Strengthening the humanitarian innovation ecosystem

The Centre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM) at the University of Brighton published the final report of its 12-month reserach project on mapping the humantarian innovation ecosystem. In 3 sections, they explain what innovation ecosystems are, how this works in humanitarian aid and how the sector can strenghten innovation in order to improve effectiveness.

The authors identify 6 priorities:

1: Address resource gaps and approaches.
2: Address the lack of innovation information and evidence.
3: Strengthen skills, capacities and enablers of innovation.
4: Strengthen and facilitate ecosystem interactions and relationships.
5: Strengthen innovation management processes.
6: Build a global alliance to strengthen the innovation ecosystem.

Link: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/centrim/research-projects/humanitarian-innovation-ecosystem.aspx

From the executive summary:

This report comes at a time when the international humanitarian community is facing unprecedented challenges that are growing in scale, scope and complexity. There is a growing awareness of the need for transformational change in what humanitarian actors do and how they do it, to maintain relevance, reputation and impact. This report focuses on the new and growing efforts to achieve such change through humanitarian innovation.

Wherever it happens, innovation is about creating value through the application of new ideas. But it seldom occurs purely by chance. The overarching aim of this report is to analyse and assess the ecosystem of actors and factors shaping innovation within the humanitarian sector. The objective was to understand and recommend how best to strengthen and improve the humanitarian innovation ecosystem, so that it might make the best possible contribution to overall humanitarian effectiveness.