25th ALNAP Meeting Innovations in International Humanitarian Action

Background Paper

1 Why innovation?

1.1 Introduction Innovation is widely understood to be a dynamic process of improvement and adaptation which strengthens an organisations’ ability to survive and thrive, and as such is often likened to evolution (Bessant and Tidd, 2007). Innovation might focus on creating and implementing new or improved products and services, on new processes, on new ways of positioning work, or on new business models. Novelty should not seen as a good in itself, rather innovations need to judged on the basis of their contributions to improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, quality or social outcomes.

The argument for greater consideration of innovation in international humanitarian response is straightforward: innovation has the potential to stimulate positive change through new and improved ways of delivering assistance to those who need it most. Innovations can provide a means of achieving significant improvements in humanitarian performance, and as such should be seen an essential, overdue addition to the existing portfolio of approaches to learning and accountability.

But things are seldom that straightforward in practice. Research by the Humanitarian Futures Programme has found that in some situations the mention of humanitarian innovation has been greeted “with cynicism and even a chuckle or two”. More specifically: “in the eyes of many humanitarian practitioners, innovation refers to a commercial sector practice that takes place far from the emergency response challenges of distributing food rations, digging camp latrines and providing screening to under fives” (White, 2008, p. 1).

Such cynicism would on the surface appear to be ignorant of the notable successes of humanitarian innovation. The entrepreneurial spirit embodied in innovations resonates strongly with the spirit of humanitarianism. The motivation to extend assistance to those affected by conflict or natural calamity has driven individuals to extreme lengths – and led to considerable ingenuity and perseverance. The work of leading innovators – from Henri Dunant and Clara Barton through to Fred Cuny - has captured the humanitarian imagination through the ages, and pushed back the boundaries of what is considered possible in relief operations.

Despite the potential benefits of successful humanitarian innovation processes, there have been surprisingly few attempts to consider innovation in any depth in the sector. Part of the reason for this may be that existing humanitarian performance mechanisms are built on the idea of improving existing practice, or meeting minimum standards, both of which can be inherently conservative leanings. By contrast, thinking constructively about innovation encourages humanitarians to move beyond asking, ‘what went wrong?’ and working

1

towards incremental improvements, and instead demands new ways of thinking and the boldness to ask and answer more searching questions.

The starting point for ALNAP’s work on innovation is that much thinking to date in the realm of humanitarian learning and accountability has concentrated on consolidating best practice and on achieving incremental improvements in existing products and processes. As a result there has perhaps been a lack of more critical exercises which question current models of assistance. The fact that existing approaches to learning and accountability might not support creativity and new ideas does not necessarily mean that the innovative spirit is always suppressed in modern humanitarian endeavours. But as noted by Hugo Slim in the 6th Review of Humanitarian Action (RHA), neither does it mean that innovation is encouraged:

‘… As the system moves towards [consolidation], it must still urgently encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism whereby humanitarian agencies can make new discoveries and risk new approaches... [humanitarian agencies] need to prioritise innovation and risk-taking in humanitarian politics and practice. If, in the next five years, the humanitarian system has only consolidated, it will have failed to take advantage of new ideas and will not have adapted to new opportunities...’

ALNAP’s work on innovations in international humanitarian response builds on these ideas, and specifically focuses on exploring how ALNAP members and the wider sector might prioritise innovation and risk-taking in humanitarian policy and practice.

This exploration lies at the heart of the 25th ALNAP meeting in November 2009. The meeting aims are to bring together key actors to develop ideas about how to improve innovations in the sector, to generate new ideas and potentially a future shared agenda. The overall goals are to see innovation incorporated as a key element of ongoing efforts to improve humanitarian aid effectiveness, and to see a stronger culture of innovation within humanitarian organisations and across the wider sector.

1.2 Overview of Background Paper In this Meeting Background Paper, the specific intention is to draw out the key findings of ALNAP research on humanitarian innovations conducted between September 2008 and April 2009. The paper will present key concepts and terminology around innovation in a clear and accessible form, and explore a range of issues relating to innovation in private, public and not-for profit contexts, before providing an overview of humanitarian innovations. The paper concludes with a series of questions for more detailed exploration in the Meeting itself. The hope is that this paper will both support and stimulate productive debate amongst the participants of the 25th ALNAP Meeting.

2 What is innovation? Ideas and lessons from outside the humanitarian sector

2.1 Innovation in the private sector Innovation is a central tenet of business thinking in the private sector. As already noted, the need to implement new products, processes or business models is often viewed as a ‘survival imperative’ – firms must innovate or die. From this Darwinian perspective, firms

2

survive and grow through a process of variation, adapting themselves to a particular environment. Although innovation is not straightforward or predictable, all other things being equal a well-prepared organisation will be better placed to exploit innovative opportunities when they arise.

