Dreaming spires and inspiring dreams

Oxford, Humanitarian Innovation Conference - July 2014. 

In the oh-so-traditional surrounds of Keeble college, over a hundred individuals gathered for two days to share their projects and stories about applying innovation to humanitarian action.  The academic world, met UN, NGO and other 'practioners' of humanitarian aid. The practitioners met the private sector foundations and innovation incubators or intermediary specialists.  The 'tecchies' met the refugee livelihoods community of practice and a few of those assisted and assisting, the field met HQ.  In the plenaries, multiple parallel sessions and enriching side conversations of this first conference on humanitarian innovation, the 'bottom-up' approaches converged with the 'top down', experience shared on specific projects mixed with systems-thinking in a rich and energetic cocktail of the potential of innovation to improve the impact, quality and effectiveness of humanitarian aid.

"So what is ECHO's vision on innovation?" was the question from the audience just as time ran out...a good question and one that together with a select few colleagues from field and Brussels we are starting to shape.

Innovation for humanitarian action by its nature must be open and collaborative, focussed on (sometimes emerging from) the people we assist, and practically- rooted in the recurrent problems that need to be resolved: be that at the level of practical improved operatoinal approaches or at the system-level of big challenges, such as the need to look at urban resilience. 

At very minimum ECHO should not 'get in the way' of innovation from its partner organisations (for example through unintentionally limiting procedures). But beyond that ECHO has a genuine potential to help take forward a positive agenda on 'transformation through innovation' by cross-fertilisation between its partners and stakeholders; by adding clarity and evidence to defining 'big picture' issues; by staking out opportunities to tap into other sources of expertise and funding (eg research budgets); by using its global field reach to share success stories and learning; by putting its full institutional weight into scale-up of improved approaches to the way we do business. 

So now we just need to work at how to make it happen...which will need all of our best collective creativity, knowledge and commitment.