WASHplus resource partner, SecondMuse, inspires innovation. Their process is a unique approach that focuses on the development of innovation through collaborative methods rather than the simple brainstorms of one or two brilliant creatives. SecondMuse alongside World Bank Water present:
The global WaterHackathon event will take place October 21st thru 23rd, 2011. The WaterHackathon is a two-day marathon hacking event with multiple global locations bringing together software developers from all over to hack on real-world water problems.
New ideas, better data and innovative instruments are needed to respond to this global water crisis. In search of just that, The World Bank and its partners aims to seed a new community that brings together software engineers and water experts to (1) identify critical global challenges and project specific problems in order to (2) develop software to respond to them. Towards this, end the WaterHackathon was conceived as venue for co-creation.
Prior to the actual event, the team works together with water experts from around the world to define and refine water problems, turning them from abstract challenges into concrete problem definitions that could actually be ‘hacked’ in one crazy weekend.They’re also looking for partners and open to suggestions for event locations! Specific sites will be announced in early September!
A hackathon event is an intensive marathon of brainstorming and programming, drawing together the talent and initiative of software developers. These events are typically between several days and a week in length and some are commercially oriented. The barrier to entry in the creation of mobile and web applications is very low, enabling innovation and the creation of quite full solutions under the time constrains of a hackathon. Recognizing the potential for co‐creation of knowledge, an increasing number of hackathon events aim to pair technology expertise with real world development problems.
Until then, SecondMuse and its partners invite you to get involved. They need water experts from around the world to define, refine and submit problem definitions on the wide-range of water issues facing developing countries today, including access to clean water and sanitation, flood management and agricultural water management and environmental pollution.
Check out the problem definition ideas and learn how to submit a water problem.
Editor’s note: This report written by WASHplus resource partner IDEO in conjunction with Partnership for Public Service was originally posted here.
Whenever our country faces a “mission impossible,” the American public looks to our government to solve the problem. Whether it’s a financial collapse, terrorist attack, oil spill or a crumbling education system, we expect our government to find solutions and deliver results. We also expect our government to reliably perform “day-to-day” tasks such as delivering the mail, screening airline passengers and fulfilling Social Security payments, effectively and efficiently, crisis or no crisis.
Expectations of our government are on the rise at a time when budgets and timelines are shrinking, leaving many of our public servants struggling to deliver results.
To satisfy these pressures, many federal leaders are embracing innovation tools, including crowd-sourcing, competitions and prizes, as ways of unleashing employee creativity. The move is long overdue and greatly needed.
The Partnership for Public Service and IDEO spoke with innovators across the public, private and nonprofit sectors to:
- Understand the unique opportunities for and barriers to government innovation;
- Identify best practices for promoting a culture of innovation in government; and
- Outline an approach to creating a more innovative government.
Download it here: Innovation in Government
Editor’s Note: This profile was created by the CCS team in Kibera, Joseph Njenga is the general manager of this innovative social venture and his contact information can be found below.
!!!Check out a Community Cleaning Service (CCS) video advertisement here on youtube
Community Cleaning Services (CCS) is an emerging Kenyan nonprofit social enterprise that is improving urban sanitation while creating profitable entrepreneurial opportunities for youth from low-income communities. CCS uses a microfranchise distribution platform to offer an integrated model of awareness creation, training, quality assurance, product supply and marketing support to sanitation service providers (mobile cleaning teams and public toilet operators) who are delivering toilet cleaning services across Nairobi’s low-income communities. These sanitation service providers offer significantly cleaner, more hygienic and more usable toilets at a cost low-income clients can afford (usually less than 20 U.S. cents per family per week). Leveraging resources and expertise from local entrepreneurs, multi-national private sector (SC Johnson) and social sector (Plan International) partners, CCS has developed an innovative turnkey solution to the “software” (ongoing management and maintenance of toilets) challenges, as opposed to the toilet “hardware” or infrastructure construction challenges, of urban sanitation.
CCS has evolved a holistic approach to the complex issues of urban sanitation that results in financially sustainable, community-owned solutions. The goal of CCS is to engage low-income urban communities to create demand for cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation which in turn creates a market for sanitation professionals to improve their livelihoods and their own communities. To achieve this goal, CCS focuses on two core activities to support the success of the sanitation service providers:
Training of Sanitation Service Providers
CCS provides comprehensive training to two groups of sanitation service providers:
1)Mobile Cleaning Teams (MCTs)
CCS is an opportunity for young people living in Nairobi’s lowest-income communities to establish their own business: an MCT serving and improving their community. MCT work consists primarily of [click to continue…]
Chance favors the connected mind. That is what author Steven B. Johnson says to those looking for the next big idea. Johnson is the author of ” Where Good Ideas Come From” a book that looks at the macro trends on how innovation evolves. 
