Development by design
Designing development programmes that are deliberate about the systems they build.
The Development sector has embraced systems thinking, but the objective underneath it still aims to improve the current system. This paper argues for designing a new one on purpose (instead of default), and shows on a real portfolio what that changes in terms of the interventions that are designed.
What’s inside
The argument Development has taken systems thinking on board, but the objective underneath the work still aims to intervene in the existing system and push it somewhere better. Except…if the interventions are significant enough, you have built a new system whether you planned to or not. The paper makes the case for designing that system on purpose, by design.
The demonstration We run the method on a real portfolio: the 2021 UNDP and Embassy of Finland study of Viet Nam's transition to a circular economy.
Designing the new system on purpose, instead of fixing whats broken in the old one, produces interventions that are materially different, and the paper shows how and why.
The organisational implications Then the paper zooms out to the operating reality of a development organisation, and shows why this way of working demands a change in many other things in the operating system of the organisation: the skills and mindset its people need, and the systems and funding architecture that would have to change for design-by-design to be workable.
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Written for the people who design and fund development:
Foundations,
Bilateral agencies,
Development finance institutions, and
International NGOs.