This Is How Innovation Begins: In Open-Mindedness
Innovation seems to be everywhere these days. Yet, it exists in different shapes and forms and gets interpreted differently depending on the context. It conjures up and inspires different visions. It manifests and emerges in ignorance of boundaries, disciplines, and constraints. In recent years, we have seen groups and organizations — including IOM — trying to harness the transformative power behind innovation. Despite the ambiguity and unpredictability in its process and development, innovation keeps attracting those who are daring and determined with a promise of a great reward, the ultimate transformation for the better.
While defining it clearly remains a challenge, many words are used to describe what innovation could be. For instance, the spirit of ingenuity and entrepreneurship is often associated with innovation, accompanied by words such as creativity, novelty, surprises, originality, and (re)invention. Innovation is never confined to boundaries. It takes concepts, processes, and products to another level to drive efficiency, effectiveness, enhance speed and reach, and bring about transformation, ultimately resulting in complete change in the system. Innovation moves constantly, and it pushes us to ask questions to challenge the status quo. Innovation can be terrifyingly simplifying. In the eye of innovation, what we are used to or what we have kept in the name of tradition can be challenged and changed dramatically.
IOM’s innovators around the world have been working to create a fertile innovation environment wherever they find themselves while asking new and thought-provoking questions to change the status quo and to better protect the rights of migrants.
In Ukraine — before the war — teams worked together with the private sector to introduce and implement new sustainability standards to the industries and in Somalia, a microcredit program contributed to peacebuilding and community stabilization. In Guatemala, an app was developed to connect returning migrants searching for work with potential employers in the private sector.
In May 2022, IOM organized its first Innovation Awards, and not only the colleagues who won the Awards (Turkey, Somalia, Uganda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine and Nigeria) but also those who submitted confirmed that IOM staff are trying out new approaches, processes, partnerships and technologies in their own unique contexts.
We also strongly believe that innovation can be supported by the springboard of knowledge and this is why the Innovation and Knowledge Management unit established in January 2022 in the Department of Policy and Research brings innovation and knowledge together. IOM staff have been generating knowledge in the area of migration with partners and stakeholders for decades and we are working to capitalize on this expertise to share with communities that might be inspired and further utilize tools and resources. Our work is to transform what our staff have held personally into good practices and lessons learned that can be shared institutionally and systematically to inform new initiatives. In fact, it may require our own innovation to drive this cultural change.
IOM’s Director General António Vitorino sees this too and has said “Successful innovation lays the foundations for systemic transformation, stronger communication and more productive networking.”
Our approach to this work is bold. Migrants have taught us to navigate the unfamiliar and unknown with courage. We embark on this work fully intending to learn from their endeavor in innovation despite difficult and unwelcoming circumstances. We intend to learn from the solutions they have worked out and demonstrated alongside our colleagues around the world. We hope to bring a dialogue on innovation wherever an IOM office is found. In this, we see the critical role IOM is playing with partners and stakeholders to facilitate innovative thinking and reflecting critically about issues that are less explored or feel impossible to address.
The questions that we are interested in exploring with our field offices and stakeholders are: How can we analyze issues in a different way to allow innovative solutions to unfold? What leads to and sustains transformation? What does it take to apply innovative thinking and systems change? How can we scale up approaches to enhance sustainable results?
Innovation is about framing the issues we encounter in a different way. As IOM’s Deputy Director General for Operations Ugochi Daniels puts it, “Innovation pushes us to rethink the way we work, and it is ever more needed if we want to upscale migrant-centered solutions.” It is crucial to involve migrants, partners and other stakeholders in the process and to take a step back to let their voices help us understand the different layers of complexities involved in each context. It is critical to create a space where migrants and their communities can be at the center of the development of innovative solutions. It is from this complex, nuanced encounter with diverse perspectives where innovation can emerge.
Our work has just begun but it will continue until innovation is so engrained into IOM’s DNA that it will become an indispensable component of our work. It is already beginning to feel that way.
Written by Laura Amadori and Kilim Park