The traditional model of innovation derives from early twentieth-century capitalism and suggests that products and services are developed internally by firms. From this ‘closed’ perspective, the process of innovation is a linear, sequential and largely internal one – moving from research, through invention, development and production to sales and marketing. The drive for innovation comes from the ‘push’ of scientific and technological discovery, recognising new opportunities, inventing new ways to address them, developing new products, testing them and finally rolling them out with the aim of furthering profits, increasing efficiency or reducing cost. Research and Development (R&D) departments would use patents, copyrights and other protections to prevent imitators from ‘free riding’ on their work, and market their products to customers (Von Hippel, 2005; Chesbrough, 2003). Such closed, 'push' models see consumers as essentially passive. This attitude towards end-users is perhaps epitomised by the famous quip of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Cars: ‘customers can have any colour car they want, as long as it is black’.

Today, the world is very different to that facing Henry Ford and his contemporaries. Globalisation, information technology and rising consumer power have transformed the scope, scale and nature of business practices. As a result of these changes, the modus operandi of innovation has shifted significantly. Today, stimulating entrepreneurial innovation is widely seen as requiring far more than simply increasing R&D budgets within a firm. Instead, innovation is seen as a multidimensional system of interacting factors, actors and processes. The closed, linear model of innovation has been replaced by more holistic models which stress the dynamic, networked, flexible, and ‘open’ nature of the innovation process (Rogers, 2003; Wenger, et al., 2002; Von Hippel, 2005; Chesbrough, 2003 and 2006), and which acknowledge the importance of wider organisational, social, economic and political contexts.

While the stages of the traditional innovation model – from recognition through development to dissemination - are still relevant, the sources of ideas and the drivers of the process have become increasingly diffuse, spanning organisational and geographic boundaries. Such ‘open innovation’ models suggest that many of the most radical innovations come not from experts and R&D specialists but from front-line staff, consumers, users and suppliers – those excluded from ‘traditional’ innovations processes.

2.2 Public sector and not-for-profit innovation In the private sector the pursuit of profitability is a key driver of innovation, and accrued profits are a key resource for future innovation investments. In the public sector, by contrast, the profit motive is lacking, and as a result, innovation has often been seen as a peripheral concern. As a recent report on public-sector innovation put it:

‘for years, officials’ speeches have talked about the need for creativity, entrepreneurialism and innovation in public services, and there are plenty of innovative people working in departments and agencies. But despite the talk,

3

innovation is very rarely taken seriously. There are few people in the public sector whose job it is to find innovations or to fund them, grow them, assess them and spread them about.’ (Maddock, 2007, p. 4).

Despite the difficulties of innovating without profit, leading proponents of public sector innovation have argued that it should become a core activity (Mulgan and Albury, 2003; NAO, 2000). They also recognise that in the absence of the profit motive it is essential to provide other incentives for innovation. These might include the following:

 Support from senior civil servants to encourage an innovative culture.  Attending to the views of all key stakeholders of a particular service – including users, staff members and middle managers.  Adequate resourcing, through the creation of central innovation funds.  Inclusion of innovation as a criterion in project evaluations.  Providing scope for experimentation, learning from ‘honourable failures’ and creating ‘safe’ places for testing.

In addition to thinking about innovation in public sector organisations, there is increasing recognition of a third source from which innovation stems, which broadens the motivations for innovation beyond profit and public service. Social innovation can be driven by goals such as equity, rights and the alleviation of suffering, all of which are key elements driving humanitarian action. Peter Drucker, the renowned management guru, argued that the bottom line for any non-profit organisation must be measured in changed lives (Drucker, 1992). This view is complemented by recent work on social innovation by Westley, et al. (2006), arguing that such innovation should focus on changing systems within which lives are played out.

The literature emphasises three key elements specific to social innovations.

1. Social innovations are usually new amalgamations of existing elements, rather than being wholly new themselves. 2. Implementing social innovation involves cutting across organisational, sectoral or disciplinary boundaries. 3. Social Innovations create new relationships between previously separate individuals and groups. This contributes to the spread of the innovation, and increases potential for further innovation.

Clearly, there is some overlap between social and public sector innovation, given the dual role of not-for-profit organisations as implementers of public services, and as influencers of public policy.

In addition the lack of a clear profit motive pushing public and social innovations, there are a number of factors inhibiting them. In the public sector, decision making processes, levels of flexibility and control, accountability mechanisms, and institutional cultures may all be working against innovation, while the report quoted above suggests that there is also a lack of individual capacity and incentives in the public sector. Social innovation may be constrained by a lack of resources to invest in innovations, and the delivery focus of many

4

NGOs may limit their ability to incorporate innovations them into existing practices. Moreover, they may also struggle to overcome the conservatism of established power structures, not least from the public sector bodies who may be funding their work.

The overall message is that the drivers and inhibitors of innovation are profoundly shaped by the contexts in which organisations operate. These contextual factors shape the space and impetus for innovation. Private-sector innovations are to be rather more common than public or social innovation, for two notable reasons. First, the rules of the game are clearer and more coherent: corporate innovation strategies have clear and consistent goals of maximizing competitive advantage and cost-efficiency, thereby improving profitability (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). Second, innovation investments can be underwritten by the profits made – the risk of failure can be more than offset by the potential successes.

