Category: What We’re Reading

Community Score Card featured on Huffington Post!

by Savannah Miller

Huffington Post and USAID’s Flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program have been collaborating on content highlighting the necessity of community health in reaching those not currently accessing key health services. This week’s blog features our own Community Score Card and their transformational work in Malawi and beyond. The article is called  Generating local solutions: How CARE’s Community Score Card is helping achieve health access for all. Happy Reading!

What we’re listening to: USAID’s first podcast on hacking international development through CLA (Collaborating, Learning & Adapting)

by Whitney Pyles Adams Leave a comment

Listening, prototyping, testing, learning and iterating.  The cycle is fundamentally reshaping how we do
development.

SxD participants rethink how the accelerator is designed
SxD participants rethink how the accelerator is designed

Not everyone uses words like “prototyping”, “lean startup”, or “human-centered design”, however.  Similar ideas crop up in adaptive management frameworks across sectors.  USAID defines adaptive management as “intentionally and systematically using relevant knowledge to inform decision-making and ultimately take action. Within the development context, that action could be adjusting interventions or whole strategies, experimenting with new ways of working, scrapping programming that simply isn’t working, or scaling approaches that have demonstrated value.”

In their first podcast, the USAID Learning Lab team explores the implementation of USAID’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Framework to see what the impact has been and how these concepts are changing development.

 

 

 

3 Lessons To Guide Designing Better Financial Tech for the Developing World from GRID Impact

by Stephanie Carey Yeargan Leave a comment

Check out this article “3 Lessons To Guide Designing Better Financial Tech For The Developing World” on Fast Company Exist from Alexandra Fiorillo’s op-ed on GRID Impact’s financial inclusion work in Pakistan. Alex is founder and principal at GRID Impact, our partner in the Human-Centered Design lab. Here’s a sneak peek:

  1. Promote individual use, but don’t be too prescriptive
  2. Design for skills education
  3. Design for local relevance

Read more here!

 

What We’re Reading: How to Develop a Human-Centered Design Mindset

by Whitney Pyles Adams Leave a comment

It’s official, human-centered design is a hot topic in the development space! There seem to be more people writing about it than are actually doing it, though.

Check out the latest article from Devex on “How to develop a human-centered design mindset” 

Jocelyn Wyatt, Executive Director of Ideo, sat down with Devex to discuss the most common shoulder shrug reaction that we hear in response human-centered design: “Well, that’s just good development.”

True! It’s not necessarily new, but it’s definitely not universally applied.   Check out Jocelyn’s reflections here:

 

 

Unreasonable Says “Forget Pitching. Tell a Story. Here’s How!”

by Stephanie Carey Yeargan Leave a comment

The Unreasonable Institute’s CEO Teju Ravilochan facilitated the Scale X Design Accelerator‘s final core lab on pitching last week. This article was one of the pre-reads for the teams before the session. The teams will work on their pitch over the next few months to prepare for the Scale X Design Challenge, a first-of-its-kind event in January in New York City!

Forget Pitching. Tell A Story. Here’s How!

What We’re Reading: Why Social Ventures Need Systems Thinking

by Stephanie Carey Yeargan Leave a comment

New Profit‘s Founder & CEO, Vanessa Kirsch, and Board Chairman, Jeff Walker, published a piece in Harvard Business Review entitled “Why Social Ventures Need Systems Thinking” over the summer. With co-author Jim Bildner of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, they coin the term “systems entrepreneurs” to characterize a critical element of New Profit’s evolved approach and the future of social problem solving: “The work our entrepreneurs face today is more complex than ever and requires a set of tools and a framework designed to address the complexity inherent when innovations are integrated into existing systems like school districts, welfare agencies, health departments, and corporate structures.” What are your thoughts on systems thinking in social ventures?