Comments

I think this is an important discussion, with more insight in the responses than the blog itself. The word 'innovation' has been used so loosely and flippantly that it has lost much of its meaning and utility. It seems that donors and other organisations are more keen to demand innovation than to understand what it might look like, and what the best way to nurture it might be. Taking away all the marketing hype and attempts at 'productising' and hawking the concept of innovation, like so many things it comes down to leadership, strategy, and culture. This can be within a project team, an organisational section, branch, or division, or across an organisation as a whole. Innovation will occur naturally when people are and feel engaged in their roles and pursuits, the culture or environment encourages and embraces the free exchange of ideas, and teams are multi-disciplinary and collaborative in nature. A more detailed discussion is on the Sustineo blog page <a href="http://sustineo.com.au/news/ideas-in-brief-6-innovate-for-me-now" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Unfortunately the private sector participation in the aid program is characterised by limited and unequal access, closed markets, and unhelpful procurement processes. Forget about borrowing myths from other global corporations and concentrate on building better leadership, culture, and teams. Then the innovative ideas will emerge naturally.

...."Shop owners have been told not to engage youths to sell products on the streets..." -- John, this recent <a href="http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node/90588" rel="nofollow">news article</a> supports some of the things we've discussed here.

I agree Grant and in a similar vein we would like to hear Australia speaking out about the flagrant abuses of democratic rights and undermining of the Rule of Law by the current government of Nauru.

Thank you Michael for your contribution to UPNG. A solemn reminder that there is hope at the end of what appears to be a dark tunnel. Regards Bal

Hi Robin, Thank you for an important piece of analysis. I think, on an initial assessment, that the government did the right thing. They got the balance about right. Maintaining our proportion with Korea will be seen as appropriate around the region. I note that the government is in discussions about a Board seat. This share will ensure we are at the Board table when important decisions for the future of the region are decided.

Robin, thanks for this, really interesting. Do you think that Australia thinks this seemingly grandiose gesture is going to buy it some kind of special sway or leverage over the AIIB's decisionmaking? It seems somewhat pointless, given that the AIIB will surely be quite happy to lend to Indo-Pacific countries given China's already strong engagement in the region, and that the same concerns/priorities that Australia has expressed about the institutional set-up have also been expressed by other member countries? It's not like Australia is the only country out there wanting transparency. Also, if this comes out of aid, we should remember that Joe Hockey made a strong point that the AIIB was not about poverty reduction nor development <a href="https://devpolicy.org/in-brief/australia-gets-on-board-the-aiib-but-with-caveats-20150331/" rel="nofollow">earlier this year</a>. At the time he said: “And of course it is important to note that this is not another new development bank,” he said. “It is not about poverty alleviation, it is an infrastructure bank.’’ So we're going to fund this not-another-new-development-bank out of our official development assistance? Hmm.

I think one of the things that causes skepticism about attempts to innovate is the bright eyed adoption of Silicon Valley style cliche. The innovation hub had a white board up at its launch that had various meaningless inspiration phrases on it, like 'Think Google!'. I don't understand why 'innovation' always seem to come with a nauseating set of cliches! In development, perhaps we shouldn't be worrying about imitating Google, worrying about whether our innovation space is decked out in bright enough modular furniture, or thinking that dressing like a hipster advertising exec is going to spark the next big lightbulb moment. Our field has plenty of inspiration. Look at the everyday innovation that occurs in developing countries--when spending time in poor communities, I'm often struck by the adaptability and creativity of people living in challenging circumstances. They aren't thinking about Google, they are thinking about ways to solve the problems that are right in front of them with the tools they have at their disposal. Sure, an aid program needs to think a bit bigger than that. But innovations will (or should) ultimately be judged on what they achieve for development, not on how cool or new they sound. When it is approached with such a cliche-riddled faddish fervour, it's pretty easy to be cynical about the usefulness of the whole thing and its longevity, and as others have pointed out, to worry that what we already know will be overlooked.

I think there is also a definitional problem. In this blog, the definition of innovation seems to be translating a finding from research into a product to be marketed. I think this is a useful definition and is consistent with where the idea of 'innovation' comes from. And important work to be funded. But the innovationXchange defines innovation as "finding new ways to solve problems". Last time I looked this was part of what gets called 'learning' and is what many human beings do every day, and what most of us would define a key part of our jobs. So in this definition, innovation is nothing new (ironically). Building learning organisations has a long history in organisational development, and in international development, and is no easy task. (I've tried it.) So this brings me back to my earlier post, that perhaps we simply need to focus on actually putting old ideas properly into practice, and we'll make more headway. Rather than spending a lot of time dressing-up old ideas in new clothing to simply disguise the real problems we find so hard to address, but which stop us from doing development that works (such as the power and politics involved in ODA).

Dear Christine, Thank you for such an insightful article, I want to acknowledge the fact that Uganda M&E system needs to increasingly build capacity of development practitioners especially government officials that are at the forefront of coordinating government projects. However, there still exist a knowledge gap between what should be basing on the set national standard and what actually is. Both the general public (who are rights bearers) and other government officials (taken as the duty bearers) need to be aware of the sector policies (which should be availed in the local language), understand their role and above all the vision of the Baraza initiative. It is a great initiative which if all communities positively take on, will improve on the quality of service delivery and promote accountability. CSOs like World Vision have involved different stakeholders in the citizen's voice and action program but putting more emphasis on joint monitoring using set score cards. The Baraza initiative is a good way to go, however based on experience, communities need to be cautious about the big tendency of persons involved politicizing the whole process.

My concerns about DFAT's take on innovation are twofold: - it seems to default to a "new = good, old = bad" mindset: whereas in development and emergencies (at least through NGOs), there is a lot of good work done through deploying proven techniques, while also quietly trialling new approaches on a small scale and then scaling up successes. - AusAID was previously a pretty risk averse organisation: I would argue DFAT is by nature even more risk averse and short termist. It will be interesting to see what happens if/when the innovation hub has a couple of costly failures, whether DFAT and Ministers are willing to wear the "waste of taxpayers' money" criticisms - especially when the miniscule fraud rate under AusAID was one of the purported reasons for folding it into DFAT. Mind you, press criticism of the aid program seems to have gone mysteriously quiet under this government. Perhaps Steve Lewis and friends from the Daily Telegraph having completed their job have been moved on to other pastures?

While I haven't seen any explicit statement of the rationale, yes, I believe the requirement to pay in 20 per cent of the value of shares held reflects the lower average credit rating of the majority membership of the institution, relative to the World Bank and the existing regional development banks. The AIIB's Articles limit non-regional members to a 30 per cent shareholding in aggregate, and of all actual and potential regional members only Australia and Singapore are currently rated AAA by <a href="http://chartsbin.com/view/1177" rel="nofollow">Standard and Poors</a>. China itself is rated AA-. In other words, pledges to pay in callable capital from many members don't carry great weight, so more actually has to be paid if the AIIB is to have any hope of achieving the same AAA rating as its 'competitors' the World Bank and the ADB. Also, of course, requiring OECD countries to pay a lot in made the decision far more real for them: they couldn't just buy seats on the board with effectively costless pledges.

Thanks for the great analysis, Robin. Any idea why the paid-in capital rate is so high at 20% if others get away with 5 or 6%. Is it to get a good credit rating?