By contrast, public and social organisations face complex and ambiguous rules, multiple interests of diverse stakeholders, and a variety of resource, operational and ethical constraints. This warns against the simplistic application of commercial approaches to innovation in the humanitarian sector. However, these core challenges must be overcome if the humanitarian sector is to avoid the accusation of ‘innovation rhetoric without action’.

One of the private sector lessons that does appear to have relevance, however, is from the recent shift to more open and dynamic models of innovation. Understanding this shift is of more than just academic interest for public and not-for-profit organisations. Given the cooperative nature of much of their work, the lack of significant resources to drive in-house R&D, and the limited scope to generate revenues which can be re-invested in future R&D work, public and not-for-profit approaches to innovation based on the ‘closed’ model may be both unrealistic and undesirable.

By contrast, approaches based on open innovation models offer the potential to share the resource burden of developing innovations across a number of organisations engaged in addressing social and economic issues. These approaches will also be better able to draw in the knowledge, resources, and goodwill of all those external actors with the potential to contribute to innovative solutions to long standing social issues.

3 Classifying and defining innovations

3.1 The process of innovation From the above overview, it will be apparent that innovations can take many different forms, and can be considered in many different contexts. Despite its complexity and unpredictability, a successful innovation process is usually seen as proactive rather than reactive, and can be said to include some or all of five key elements:

1. Recognition of a problem, a challenge, or an obstacle to be overcome; with a corresponding opportunity for innovation. 2. Invention of a solution, or an idea, which helps to address the problem or seize the opportunity. 3. Development of the innovation by creating practical, actionable plans and guidelines.

5

4. Implementation of the innovation to produce real instances of changed practice, often initially using pilots and then scaling up promising innovations. 5. Diffusion of the innovation leading to its wider adoption, outside the original setting. This might include various formal and informal communications channels, and may involve the original innovation being continually developed and refined.

This 5 stage process is useful for tracing the progress of innovations, but it should not be taken to suggest that all innovations are linear processes. Rather than clearly defined stages, these are broad and overlapping phases through which many innovations pass. In reality, progress is iterative and frequently non-linear – some innovations might never get past the early phases, and others might be discarded and later revived only after a fortuitous event or different application (Maddock, 2007). There is no set path for innovation, and most innovation processes feature moments of serendipity, randomness and good or bad fortune.

That said, contextual factors can have a significant influence on these processes. These factors include:

 The capabilities of those involved.  The relationships that exist between the innovators and other influential or important stakeholders, including users, frontline workers, external experts.  The wider organisational, social, economic and political contexts in which innovation processes are embedded all play a significant role.

The process model is useful because it allows different innovations to be analysed, understood and compared, and can therefore help organisations ‘repeat the innovations trick’ by providing a roadmap for how innovations should progress and be supported at their various stages of development.

3.2 The focus of innovation It is often difficult to pin down exactly what warrants being called an innovation. Innovation is often in the eye of the beholder - what may be new and radical for one person, may be old news for another. Despite this subjectivity in identifying and classifying innovation, there has been useful work in thinking about the focus of different innovation processes, guided by the question: what is it that innovation processes seek to change and improve?

The ‘4Ps’ model developed by Bessant and Tidd (2007) provides a powerful tool for such analysis. It builds on the hypothesis that successful innovation is essentially about positive change, and puts forward four broad categories where such change can take place:

 ‘Product innovation’ – changes in the things (products/services) which an organisation offers.  ‘Process innovation’ – changes in the ways in which products and services are created or delivered.  ‘Position innovation’ – changes in the context in which the products/services are framed and communicated.

6

 ‘Paradigm innovation’ – changes in the underlying mental models which shape what the organisation does.

Perhaps the most commonly understood form of innovation is that which introduces or improves a product or service – a change in what is offered to end users. The Bic ballpoint pen is an example of a product innovation, which has also benefited from a range of incremental innovations since its original invention. The emblematic humanitarian product is food, which is the dominant form of assistance. Different forms of food aid might be seen as incremental innovations, although these may not always be driven by the needs of users. There may also be innovative products which help to achieve humanitarian goals. For example, the LifeStraw is a portable water filter developed by Vestergaard-Frandsen which enables individuals to drink clean water from almost any source, however dirty. Another example is PlumpyNut, a therapeutic food which is both durable and can be dispensed outside of traditional medical settings.

Innovations can also focus on processes through which products are created or delivered. Because so many of the products used in relief settings are initially developed for non-relief contexts, a natural focus for humanitarian innovation is to consider how an existing product might be used in resource-poor or rapidly changing settings. Examples of process innovations that have had a positive effect on the humanitarian sector are the increasing stockpiling of goods in strategic locations, the use of pre-made packs and kits, learning and accountability processes which seek to improve the quality of the humanitarian product, or risk assessment and contingency planning tools such as scenarios, which seek to ensure the relevance of humanitarian aid in changing contexts.

