outsourcing to large programme partners because we don’t have the capacity, bring people in and alongside us to drive and operationalise innovation
Take-outs: be ambitious, in-source, be flexible, think whole business models not a solution, focus on better results from development and humanitarian investment.
