centering innovator voices

Results for Development

OVERVIEW

The ecosystem for organizations solving civic and social issues is fragmented and often controlled by donor funding and partner strategy. Innovators regularly attend expensive workshops and conferences, but are they actually able to integrate anything they learn into their work?

​Amplifying the work and creating structure around supporting innovator connections gives innovators their agency back.

ROLE

user research

PROCESS

generative research

TEAM

Emily Endres, Research Plan 

challenge

The Monday Morning Problem: After an innovator attends a conference or workshop and learns a new approach or skill that they want to integrate into their program, they show up to work on Monday morning and have no idea where to begin.

How might we eliminate barriers innovators face on Monday morning when they try to implement new ideas?

process 

focus groups & interviews

We asked water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) program implementers in India and East Africa to describe the challenges they face when implementing new ideas and more specifically, “What enables your organization to be flexible?”

Focus group discussions and interviews were held in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and India with over 60 members of the WASH Impact Network, a network of innovative WASH organizations based primarily in India and East Africa.  

insights | pain points

donor relationships

• ​Short project timelines

• Changing priorities

• Lack of funding for experimentation, learning, and growth

There are funders who have specific motives. We’ve had a lot of problems satisfying their whims and fancies. Some donors are very insistent on testing specific products even if it’s not reasonable. And that negatively impacts staff too.

organizational structure 

• Lack of skilled, trained local staff

• Lack of time and human resources to learn and implement new ideas

• Hierarchical structures that don’t allow for staff buy-in or contribution

We want to make a more compostable sanitary napkin, but our main challenges are that we lack funds for research and development, and our current staff lacks the time to do behavior change communication in tandem with innovating the product.

partnerships

• Lack of access to mentors and experts

• Lack of adaptable tools

• Lack of support to amplify work and increase visibility that allows organizations to continue to scale.

Instead of bringing the one foreign expert who will leave this community, take one from this community, make them an expert, and then bring them back into this community.

solution

Allowing space for deeper innovator connections by creating opportunities to share and learn.

communications

This work wasn't typical in international development. These insights gave a platform to innovators that they usually don't have to express their concerns. We also challenged funders on their processes, and we wanted to spark conversation around these topics.

To do that, we put together a communications strategy to disseminate these insights on social media. We  had shareable graphics and pamphlets for innovators, partners, and funders designed and distributed at conferences and external engagements. 

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in practice

​When we spoke to innovators about being flexible, we also asked them what they hated about workshops. I wrote a blog about what they said here.

• Learning events that offer no time for collaboration and participant input.

• Webinars without built-in discussion time. Without a space to chat about research results, webinars do not offer the space to get to dig deep and brainstorm solutions to complex problems.

• PowerPoints and long written reports are rarely revisited and require too much time to digest and adapt.

As my colleague and I continued to support entrepreneurs all over the globe, we thought about this a lot. 

We decided to host learning events that would promote information sharing and foster genuine connections by centering innovator voices in the sessions we held.  We often utilized Liberating Structures, a method of engaging that breaks down hierarchy by promoting collaborative thinking.​

At the Innovations for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Conclave in Bangalore, India in 2018, innovators used Liberating Structures to discuss data collection methods and private sector support for their health tech ventures. They were able to share best practices, give advice, and learn from experts in the group in space free of expectation or hierarchy.

At the end of the session, we used a Liberating Structures technique called, What, So What, Now What? to review the session and think about next steps.

We wanted to get feedback on how well Liberating Structures worked in this context, so I designed feedback surveys to capture more of participant feelings.

Rather than simply asking how satisfied they were with the session, I wanted to get a better sense of how the discussions we fostered made them feel. At the end of the survey we also asked what steps they were planning to take to actualize the discussion takeaways. 

This approach allowed us to see if participants were actually thinking about what next steps to take and if they felt equipped to begin the process.

100% of participants said they never attended a session like the one we hosted.

100% of participants selected words that were with positive and affirming to describe how they felt after the session.

reflection

Learning and sharing works best when done in small affinity groups. Geographic region, experience level, and sector matter. Finding champions of this work that work in different sectors across the world was important.​

Trust is key. We were often speaking to people who weren't used to being listened to. In the development space, grant funders hold the power. It was important for us to let innovators know that they could share with us and face no consequences.