Blog

Knowing through doing, and learning

written by Matt Andrews In 2010, Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock and I started writing about PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation) as a potential approach to do development differently. We had been observing that many development initiatives were not yielding anticipated results, and more importantly not building any kind of capability in developing country governments. We…Continue Reading Knowing through doing, and learning

PDIA and Climate Change Adaptation

written by Tim O’Brien and Salimah Samji We launched a pilot course entitled “The Practice of PDIA: Adapting to Climate Change,” in September 2017. This was our first attempt at customizing our free, PDIA online course to a specific theme of development problems. Our motivations in choosing climate change adaptation as an anchor for the…Continue Reading PDIA and Climate Change Adaptation

Using PDIA to Decode Growth in Honduras

From left to right: Jose Arocha, Matt Andrews, Marco Midence and Jorge Jimenez. Over the past 10 weeks, Matt Andrews has been working with a team of three mid-career students from Latin America on a project applying the problem analysis in PDIA to the challenge of growth in Honduras. We had shared their fishbone diagram in…Continue Reading Using PDIA to Decode Growth in Honduras

PDIA Course: Taking the classroom to the field and the field to the classroom

written by Salimah Samji When we launched the first PDIA online course in November 2015, we had a burning question: Is it possible to teach PDIA in an online environment?  To answer this question, we essentially PDIA-ed our way forward by learning, iterating, and adapting our online course – and the answer is a resounding YES! As…Continue Reading PDIA Course: Taking the classroom to the field and the field to the classroom

We recently ran a PDIA course on climate change adaptation. Why?

written by Tim O’Brien Leader of farming cooperative in central Sri Lanka that diversified into ginger production as drought increasingly hurt rice cultivation. If you live in a developed country, odds are that you think about climate change as something that will harm future generations — your children or your grandchildren perhaps. But if you…Continue Reading We recently ran a PDIA course on climate change adaptation. Why?