The third focus of innovation involves re-positioning the perception of an established product or process in a specific context. Position-based innovations refer to changes in how a specific product or process is perceived symbolically and how they are used. For example, Levi-Strauss jeans are a well-established global product line, originally developed as manual workers’ clothing materials, but then re-branded as a youth fashion item.

In the humanitarian context, position innovations include changes in the signals that are disseminated about a humanitarian organisation and its work. This may relate to the way in which aid is marketed and packaged for potential donors.

Alternatively, it may involve a repositioning of humanitarian assistance within a particular operational context or for particular users. An example of the former can be seen in attempts by humanitarian agencies in different complex emergencies to develop principle- based cross-agency positions in relation to belligerent parties in complex emergencies which amount to a set of conditions under which humanitarian aid would be delivered, and a clear articulation of the situations where it would not. Agencies such as Disability International or HelpAge International are position innovators in that they call for the delivery of humanitarian products and services to groups that are often excluded.

The final ‘P’ relates to innovation that defines or redefines the dominant paradigms of an organisation or entire sector. Paradigm-based innovations relate to the mental models which shape what an organisation or business is about. Again, Henry Ford provides a pithy

7

quote, when talking about the development of the Model T motor car: ‘If I asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a five-legged horse’.

The paradigm shift brought about by Ford Motor Cars was the idea that a handmade specialist product for a few wealthy customers could be mass-produced affordably and effectively for the general population. More recently, Bill Gates’ vision of a personal computer in every home was a radical departure from the 1950s IBM view that there was perhaps a worldwide market for eight computers.

Paradigm innovations include changes in an organisation’s rationale, assumptions and frameworks, and can mean changes in organisational and business strategies and designs, and in the relationship between producers and users. Such paradigm innovations require a whole host of innovations in the other ‘Ps’ – for example, the Model T car involved changes in design, in machinery, in factory layouts, in marketing and so on.

Examples of paradigm innovation in the international humanitarian sector include an increasing emphasis on local ownership and leadership of responses to crises as an alternative to internationally dominated responses. A greater and more central role for aid recipients is another example, and finally, perhaps the most radical innovation is the idea of disaster risk reduction approaches, which if successful can negate the need for any kind of response. The development of community-based feeding therapy is one of the most recent examples of such innovations, with the combination of a product (PlumpyNut), a process (community-based distribution) , a re-positioning (the idea that aid agencies do not need to do the feeding themselves directly) and a paradigm shift (the notion that families and communities can treat malnutrition at home). Similarly, cash-based programming at its most radical involves a new product (cash), new processes (means of distributing cash), new position (a change in how aid is perceived by donors) and new paradigms (a change in how recipients are perceived by aid agencies).

Within each of the 4Ps, the changes that result vary in scale. ALNAP research has identified three different levels of change that can result from innovations. These do not relate to the nature of the thinking that informed the innovation, but rather the changes that come about – radical changes in how things are done might still only lead to incremental changes.

 Transactional innovations might be those which are driven by needs and are often ad hoc, lowering transaction costs or enabling new forms of transactions. Because of their highly context-specific nature, there may not be scope to disseminate these innovations widely  Incremental innovations are distinct, scalable improvements made to existing processes, improving efficiency or effectiveness. Despite being framed as ‘incremental’, such innovations can generate dramatic improvements in key performance indicators.  Transformational, or radical, innovations are long-term, strategic innovations intended to create profound transformation of organisational or industry processes, enabling and embodying new ways of working.

8

Taken together, the process of innovations and the 4Ps model provide a foundation for furthering understanding of innovations in the humanitarian sector. This work has led ALNAP to a working definition of innovations.

Innovations are dynamic processes which focus on the creation and implementation of new or improved products and services, processes, positions and paradigms. Successful innovations are those that result in improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, quality or social outcomes/impacts.

Moreover, innovation processes are not insulated from the world, but are embedded in and shaped by the capabilities of the actors in and around a given sector, the relationships between them, and wider social, economic and political contexts. These factors play a crucial role in enabling or inhibiting innovation processes and in shaping the resulting changes.

4 Exploring humanitarian innovation in practice

Almost everyone interviewed for ALNAP’s 2009 study ‘Innovations in International Humanitarian Response’ accepted the need for more and better humanitarian innovation as a matter of principle. There was a widespread view that in the face of accelerating global change and turbulence, humanitarian agencies need to become more innovative simply in order to maintain their relevance. More positively, it has been recently suggested that: "at a time of deepening gloom over the global economic downturn and... environmental catastrophe, successful innovation and problem solving in our sector serves to maintain some degree of optimism and sense of progress” (Shoham, 2009). A number of respondents also highlighted examples of context-specific adaptations in the delivery of aid, prompted by a necessity to ensure the right aid gets through to those who need it in a timely fashion. While such adaptations should not be overlooked, their contextual nature makes wider dissemination challenging. In terms of the ideas already presented, much of humanitarian aid is built on transactional innovations.

