Stories

Category: Innovation

  • What did we learn from the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) in its first two years?

    What did we learn from the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) in its first two years?

    At a World Health Organization conference in Panama, The Geneva Learning Foundation is hosting an Innovations Café today.

    The session’s title is “Connected learning to accelerate local impact at global scale: Year 1 of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)”.

    What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)?

    Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) is the world’s strategy, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2020, to achieve the global goals for immunization.

    In March 2022, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) launched a call to form a movement in support of IA2030.

    By June 2023, over 16,000 health workers were participating.

    More than 80% work in districts and health facilities and over half are government workers.

    70% work in fragile contexts such as armed conflict, remote areas, urban poverty, and other challenges.

    This ground-up commitment has the potential to complement the top-down work of the IA2030 global partners, if this community of practitioners is recognized, empowered, and listened to by global health agencies and donors.

    In today’s session, you will hear first-hand from IA2030 Movement Members.

    How has participation in this Movement helped them to better serve the immunization and primary health care needs of the local communities they serve?

    In Year 1 of this Movement, we demonstrated the feasibility of establishing a global peer learning platform for immunization practitioners, with the creation of a movement of more than 10,000 health workers in support of IA2030 goals. Learn more about Year 1 outcomes.

    In Year 2, as the Movement continued to grow rapidly in over 100 countries, we generated evidence of practitioner demand and public health impact, captured in academic papers and multiple detailed case studies. Request your invitation to the IA2030 Movement’s Knowledge-to-Action Hub to get access to research outputs.

    Learn more about how new digital learning approach can open access to international global health conferences otherwise restricted to the select few.

  • Skunk Works: 14 rules to live and die by

    Skunk Works: 14 rules to live and die by

    Lockheed’s Skunk Works may be one of the earliest models for sustaining innovation inside an organization – never mind the nefarious mission of making flying machines to kill people. These are the basic operations rules enunciated by founder Kelly Johnson in 1954, as cited in his successor Ben Rich’s book:

    1. The Skunk Works program manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should have the authority to make quick decisions regarding technical, financial, or operational matters.
    2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and the industry.
    3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people.
    4. Very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided in order to make schedule recovery in the face of failures.
    5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
    6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don’t have the books ninety days late and don’t surprise the customer with sudden overruns.
    7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are often better than military ones
    8. The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and the Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push basic inspection responsibility back to the subcontractors and vendors. Don’t duplicate so much inspection.
    9. The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages.
    10. The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to in advance of contracting.
    11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn’t have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.
    12. There must be absolute trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.
    13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled.
    14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.

    Source: Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (1994). Kelly’s 14 Rules & Practices may also be found here.

    Photo: Skunk Works logo on Museum’s SR-71. Photo #2005-6014 by Dane Penland, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

  • What is a wicked problem?

    What is a wicked problem?

    In 1973, Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, two Berkeley professors, published an article in Policy Sciences introducing the notion of “wicked” social problems. The article, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” named 10 properties that distinguished wicked problems from hard but ordinary problems.

    1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem. It’s not possible to write a well-defined statement of the problem, as can be done with an ordinary problem.
    2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. You can tell when you’ve reached a solution with an ordinary problem. With a wicked problem, the search for solutions never stops.
    3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false, but good or bad. Ordinary problems have solutions that can be objectively evaluated as right or wrong. Choosing a solution to a wicked problem is largely a matter of judgment.
    4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem. It’s possible to determine right away if a solution to an ordinary problem is working. But solutions to wicked problems generate unexpected consequences over time, making it difficult to measure their effectiveness.
    5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot” operation; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly. Solutions to ordinary problems can be easily tried and abandoned. With wicked problems, every implemented solution has consequences that cannot be undone.
    6. Wicked problems do not have an exhaustively describable set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan. Ordinary problems come with a limited set of potential solutions, by contrast.
    7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. An ordinary problem belongs to a class of similar problems that are all solved in the same way. A wicked problem is substantially without precedent; experience does not help you address it.
    8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. While an ordinary problem is self-contained, a wicked problem is entwined with other problems. However, those problems don’t have one root cause.
    9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways.A wicked problem involves many stakeholders, who all will have different ideas about what the problem really is and what its causes are.
    10. The planner has no right to be wrong. Problem solvers dealing with a wicked issue are held liable for the consequences of any actions they take, because those actions will have such a large impact and are hard to justify.

    Source: Cited in HBR’s Strategy as a wicked problem (also worth a read). Rittel’s and Webber’s original paper can be found online. Photo credit: Wicked signs (Aukje Dekker/Flickr).

  • Tech Change

    Tech Change

    The Institute for Technology and Social Change is a private company based in Washington, D.C. Its web site offers a course catalogue focused on technological innovation. Timo Luege is a communication specialist who has spent the last seven years working for the humanitarian and development sector, a period during which large-scale disasters intersected with the rapid rise in mobile communication. Starting on Monday, he will be delivering TechChange’s course on technology tools and skills for emergency management for the third time.

    In this interview he answers the following questions:

    1. What will I be able to do after taking the course that I couldn’t do before?
    2. Why should my manager pay for this, or at least support me?
    3. Why should my staff development or HR people support me to take this course?
    4. How will this help me to deliver for my organization – or to find my next job or mission?
    5. Humanitarian training focuses on technical skills, yet everyone recognizes the need for critical thinking and analytical skills. Do you think that your course can help with these and if so how?
    6. Is TechChange accredited and, if not, why not deliver this course through a traditional university?
    7. How does a communication specialist become an online instructor?
    8. What is your experience of teaching online?

    Timo assisted in teaching the first iteration of the course before taking the helm, and dedicates two full weeks to preparation for the course. This is especially important as he covers fast-changing topics. A number of guests are invited to deliver online presentation and contribute to discussions. Although there is no group work, there are many opportunities for interaction. The learning environment is a custom-built job on top of WordPress. The cohorts are typically between 20 and 30 learners, with a broad diversity of people and countries represented.

    The fees for the course are US$445, but if you are interested, ping me (or Timo) on Twitter (or use the contact form on this blog) and I will share a code you can use to get a US$100 discount.

    From my vantage point, I connected with Timo to chat about this course which I found profoundly interesting for reasons that should not surprise regular readers of this blog:

    • It aims to offer most-current knowledge in an area of innovation where the “half-life” of knowledge is short (and in fact Timo mentions that he finds it necessary to thoroughly update his content each time he runs the course).
    • It has been developed outside of in-service training and of traditional universities, with knowledge based on practitioner expertise acquired through experience
    • It is offered by a private company, leveraging relationships to the technology, humanitarian and development sectors.

    On the other hand:

    • It is neither open (free) nor massive (and doesn’t try to be), and therefore difficult to scale up.
    • The pedagogical model appears to contain some elements of constructivist and experiential learning, but still appears very focused on information transmission.
    • The value of the credential remains to be demonstrated with respect to applicability to work, performance outcomes, and recognition by HR departments and managers.
    • It is unclear if or how learners interact during and after the course to form a knowledge community.
    • The cost structure and business model are difficult to determine without first chatting with the TechChange team.

    Please note that I have never taken a TechChange course and have not (yet) met their team, so these are only my first impressions, from the outside, looking in.

     

     

     

     

  • Complexity and scale in learning: a quantum leap to sustainability

    This is my presentation on 19 June 2014 at the Scaling corporate learning online symposium organized by George Siemens and hosted by Corp U.