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<\/p>\nRoy Amara coined the phrase “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”[1] \u00a0\u00a0Sweeping changes, transformations that fundamentally alter the way the world works, are easily discounted or ignored \u2026 even by us, the drivers of innovation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an uncommon person, even an active leader of change, who imagines a revolution in his or her own world.\u00a0 And yet, we innovators are not immune to disruptive change.\u00a0 Our art can be turned on its head just as easily as any other practice.<\/p>\n
So, as a start to a new year, I\u2019d like to explore three shifts that lie on the near horizon in the field of innovation for humanitarian aid and development.\u00a0 Each is exciting in its power to disrupt the disrupters in 2015.<\/p>\n
We are about to receive an exciting new set of tools.\u00a0 Very quickly it will enable radically new creativity in the design of personalized context driven services.\u00a0 \u00a0It is rooted in three technology trends, each with the dubious distinction of being over-hyped fads.\u00a0\u00a0 Big Data. The Internet of Things (IOT).\u00a0 The Cloud.<\/p>\n
To date, the hype around these tools has seemed a bit overblown.\u00a0 That\u2019s not surprising.\u00a0 Most new technologies make their debut as bright and shiny objects, inventions touted in breathless articles of a flying-cars future.\u00a0\u00a0 Early in their life they are applied in isolation to pre-existing business challenges or inconsequential demonstrations of coolness.<\/p>\n
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This bright-and-shiny object phase persists until the technologies mature sufficiently to become part of a broader creative ecosystem.\u00a0\u00a0 This happened back in 2007 when Apple finally knit together mobile phones and digital content with an Internet platform and application development community.\u00a0 The concinnity of the combination drove an explosion of impactful new ideas in mobile.<\/p>\n
2015 is ripe for another of these dramatic intersections.\u00a0 \u00a0By 2020 projections are that there will be 35 zettabytes of data generated annually[2] (zettabytes?) and 40 billion IOT devices.[3]\u00a0 When these two monumental waves of capability are finally joined together amazing new things can happen.\u00a0 We will be able to leap frog many of the existing service models that dominate current programming.<\/p>\n
The Cloud provides the missing link.\u00a0 It joins actors to information and ubiquitous touch points.\u00a0 Think of the new ecosystem as a cycle.\u00a0 Local sensors from the Internet of Things, feed real time data into the world of Big Data.\u00a0 This produces insight, which a global community of actors can access through the Cloud.\u00a0 They can then drive a context appropriate response back down to specific individuals or situations leveraging a growing array of financial devices, printers, and controls (more Internet of Things).<\/p>\n
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This ecosystem makes it possible to engage communities of action from afar to deliver a new generation of highly personalized services in a real time context.\u00a0 Buildings that announce when they fall down, medicine that tracks its condition during rough shipment, or prosthetics that are printed on site, can transform the efficacy of humanitarian responses.<\/p>\n
The Crisis Mapping and prosthetic design communities have already demonstrated that remote actors are willing and able to mobilize around needs that exist on the other side of the world.\u00a0\u00a0 With this ecosystem it becomes possible to create \u2013 even in highly volatile and chaotic environments \u2013 unique, customized services specifically tailored to an individual person\u2019s need at the moment.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s disruptive about this is the extent to which aid and development engagement models can be re-thought from the ground up.\u00a0 Instead of mass produced solutions delivered in bulk, hundreds and even thousands of individual responses can be crafted to meet a moment of need.<\/p>\n
This new ecosystem comes entangled with deep challenges around privacy, but for communities in crisis it radically expands the responses that can be crafted for challenges in health care, education, nutrition, and security.<\/p>\n
2015 also provides an opportunity to take a hard look at our ability to scale good ideas.\u00a0 Over the last few years, the widespread energy around \u201cinnovation\u201d has created a space in which new programs and thinking could be put in place.\u00a0 It is to the sector\u2019s credit that so many pilot and exploratory programs have flourished.\u00a0 So many pilots have been done, that at this point they can seem like a herd of baby bunnies.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, stories of deployment and adoption at scale are far less common.<\/p>\n
Ian Gray[4] and I wrote about this scaling challenge last summer[5] and have since heard the drumbeat of concern from donors and practitioners about the pervasive issue of \u201cpilot-titis\u201d.\u00a0 The sector has long known how to replicate and optimize proven practices (like building school buildings) and now we have the capacity to explore new ideas (innovative pilots), but there is still a missing middle.<\/p>\n
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Something must be found to connect these two skills.\u00a0 The solution is not to simply do better Pilot programs.\u00a0 Done right, a Pilot program should not be ready to replicate.\u00a0 The early stage model of lean innovation used in a Pilot is all about flexibility and learning.\u00a0 This nimble exploration of ideas is necessarily different from the complex architecture of systems and people needed to bring a proven idea to scale.<\/p>\n
What is disruptive here is that Scaling Up and Scaling Out are fundamentally different kinds of work. Innovators must engage with an entirely new level of complexity.\u00a0 They must fill in missing pieces of a solution, swap out make shift parts of the early design, and deal with wicked problems that permeate real life change and adoption.<\/p>\n
