United Nations : Solving The World’s Toughest Challenges With Experimentation
To be a really good public innovator, you need to have political acumen to work out how to lobby. Just because an experiment works, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be implemented. Experimentation doesn’t act in a vacuum.
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Introduction
How do you engage in innovation? What are the practical steps to experimenting?
Most importantly, how do you take something that’s inherently unpredictable — the process of creating new solutions to unforeseen challenges — and turn that process into an algorithm that can be studied, repeated, transmuted and extrapolated?
Perhaps nobody can answer that question better than Kate Sutton, Head of the Regional Innovation Centre for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Sutton sat down with me to discuss one of the greatest issues surrounding innovation today: how can we use experimentation to solve humanity’s most challenging problems?
Throughout our conversation, we touched on Sutton’s work with the UNDP, what innovation looks like in a real-world setting, the tools and mindsets required to engage in meaningful experimentation, and how businesses can use experimentation to tackle challenges and solve problems.
Innovation on a global scale
It might seem like an overwhelming task to be in charge of innovation at a multi-national, inter-regional organisation such as the UNDP.
Sutton, however, doesn’t see it that way.
In fact, it’s given her a breadth and depth of perspective that few other entrepreneurs in the innovation space possess.
Take, for instance, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) at the United Nations.
The manpower required to meet these goals is impressive: some 20,000 people across the globe are committed to tracking progress and delivering the SDG’s.
In Sutton’s region alone — the Asia-Pacific — there are 35 countries, 25 country offices, and a host of local governments working together to try and achieve the kind of structural transformation required to become sustainable.
Together, they help develop infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, climate change, environmental disruption and more.
But Sutton says it’s not just the ideas her team implements that bear the mark of innovation. In fact, the very process by which different governments decide to meet SDG’s involves a level of creativity and experimentation.
“There’s no one-size fits all solution. Each country is going to feel quite different in how they want to [meet these goals], especially when governments have different ideas about which SDGs they want to prioritise. It’s a very devolved and decentralised organisation, which makes it a lot of fun to work for.”
At a larger, more regional level, Sutton is tasked with providing advice, guidance, products and services to varying country offices that, in turn, make those products and information available to their governments.
Together, Sutton’s team and a host of tireless ground operatives help their governments select a pick-and-mix approach to sustainability that is customisable and transmutable depending on their individual needs.
If you’re enjoying this article, listen to the podcast conversation on Experimentation Masters
Experimentation creates worldview
What does it take to become innovative?
Suttons says her worldview has been shaped by a series of incremental experiments that have slowly moulded the way she thinks about creating, testing and interrogating new ideas.
One particular experiment on malnutrition in Delhi got her thinking about two different facets of innovation.
First, she was curious about the “experiments” themselves, or the ideas her team was developing and testing.
Second, she wanted to know more about the way her team was operating, and whether they could come together to create ideas that were greater than the sum of their individual parts.
Was it possible to bring together such a diverse group of people to solve a difficult challenge?
“I always try to work on those two levels: that kind of operational solutions and executable ideas level, as well as the systems and processes level. We need to be experimenting on both the problem itself and the team required to solve that problem.”
The guiding principles of experimentation
In order to start implementing innovation in your business, Sutton believes it’s important to understand the core fundamentals of experimentation — the “building blocks,” or guiding principles, that lead to new ideas.
Her first suggestion?
Everyone (not just company CEOs or executive teams) should bring new ideas to the table. In short, technocratic specialism is a thing of the past.
While your company might assign innovation experts who understand the theory and practice of experimentation more rigorously than everyday employees, it would be a mistake to believe that good ideas can’t come from a multitude of places.
“Innovation doesn’t just come from thinkers holed up in an innovation lab. It comes from people on the ground who are equal parts empowered and faced with challenges.”
Another guiding principle of experimentation?
“Curiosity,” says Sutton, “for both the idea and its execution.” In order for innovation to grow and develop organically, there needs to be a natural, innate curiosity to undertake experiments.
Beyond the idea, however, experimenters also need to be interested in how things get implemented.