Calls for more and better innovation have also been qualified in a number of ways. Some point out that working in rapidly changing, insecure crisis contexts made innovations very challenging, if not impossible (as was also noted in the HFP think piece quoted earlier). Others suggested that innovations are risky endeavours, and could lead to lives of aid recipients being put at risk. Those that were positive about the potential of innovations still felt that approaches in the humanitarian sector would need to be stripped of the ‘corporate evangelism’ that surrounds much of the existing rhetoric of innovation. While these are all valid points, there is much to suggest that they could be addressed. To take just one of these examples, to cite potential failures and risk of life as a reason not to innovate is to ignore several important characteristics of humanitarian aid. Firstly, while some humanitarian aid is quite literally life-saving, a lot of it has a less dramatic impact, and there is probably greater scope for innovation than is commonly imagined. Secondly, the fact is that much aid work is currently both problematic and prone to mistakes. Moreover, there is a tendency to repeat the same mistakes in the name of following rules and procedures. To

9

cite possible mistakes as a reason not to innovate may be tantamount to saying, ‘we prefer our known mistakes to unknown ones’.

That said, these qualifications should not just be dismissed. Rather, if there is a widely accepted need to improve the humanitarian sector’s approach to innovation, future efforts to do so must take account of the unique capacities, relationships and contexts which shape the humanitarian endeavour, and their implications for enabling or inhibiting different kinds of innovation. A number of these aspects are worth reflecting upon.

Firstly, and most importantly, thinking about innovation in international humanitarian action must be grounded in the operational realities of providing aid in some of the world’s most unpredictable and volatile environments. How new approaches can be piloted in such settings, and taken to scale, remains a challenge.

Moreover, humanitarian accountability is still weak – especially in terms of accountability to aid recipients. Such accountability must play a central role in considerations of innovations – any innovation must by necessity be built upon the idea of ‘honourable risk’ which does not threaten or challenge those receiving aid. In turn, the framework of structures, codes and guidelines that have been built to strengthen humanitarian programme quality and accountability also have an influence on the scope for innovation – they might inhibit innovation, but they can also be a force to promote innovation.

A related point is about the source of innovative ideas. Those with perhaps the most groundbreaking ideas for how assistance is provided, and sufficient knowledge of contexts to understand what will work, are people in the affected states themselves, whether local and national organisations, or members of the affected population. Also important are frontline aid workers, whose perspectives can sometimes be overshadowed by head office directives. Bringing these voices into the ongoing dialogue on innovations is central to an effective sector-wide approach.

Another important contextual factor is that the humanitarian sector does not have a profit motive to drive innovations and improvements. This has clear implications for the incentives driving individuals and organisations, as well as the possibilities for quickly and accurately judging the relative success or failure of innovative approaches as compared to established practices.

The widespread comment, noted earlier, about the need for more and better innovations in the humanitarian sector carries the implication that the sector is not currently capitalising on its innovative potential. But with a few exceptions, humanitarian organisations have not made sustained attempts to stimulate a culture of innovation. In fact, many argue that the opposite is happening and that the sector in some ways is becoming more conservative and insular as it grows and attempts to consolidate.

However, there are also some examples of organisations creating mechanisms to find creative solutions by harnessing innovative products and processes, as highlighted in ALNAP’s study in Innovations (2009). Examples include Oxfam’s internal innovations prize focusing on water and sanitation work; UNICEF’s ‘innovation generator’, which aims to facilitate innovations processes “with the goal of developing new products, services and

10

processes” which will improve beneficiary outcomes; WFP’s innovation fund supported by DFID institutional strengthening strategy; World Vision Canada’s new product development function; MSF’s operational research strategy; and Concern International’s notable successes in operational innovations.

However, many of these have been internally focused. Better exchange and engagement across these initiatives, in order to learn what has worked well in humanitarian operations, has the potential to elevate innovation approaches from their present under-utilised status to a mainstream mechanism for improving humanitarian performance. But such efforts are thin on the ground. The evidence indicates that, seen as a whole, humanitarians are not yet fully exploiting the potential for collaborative innovation, whether this involves the organisations currently involved in humanitarian response, or reaches beyond to include new ideas and actors from outside the sector. In a variety of other fragmented sectors facing limited R&D budgets, innovations intermediaries have emerged or been developed to broker such relationships, thereby strengthening the innovative potential of a sector as a whole. There are numerous lessons here for the humanitarian sector to pick up on.

For a broader and more detailed discussion of all of these issues, readers are referred to the ALNAP study on Innovations in International Humanitarian Response (Ramalingam, Scriven and Foley, 2009). This work has demonstrated the value of the various ideas of innovations presented earlier, and also provides an outline of how these processes work in humanitarian contexts. Drawing all of this together, the study presents an emerging framework for analysing and understanding humanitarian innovations, presented in visual form below.

11

Figure 1: An emerging framework for innovations, adapted for humanitarian agencies

5 Key questions to explore at the ALNAP Meeting

From the ALNAP work undertaken to date, and ongoing discussions, a number of specific questions have emerged as critical ones for the sector to consider in more detail. These are presented below, and will be the focus of a series of workshop discussions at the ALNAP Meeting.

