We need to get over our obsession with innovation. It’s hurting our ability to do good development work. We get caught up in trendy new ideas – we fondle the hammer – and we exhaust out energies looking for the next big thing instead of supporting interventions which have been proven to work.
Innovation is not a quick fix. It is not a magic bullet that will solve all our problems. Social media is a genuine innovation (as Our Man in Cameroon points out), but it has rules and best practices. It takes time and skill to learn to use it well. Antibiotics were an innovation in their time, but they too had to be perfected and properly used before they could save lives.
When I lived in Cairo, people on the street used to talk about Japanese engineers. Everyone was sure that the Japanese government was about to build a new sewer system, repave the roads, or extend the subway. I lived in Egypt ten years ago. Cairenes are still waiting for their Japanese metro.
Chasing innovation too often leads us astray, when we could be plugging along at the things that have been proven to work. Those things do exist. Girls’ education. Microfinance. Contraception. We need innovation; it’s true. But it’s not all we need.
Given what I spend my days doing and thinking about right now, I feel compelled to make the case for “managed” or “guided” innovation in development. At least that’s what I’ll label it for now. I really do believe in this stuff (well, in ICT-focused innovation when it’s done appropriately). Hey, maybe I’ll even draft up a “white paper” at some point on the topic that nobody will read.
In general, I agree with most of your points. There is a big tendency in development practice right now to gather up a bundle of “innovations” that sound cool, throw them against a wall, and hope that something sticks.
Will write more and try to sketch out a case soon.
I am not opposed to innovation in development! I think it’s really important. I just don’t think it should be our only focus. It needs to be one part of our strategy, not the whole thing.
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Whether or not the industry needs a complete overhaul is probably irrelevant as It sounds it is so entrenched in a global political /economic framework that its probably impossible.
But maybe that doesn’t matter, because all those things you list….they were once innovative ideas too! They were once new and untested, and are now used systemically right??
I am sure there are a myriad of practices which aren’t working and do need new solutions. Sure, if it aint broke don’t fix it, but where it is broke…?
From a complete outside the industry perspective (project manager in local government), it sounds like “Look beyond your industry” is something the industry probably needs to do more of (that probably goes for many industries). If you keep asking people with the same experience to come up with a new way to solve a problem you are probably not going to get anywhere fast. Get some fresh blood in across the spectrum. Go lateral.
Collaboration between a diverse range of experience, architects, health industry people, project managers, civil engineers, economists, will bring together different ways of approaching, understanding and solving problems.