Ideas are rarely created through a “eureka” moment. It may seem like Doc Brown fell off his toilet and invented the flux capacitor, but really the idea for time travel and how to do it were converging in his brain for quite some time before the blow tothe head. Instead of an “aha!” moment, Johnson believes that ideas are born of a “slow hunch” that are made possible through periods of technological innovation and evolution. If you are creating a startup, where do you get your ideas from?
Innovation is often made possible by the evolution of networked possibilities. In a presentation at Google Innovation Nation in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Johnson used the example of John Snow and cholera outbreaks in London during the mid-19th century. Johnson used data being about deaths being made available by the London government for the first time, empirical observation and his own background of studying water to come to the conclusion that cholera was not being spread through the air but rather by a water pump in a local neighborhood. Snow created a spot-map of where cholera deaths were reported from the statistics he obtained and honed in on the center of the outbreak.
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by: Mike Pezone
In this 25 minute presentation Kevin Starr, founder and director of the Mulago Foundation – a private foundation focused on health, poverty and conservation in the world’s poorest places – presents “Design for the Bottom Billion.” The Mulago Foundation finds scalable solutions in the developing world and funds organizations that can deliver those solutions like Aquaya, Living Goods and Vision Spring. As a social investor interested in maximizing impact for each dollar, the Mulago Foundation put together a “doable yet rigorous approach to assessing impact.” To get the design right you need to understand what your organization is set up to achieve – your impact. What does this mean for Kevin Starr?
- 9 word mission statements with no fluff!
- Determining the SINGLE most important indicator (KEEP IT SIMPLE!)
- Measuring the “right” thing
- Clearly attributing improvement in the “right” measurement to your intervention
In a clear and straightforward manner, Starr breaks down a 10 step checklist of sorts for bringing an idea through the design process to real impact (see image above). I would summarize the checklist here, but I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Watch the video as Starr shares anecdotes and lessons learned from the field to demonstrate design ingredients and pitfalls.
Whether you are a design guru, novice or just have an interest in the subject you will learn something. Even better yet, if you work in the development field on relevant projects organize a time to watch this with some of your colleagues.
Good ideas get better when shared!
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Tales from the Hood
It’s all en vogue right now for aid organizations to have staff or maybe even whole departments and teams devoted to “innovation.” Like “Child Survival” in the 80s, “Household Livelihood Security” in the 90s, and “Harm Reduction” or “Peacebuilding” in the 00s, “Innovation” is the magik bullet that, if gotten right, we believe will sort out everything that’s wrong with aid.
I do get this. I also get that of course finding more effective and more efficient ways of delivering relief and development interventions is hardly a “bad thing.” And yet, for all of hype and energy and even (substantial) funding around innovation, the vast majority of what comes across my desk as ideas for “innovation”, in fact aren’t. They very often are not innovative, nor will they make aid more effective or efficient. And even when they truly areinnovative and truly have merit, they are very often impossible to move into the real world.
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Five principles for moving humanitarian innovation into the real world.
Know the history. Depending on which web dictionary you want to believe, “innovation”, by definition, builds on past learning. Innovation in the context of relief and development needs to be based on specifics of what we know already. [click to continue…]
I came across this post on one of my favorite blogs – NextBillion. NextBillion is great resource for anyone interested in exploring opportunities to build sustainable businesses that positively impact (be it socially, financially, environmentally) the base of the economic pyramid (BoP). Grant Tudor’s blog post in particular caught my eye as I just finished reading The Power of Positive Deviance – a great book which describes how “positive deviants” or PDs see solutions where others do not and then tells first-hand stories of how PDs tackled and alleviated some of society’s toughest challenges.
-Mike Pezone
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP), the brainchild of development economist Jeffrey Sachs, has set out to demonstrate ‘what success looks like’ in development. Armed with a five-year budget of $120 million and a suite of meticulous interventions – from importing seeds and fertilizers to teaching modern farming practices – the sweeping development project is ‘transforming’ 80 villages across Africa.
Meanwhile, a farmer named Yacouba Sawadogo has been experimenting with some manure. After adding in bits to zai, the shallow pits dug around crop roots to harvest rainwater, the seeds embedded in the manure have sprouted small trees – increasing crop yields, restoring soil fertility and ensuring food security. In the face of a warming climate and vast desertification across the Sahel, his unexpected version of tree-based farming has quickly spread; new greenery across Burkina Faso is now visible via satellite imagery.
Researchers call individuals like Sawadogo – who demonstrate uncommon but successful behaviors – ‘positive deviants.’ While subject to the same resource constraints as their peers, they practice rare behaviors with dramatically better outcomes. Unlike the MVP, their solutions cost nothing; they avoid reliance on outside aid; and they mobilize what assets are already available. They exhibit a distinctly bottom-up approach to development – if their behaviors are found and spread.
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