5.1 Incentives for and risks of innovation Many commentators are suggesting that the sector must find space to encourage greater innovation in aid delivery. It is widely felt that as the humanitarian sector has grown and consolidated it has created a ‘cookie cutter’ model of humanitarian assistance, where the notion of best practices masks a one-size-fits-all approach, stifling the ability for individuals to innovate and develop creative alternatives to existing ways of doing work. This is not a trivial issue – as the Tsunami Evaluation identified, aid agencies need to spend as much time thinking about how they do things as about what they actually do.

People’s lives and livelihoods can depend on getting aid of the right type and quantity to the right place on time. By definition, innovation requires new ways of thinking and new approaches to practice. But innovations also face a high risk of failure – the oft-noted

12

private sector statistic of 80% of new product launches failing is a sobering one in the context of humanitarian aid.

As a result, incentivising innovation goes hand in hand with risk. When attempting new and innovative approaches in humanitarian settings, when lives are potentially at stake, key questions must be raised with regards to safety and ethical issues. Measures must be taken to ensure any innovation does not unnecessarily endanger life, wellbeing or dignity, or have undesirable unintended consequences in the longer term. There needs to be careful balancing of the drive to deliver better against humanitarian goals by doing things previously thought impossible, with the risks that are faced in different contexts. The central question is whether the various actors in the sector can work together to create a culture of ‘honourable risk’ to strengthen humanitarian innovations.

Key question: How can the humanitarian sector create incentives for innovation, while simultaneously managing the different kinds of risks posed by innovation?

5.2 The role of Codes and Standards in innovation Systems of codes and standards – through checks and balances, external scrutiny, and regulation - operate in many sectors as a means of establishing acceptable standards and discouraging certain activities and behaviours. Although in many settings, such codes and standards have been seen as inhibiting certain types of innovation, this is generally accepted as a justifiable sacrifice. For example, health and safety regulations specify that construction workers should abide by tried and tested routines, even though there may be faster and cheaper ways to get a particular job done.

But do such standards and codes have to always be seen as a necessary evil? While regulation, in whatever form, will inevitably influence the possibilities for innovation, this influence need not necessarily be negative. Experience from the construction sector in the UK, for example, highlights the potentially positive role of regulation that “specifies the outcome to be achieved and provides industry with sufficient lead-time to apply initiative and innovation to meet that goal in the most cost-effective manner” (BERR, 2008, p. 16).

In the humanitarian sector, there are now a variety of standards and codes that aim to improve performance. These include attempts to ensure that aid recipients receive sufficient and appropriate assistance (SPHERE), are protected from exploitation and abuse (Building Safe Organisations), and that organisations are accountable to those they aim to serve (HAP) and follow good practices in human resource management (People In Aid code).

Is it possible for such mechanisms to be used in ways that ensure minimum standards, at the same time encouraging innovations which meet or exceed them, without also causing additional or unanticipated problems or costs? What conditions are needed to ensure enforceable minimums standards and accountability, while at the same time retaining a culture of innovation and the space to try new ideas?

Key question: Can codes and standards be used to foster and promote innovation, and if so, in what ways?

13

5.3 The role of evaluation and research in innovation Evaluations and research are of crucial importance to innovation. Evaluations can help to identify and disseminate innovations within projects and programmes. Good quality research is an essential element of effective piloting processes and systematic assessments can help to clearly demonstrate the value of new products, processes or approaches in the delivery of aid.

But there are questions as to whether the tools and methods available to humanitarian evaluators and researchers are sufficient and appropriate for the task of supporting and fostering innovations. Many evaluations are predominately accountability-focused exercises, designed to prove that what was done was what was promised. Where they focus on learning, the aim tends to be on bringing about incremental improvements in existing practices – what is known as ‘single-loop’ learning. In the worst case, such evaluations can act to stifle innovation processes, by inculcating a culture of fear and risk aversion. Not much better are situations where innovative practices are undertaken in projects and programmes, but are not discussed openly with evaluators for fear of backlash from conservative head office or senior management staff.

Another key challenge is how to undertake systematic research on innovations that are in the process of being developed. Typically, new approaches are implemented through small- scale pilot projects, which are usually extensively evaluated and further developed before an innovation is considered for scale-up. Some analysts have criticised the length of time spent running and evaluating pilot projects, when what is needed is a short but thorough pilot with a view to rapid scale-up, ensuring momentum. From this perspective, the increased use of evaluations and programme reviews may sometimes be perceived as a bureaucratic hindrance.

It has been suggested that insufficient attention has been paid to developing a proactive culture of reviewing and testing proposed innovations before they are introduced and scaled up in operations. If pitched and timed well, such work provides a vital source of new data on the effectiveness of innovations, and can contribute to further development and preparation for appropriate scale-up.

Key Question: What role should evidence - specifically evaluation and research - play in generating and piloting innovations, and what are the related opportunities and challenges?

