Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art

By creating shared definitions and principles, identifying good practices, and lifting barriers to ethical, user-led innovation, humanitarian actors can help transform the sector and meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. This paper sets out to develop a common language and framework as a basis for dialogue, debate, and collaboration.

The paper looks at the rise of humanitarian innovation and the innovation ecosystem; the challenges of humanitarian innovation; the innovation cycle in practice and the role of crisis-affected people.

Key findings:

Factors driving the demand for humanitarian innovation

Demand for a New Business Model: Humanitarian tools and services are, in many cases, ill-suited to modern emergencies. Most were designed for rural camp settings and short time frames. However, more than half of all refugees now live in urban areas, with very different coping mechanisms and basic needs. In addition, emergencies are rarely short-lived. Despite the dramatic change in the operating environment, the structure of the humanitarian system has remained essentially closed and unchanged. As a result, pressure is building to fundamentally alter the way business is done, and many humanitarian actors and donors are looking to innovation as a vehicle for introducing these changes.

Private Sector Engagement: Initially seen simply as an alternative source of funding, since about 2010 the private sector has been acknowledged as playing other roles, most notably in product and process innovation. It has also been increasingly recognized as operating at various scales, from multi-national corporations to national companies to small businesses created by refugees and internally displaced persons.

Partnerships: A range of actors now bring unique capacities to the international humanitarian system, including diaspora groups, businesses, and local first responders. However, traditional humanitarian actors have been slow to establish partnerships that leverage the assets that each has to offer.

Technology Development: The innovation trend builds upon earlier and parallel debates on the potential for technology to strengthen emergency response. Cellular phones have provided a new platform for needs assessment and feedback mechanisms for affected people.

The Unique Challenges of Humanitarian Innovation

A Closed Market: The humanitarian system’s market structure differs from that of many other goods and services. On the demand side, humanitarian goods are generally thought of as “global public goods”. On the supply side, there is the assumption that humanitarian goods can only come from a closed and tightly regulated group of suppliers. On the final side of the transaction, the users of humanitarian goods do not have the traditional characteristics that economists ascribe to the individual. Their ability to choose alternative goods is often limited by their circumstances. The system lacks a mechanism for feedback from affected people directly to donors and humanitarian agencies.

Ethical Constraints: Attempts to innovate by developing pilots at the field level may have ethical consequences at three levels: individuals, their communities, and the wider humanitarian system.

Aversion to Risk: The consequences of failure in humanitarian efforts are high, and emergencies tend to be high profile and political. As a result, many donors and agencies have a strong aversion to untested approaches, and to activities that do not contribute directly to the immediate response. These two factors have incentivized humanitarian agencies to continue business as usual while discouraging R&D and long-term business development.

Summary