It is not enough to simply fail fast and learn quickly. \u00a0The scaling journey must construct complex architectures that span multiple dimensions; messy political challenges, inconsistent and varied technical landscape, sustainable business models, immature supporting supply chains, support for adoption and training, and providing the next generation leadership when the original passionate owners are gone.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the work that changes.\u00a0 The way contracts are shaped and administered must shift too.\u00a0 Scaling through the missing middle requires sustained commitment, much longer than the typical time boxed pilot program.\u00a0 Funding, management, and measurement models will need to be tailored to support these extended, less easily measured, models of complex change.<\/p>\n
Finally, our places of work are poised to be upended. Competition has arrived on the wings of accelerating innovation.\u00a0 Historically, the humanitarian and development sectors might be seen as leveraging the relative poverty of the sector as a defense against competition.<\/p>\n
Organizations with legacies dating back to World War II are common.\u00a0 Yet, this is not the pattern seen in most other areas of organized human endeavor. Yale\u2019s Richard Foster points out that, \u201cThe average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today.\u201d [6] By 2020, more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will be companies that no one has heard of yet.<\/p>\n
What makes 2015 a potential turning point, is the increased capacity for competitors to enter the aid and development fields, pushing aside traditional players. \u00a0The challenges come from multiple directions.\u00a0\u00a0 New solutions, new providers, and new funding models all have the potential to drive competitive disruption.<\/p>\n
New solutions are capable of dis-intermediating long term players, making their best skills irrelevant.\u00a0 Quite simply, the key skills of many organizations won\u2019t be needed tomorrow. For example, the move from goods to cash based aid devalues supply chain management expertise and an organization\u2019s ability to put boots on the ground.\u00a0 New tools like the intersection of Big Data, IOT and the Cloud further democratize the ability to deliver better and fundamentally different services to troubled regions.<\/p>\n
Business models are ripe for change too.\u00a0 New technologies extend the areas that can draw commercial interest. \u00a0Telecom and financial service providers are increasingly entering the field with legitimate business opportunities<\/p>\n
The potential for restructuring exists on the donor side too.\u00a0 Crowd sourced and individual funding becomes an increasingly viable option as direct access to crisis services grows.\u00a0\u00a0 Oxfam offers donors an ability to buy a symbolic goat.\u00a0 Little will prevent individuals from buying that goat directly on behalf of people that they interact with in real time.<\/p>\n
Choices multiply for institutional donors too.\u00a0 Local and non-traditional players can be granted a bigger role.\u00a0 \u00a0As technology amplifies the speed and quality of feedback from the field, these organizations can become part of even risk adverse aid portfolios.<\/p>\n
What makes this disruptive is that it is not a one-time challenge.\u00a0 An organization\u2019s response cannot be to make a few immediately pressing changes and then sit back for another 60 years of steady operation. \u00a0\u00a0An innovation driven environment creates a new era where deep systemic change is part of the daily demands placed on organizational leaders.<\/p>\n
Think of this as the curve that has driven the sector throughout most of its history.\u00a0 Periods of innovation are followed by extended periods where skills are applied and refined.\u00a0 It\u2019s a model that supports stability and long term players.<\/p>\n
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However, when innovation driven competition arrives, the forces of dis-intermediation, new business models and financial restructuring increasingly make proven services obsolete.\u00a0 The lifespans of proven service offerings shrink.<\/p>\n
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As a result, the ability to sustain a relevant position in the field is dependent on yet another wave of innovation. \u00a0The goal of an organization increasingly shifts from one of optimizing established services to inventing new reasons for relevance.<\/p>\n
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Serial innovation[7] is a huge change and few organizations are ready.\u00a0 A far different kind of organization is needed to deliver this steady stream of reinvention.\u00a0 As with the Fortune 500, many trusted names will fail to make the shift.<\/p>\n
Will each of these changes mature within the span of twelve months?\u00a0 Probably not, but they are rooted in deep systemic drivers of global change. \u00a0The shape and detail may vary, but some form of these disruptive changes will roll across our field with devastatingly broad affect.<\/p>\n
What should we do?\u00a0 As the innovators of innovation, our goal could be to become the exception to Amara\u2019s Rule.\u00a0 Who better than us to recognize the scale of the transformations ahead and prepare for the turmoil and opportunity that will result?<\/p>\n
[1] http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roy_Amara<\/p>\n
[2] https:\/\/www.marketingtechblog.com\/ibm-big-data-marketing\/<\/p>\n
[3] https:\/\/www.abiresearch.com\/press\/the-internet-of-things-will-drive-wireless-connect<\/p>\n
[4] https:\/\/uk.linkedin.com\/pub\/ian-gray\/15\/196\/961<\/p>\n
[5] http:\/\/www.worldhumanitariansummit.org\/node\/472051<\/p>\n
[6] http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-16611040<\/p>\n
[7] http:\/\/www.thoughtworks.com\/insights\/blog\/rise-serial-innovator<\/p>\n
About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan McClure<\/a>\u00a0has spent 30 years designing and applying innovation practices across a diverse range of enterprises. He specializes in the architecture of sustainable systems of creative innovation. Today, he leads Innovation Design initiatives for\u00a0ThoughtWorks<\/a>, where his clients include humanitarian and public good organizations working to advance their ability to drive disruptive change.<\/strong><\/p>\n