5.4 Organisational approaches to innovation Humanitarian action takes place in highly challenging situations, and aid workers frequently have to operate without sufficient support and resources. As a result, rapid adaptation to changing contexts is at the heart of humanitarian action. However, this abundance of localised adaptations has not translated into sustained innovative improvements in performance. If successful innovations are those that become widespread and enduring, then most in the sector can be described as unsuccessful, in that they fail to contribute to lasting positive change in how assistance is delivered (Currion, 2009). This implies that, when systemising innovation, aid agencies are at best inefficient, and at worst squandering their considerable innovative potential.

14

However, a number of agencies have started to explore with new ways of fostering and facilitating sustained innovations. WFP used a strategic grant from DFID as an innovation fund, while Oxfam have a private sector funded innovation mechanism for water and sanitation. World Vision Canada has a new product development department, while UNICEF has developed a framework for innovations in their supply chain. But many innovation funds fail, not because of a lack of resources but because of poor specification. How can humanitarian organisations improve such approaches, to enable more effective innovations processes?

Key question: How can the humanitarian sector improve organisational approaches to identify, develop, test and scale up innovations across different operational contexts?

5.5 Partners for innovation Humanitarian organisations with an interest in innovations cannot rely on their own knowledge and ideas in order to deliver on their goals for new and innovative practices. Although they may be well placed to identify problems and opportunities in the delivery of aid which could be addressed with innovative effort, they may not have the knowledge or skills to be able to translate this into practical reality.

Throughout ALNAP’s research there has been a reiterated message: effective strategic partnerships, based on clear understanding of competencies that different parties bring to the table, are essential for innovations to be identified and developed. This echoes corporate approaches to R&D, in which different kinds of actors – government, private sector, universities and knowledge institutions – work together to ‘incubate’ innovations. In the humanitarian sector these partnerships have been established between international agencies and recipient communities, across international agencies, with the private sector, donors, or academic and research groups.

Between international agencies, while formal partnerships remain essential for a more effective humanitarian system, innovations also rely upon informal, collegiate relationships between staff at different organisations.

Relationships with corporations have traditionally raised issues for humanitarian organisations, despite the fact that much of their procurement, information systems, and facilities functions are provided on a commercial basis. However, as the case studies for the ALNAP study demonstrated, partnerships with companies on commercial terms can play an integral role in the innovation process, especially where new technologies are involved. Agencies’ abilities to develop and manage such relationships to ensure the best outcomes for recipients need to be strengthened. The same goes for partnerships with academics, which could play a greater role in ‘blue sky thinking’ around new ways of approaching existing problems.

The reality of the current paradigm of international assistance means humanitarian organisations often see national actors as a means of ‘outsourcing operations’ and delivering aid at a lower cost. Because of this, and an overall tendency to undervalue

15

national staff, significant opportunities to learn from national level actors are missed, potentially squandering possibilities to innovate.

Key question: What different inter-organisational partnerships and agreements are needed for effective innovation processes in the sector?

5.6 Fostering open, collaborative innovation The rise of open-innovation models in the corporate sector has been based on the idea that no single organisation can effectively innovate by itself, and that increasingly the best new ideas come about through effective cooperation between otherwise competitive actors. This has led to increasing prominence of so-called ‘innovation intermediaries’ which work to broker the exchange of new information, knowledge and resources. The success of such intermediaries has made them increasingly appealing to non-profit organisations eager to increase their ability to meet the challenges they face, with limited R&D capacities.

In the private sector, there are a range of different models for such intermediaries, based on the functions they need to perform to improve the innovation market. According to leading thinker Henry Chesbrough, the work of InnoCentive exemplifies the four critical aspects of the innovation-intermediary model: stimulating thought and shaping the problem to be overcome, creating a process for the exchange of key information between interested parties, gathering credible evidence of the value of an innovation, and finally helping all sides to further develop the scope and resources for possible solutions (Chesbrough 2007).

In the individual agency rush to create mechanisms to stimulate innovations among teams and individuals within the organisation, the potential for a cross-sector mechanism should not be overlooked. Key question: What kinds of cross-organisational mechanisms and processes are required to foster greater open, collaborative innovation across the sector?

5.7 New technologies for innovation For many, innovation is synonymous with technological development. Since the advent of steam power and the Spinning Jenny, industrial innovation has co-evolved with technological advances. The humanitarian sector has benefited from technological developments, both in terms of widespread technological advances – particularly in information and communications technologies – but also specific technologies such as nutritional techniques, emergency health innovations, or advances in emergency water and sanitation engineering.

The above illustrates two distinct approaches to harnessing technologies for humanitarian purposes – it might be an unplanned use of new and emerging technologies such as mobiles or computers, or a planned, proactive attempt to transfer technologies for use in humanitarian contexts. However, both approaches require some degree of adaptation of the technology in question– the large number of inappropriate emergency shelter ‘innovations’ bears witness to this.

16

This raises the central challenge of how agencies can empower aid workers with the knowledge and skills needed to proactively try out new technologies, while also appreciating that the diffusion of new technologies into humanitarian contexts will not wait for established agencies to be ready. The increasing number of humanitarian innovations being developed outside aid agencies – for example Ushahidi and others - means agencies must be prepared to rapidly engage with these emerging technologies if they want to remain ahead of the curve.