Having a variety of different approaches and tactics for implementing an idea is an important part of the “innovation thesis,” and it pays to have a business model and scaling plan that can change as necessary.
The last building block on the list of experimentation principles involves proper foresight regarding scale-ability.
Contrary to popular belief, not every innovation needs to be scaled in the way CEOs and other leaders might think. Just because an idea doesn’t meet the requirements to be a massive, multi-country endeavour, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth testing.
Having a strategic objective and a plan to scale is important to hold a company mission together, but the process of achieving that mission can be more organic.
Innovation pitfalls
Innovation isn’t simply a process of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.
According to Sutton, having a hypothesis about where an experiment might take you is vital to its success. On top of that, it’s also key if you want to avoid wasting organisational time and resources.
“Having a methodology and an approach and trying to follow it is important,” Sutton says. “You can’t be scattered about it, because often what you’ll see is people just waiting to see what emerges. And you can’t simply say ‘oh no, this didn’t work’ before moving onto the next idea.” Instead of failing without assessing the root cause of the failure, Sutton suggests asking more questions and setting better experimental parameters.
Why didn’t the experiment work? What’s the next hypothesis? What are the new parameters of the next experiment?
“Experimentation leaders must hold an idea loosely enough to ensure that new possibilities emerge, but tightly enough so that their team doesn’t feel lost and frustrated.”
These are the kinds of questions innovators should be asking when tasked with creating new solutions to challenging problems.
A final (yet important) pitfall to avoid involves the inherent biases all innovators possess. Often, great ideas are shut down because of structural, societal or other hierarchical scaffolds that prevent powerful solutions from emerging.
“There’s usually a lot of bias that comes in depending on where you come from in the world, what your gender is, and where you stand in the hierarchy. So, you’re not actually getting true emergence, which would occur if everybody was properly involved. I think we have to be very aware as practitioners of our biases and understand where we exist within the system.”
How to start experimenting in your business
For businesses looking to engage in experimentation on a scalable level, Sutton has some advice: you have to choose to experiment. That sounds obvious, Sutton admits.
“You’ve got to be willing to have a part of your company that’s going to take on some risk.”
That’s an important distinction that organisations need to make before committing to experimentation. Ask yourself if your team is willing to absorb the cost and time of experiments when developing and executing new ideas.
Next, businesses should look to create the infrastructure required to engage in constant experimentation. That means setting up all the necessary tools and platforms to make experimentation available to as many people as possible, at the lowest cost.
Beyond a physical foundation rooted in research, companies need to invest in the human element of innovation, too.
As Sutton puts it, “[Organisations need to ask themselves:] How am I going to run my business? Will innovation be part of the day-to-day work of certain employees, or will it be something all of our leaders engage in? Will experimentation be customer-facing, or will it also encompass our internal processes?”
Answering those “human” questions will help your business decide what the process of innovation will actually look like down the road.
Lastly, once innovation and experimentation are underway, it’s important for businesses to make a conscious effort not to stagnate.
Getting stuck in the design phase is a common hurdle for many companies because there are always new avenues and possibilities to explore.
Sutton recommends the “80-20” approach: if your business is about 80 percent prepared to launch a new idea, product or initiative, it’s important to bring it into the real world for testing.
This “build and test” approach is important for two reasons.
First, if you’re working in an organisation such as the UNDP, where there are high levels of international cooperation and bureaucracy required, it pays to keep momentum going. Otherwise, new ideas stagnate, lose steam, and eventually lose funding altogether.
Second, while those in charge of innovation (namely specialists and technologists) might be fine living in details and procedures, head decision-makers (generalists, government officials and company leaders) want actionable results.
Keeping those generalists enthused is key to maintaining their trust in your ideas.
“You need to build a movement,” says Sutton. “You need to build a coalition of people wanting to create that social change.”
Need help with your next experiment?
Whether you’ve never run an experiment before, or you’ve run hundreds, I’m passionate about coaching people to run more effective experiments.
Are you struggling with experimentation in any way?
Let’s talk, and I’ll help you.
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