written by Lant Pritchett At a recent holiday party I was discussing organizations and innovations with a friend of mine who teaches at the Harvard Business School about organizations and is a professor and student about technology and history. I told him I was thinking about the lessons for the development “best practice” mantra from…Continue Reading Best Practice is a Pipe Dream: The AK47 vs M16 debate and development practice
Thomas C. Schelling’s Contributions to Policy Analysis
Guest blog by Robert Klitgaard Thomas C. Schelling has been rightly lionized for his contributions in economics, international security, and the transdisciplinary field of game theory. He was also a pioneer in policy analysis. In this note, I want to reflect on what Schelling can teach us about doing policy research. Though a theorist, he was fascinated…Continue Reading Thomas C. Schelling’s Contributions to Policy Analysis
Doing development differently: two years on, what are we learning?
On 17 November 2016, ODI, in collaboration with the Building State Capability program at Harvard University, convened a private workshop bringing together a number of actors from academia, civil society, and donors, to look at how the adaptive development agenda has been put into practice throughout the world. We attempted to draw out some lessons…Continue Reading Doing development differently: two years on, what are we learning?
State Capability Matters
written by Lant Pritchett The Social Progress Index is a new attempt to gauge human well-being across countries that does not rely on standard measures like GDP per capita but rather builds and index of Social Progress from the ground up. The Social Progress Index is an overall measure and then is divided into three…Continue Reading State Capability Matters
PDIA Notes 2: Learning to Learn
written by Peter Harrington After over two years of working with the government of Albania, and as we embark on a new project to work with the government of Sri Lanka, we at the Building State Capability program (BSC) have been learning a lot about doing PDIA in practice. Lessons have been big and small,…Continue Reading PDIA Notes 2: Learning to Learn
PDIA: It doesn’t matter what you call it, it matters that you do it
written by Matt Andrews It is nearly two years since we at the Building State Capability (BSC) program combined with various other groups across the developing world to create an umbrella movement called Doing Development Differently (DDD). The new acronym was meant to provide a convening body for all those entities and people trying to…Continue Reading PDIA: It doesn’t matter what you call it, it matters that you do it
PDIA Notes 1: How we have PDIA’d PDIA in the last five years
written by Matt Andrews We at the Building State Capability (BSC) program have been working on PDIA experiments for five years now. These experiments have been designed to help us learn how to facilitate problem driven, iterative and adaptive work. We have learned a lot from them, and will be sharing our lessons—some happy, some frustrating,…Continue Reading PDIA Notes 1: How we have PDIA’d PDIA in the last five years
The “PDIA: Notes from the Real World” blog series
written by Salimah Samji We are delighted to announce our new PDIA: Notes from the Real World blog series. In this series we will share our lessons from our PDIA experiments over the past five years, on how to facilitate problem driven, iterative and adaptive work . We will also feature some guest blog posts from…Continue Reading The “PDIA: Notes from the Real World” blog series
SearchFrames for Adaptive Work (More Logical than Logframes)
written by Matt Andrews Although the benefits of experimental iteration in a PDIA process seem very apparent to most people we work with, we often hear that many development organizations make it difficult for staff to pursue such approaches, given the rigidity of logframe and other linear planning methods. We often hear that funding organizations…Continue Reading SearchFrames for Adaptive Work (More Logical than Logframes)
Book Review of Serious Whitefella Stuff: When Solutions Became the Problem in Indigenous Affairs
written by Michael Woolcock It is no secret that a long succession of Australian governments – federal and state, Liberal and Labour – have struggled to implement effective policies in Indigenous communities. Less well known, even among seasoned researchers, is exactly why this has been (and remains) the case. How is it that a public…Continue Reading Book Review of Serious Whitefella Stuff: When Solutions Became the Problem in Indigenous Affairs