Key question: How can agencies best use new technologies for the benefit of humanitarian innovation?

5.8 The potential of user-generated innovation One of the lessons of ‘open’, democratised innovation models is that many of the most radical and groundbreaking innovations come not from experts and specialists in R&D but from consumers and users – who have traditionally been excluded from innovation processes.

This has potentially profound implications for humanitarian organisations. Innovation partnerships established by private-sector organisations with their customers may provide a model for future engagement.

Clearly, there are questions about how this can be pragmatically achieved in the reality of crisis situations. But ultimately, recognition of the opportunity or scope for humanitarian innovations requires an in-depth understanding of affected people and the problems they face.

Being on the front-line delivering humanitarian relief, aid workers should be good at drawing on the experiences of their ‘users’ to improve performance. Although some innovations have stemmed from re-thinking the relationship between aid agencies and the recipients of aid - notably community-based feeding therapy and cash - the recipients themselves have not been particularly active in these changes.

The boundary between a humanitarian ‘firm’ and its ‘users’ should arguably become more porous. Such open relationships may be a source of potential innovations, especially as many agencies are increasingly concerned with promoting ‘downwards’ accountability. This requires aid organisations to act to move beyond the rhetoric, and to be more sensitive to the actual needs of those receiving aid. At the present-time, as the ALNAP Study reveals, aid agencies follow a more Ford-like model of ‘they can have any aid they want, as long as it is what we have to give them’. Work by the Listening Project and HAP International has spent time listening in detail to the concerns and issues faced by those receiving aid, and these accounts provide a starting point for user-driven innovations in the sector.

Key question: How can 'user-generated innovations' be made more prominent in the humanitarian sector? How can international humanitarian agencies better capitalise on the innovative potential present in the communities and countries in which they work?

17

______

This Background Paper was written by Kim Scriven, the ALNAP Research and Innovations Officer, who can be contacted at [email protected]

It draws on the 2009 ALNAP Study ‘Innovations in International Humanitarian Response’. The full paper can be downloaded from the ALNAP website at http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/8rhach3.pdf

More information on the 25th ALNAP Meeting on Innovations in International Humanitarian Action can be found at http://www.alnap.org/events/25th.aspx.

For more about ALNAP, visit www.alnap.org

______

References

Bessant, J, & J Tidd (2007) Innovation and Entrepreneurship. London: Joy Wiley & Sons Ltd

Chesbrough, H (2003) The era of Open Innovation. Boston: MIT Sloan Management Review.

Chesbrough, H (2007) Innovation Intermediaries: Enabling Open Innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Chesbrough, H, W Vanhaverbeke & J West (Eds.) (2006) Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Currion, Paul (2009) Blog Article, The Innovation Fallacy, Part 1, November 22nd, 2008, available at: http://www.humanitarian.info/2008/11/22/the-innovation-fallacy-part-1/ (accessed 10 November 2009)

Davenport, TH, & L Prusak (2000) Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Drucker, P (1992) Managing the Nonprofit Organization. New York: HarperCollins Business.

Maddock, S (2007) Conference Report: Creating the Conditions for Public Sector Innovation. London: NESTA, the National School of Government, and the Young Foundation

Mulgan, G, & D Albury (2003) Innovation in the Public Sector. London: Strategy Unit, UK Cabinet Office. Available at: http://www.cabinetoffice. gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/strategy/assets/pubinov2.pdf (accessed 14 May 2009)

National Audit Office (NAO) (2000) Supporting Innovation: Managing Risk n Government Departments. London: Stationary Office. Available at: www.nao.org.uk/publications/9900/managing_risk_in_gov_depts.aspx (accessed 14 May 2009).

18

Ramalingam, B, Scriven, K and Foley, C. ‘Innovations in International Humanitarian Response’ in 8th ALNAP Review of Humanitarian Action: Performance, Impact and Innovation. London: Overseas Development Institute. Available at: http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/8rhach3.pdf

Rogers, EM (2003) Diffusion of Innovation. (5th Edition). New York: Free Press.

Shoham J (2009) Field Exchange, Issue 35, ENN

Slim, H (2006) ‘Global welfare: A realistic expectation for the international humanitarian system?’ in 6th ALNAP Review of Humanitarian Action: Evaluation Utilisation. London: Overseas Development Institute. Available at: www.alnap.org/publications/RHA2005/rha05_Ch1.pdf (accessed 14 May 2009).

Von Hippel, E (2005) Democratizing Innovation. Boston: The MIT Press.

Wenger, E, W McDermott & W Snyder (2002) Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Westley, F, B Zimmerman & MQ Patton (2006) Getting to Maybe: How the World has Changed. Toronto: Random House.

White, S (2008) Turning ideas into action:innovation within the humanitarian sector. A think piece for the HFP Stakeholders Forum. London: Humanitarian Futures Programme. Available at: www.humanitarianfutures.org/mainsite/downloads/stakeholdersForum/2008/InnovationsT hinkPiece.pdf (accessed 14 May 2009).

19