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Collaborative Learning — an approach which brings together people who face common challenges to share knowledge and jointly problem-solve — is a powerful way to support locally-led development and achieve impact. It provides a structured process in which change agents determine priorities, set the learning agenda, work together to identify strategies to address complex challenges, and provide ongoing implementation support to one another. Collaborative Learning — unlike traditional...

Over the last 15 years the concept of scale has become a foundational part of the apparatus of the social and environmental change sector. A business mindset of growth has been seamlessly transferred to the social and environmental problems we are collectively trying to shift in the world. Scaling up, (influencing policy) has been considered the strategic pathway to systems change. Scaling out (spreading new models) is seen as a pathway to success. The allure of these scaling theories lies,...

Effective learning is a key driver of market systems change, with the potential to enhance system competitiveness, resilience, and inclusiveness. Shifting the Locus of Learning: Catalyzing Private Sector Learning to Drive Systemic Change recently outlined a rationale for enhancing the scale and quality of learning in a system and identifying 10 strategies programs can contextualize to catalyze learning. These strategies are also backed with robust examples from 13 programs doing this work...

Innovation teams must navigate inherent tensions between different learning activities to produce high levels of performance. Yet, we know little about how teams combine these activities—notably reflexive, experimental, vicarious, and contextual learning—most effectively over time. In this article, we integrate research on teamwork episodes with insights from music theory to develop a new theoretical perspective on team dynamics, which explains how team activities can produce harmony,...

Digital transformation has become a buzzword that is permeating multiple fields, including public administration and management. However, it is unclear what is transformational and how incremental and transformational change processes are linked. Using the PRISMA method, we conduct a systematic literature review to structure this growing body of evidence. We identified 164 studies on digitally-induced change and provide evidence for their drivers, implementation processes, and outcomes. We...

Large language models (LLMs) are a type of generative artificial intelligence (AI) designed to produce text-based content. LLMs use deep learning techniques and massively large data sets to understand, summarize, generate, and predict new text. LLMs caught the public eye in early 2023 when ChatGPT (the first consumer facing LLM) was released. LLM technologies are driven by recent advances in deep-learning AI techniques, where language models are trained on extremely large text data from the...

This document describes key principles of the Value for Investment evaluation approach and provides guidance on how to use it to design and implement evaluations, using the evaluation of the Youth Primary Mental Health and Addictions (Youth PMHA) initiative as an illustrative example.

This document offers practical guidance for assessing the Value for Money (VfM) of government- and donor-financed programmes and policy interventions. In line with OPM’s focus and mission, it has been predominantly applied in the international development sector, but the approach upon which it is based is also used in the context of domestic public policy and programmes.1 There is increasing scrutiny on VfM in international development, but a lack of appropriate methods to support its...

Motivation This paper explores adaptive approaches to development programmes that aim at improving service provision in underperforming sectors in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS). It does this through a case study of the Integrated Maji Infrastructure and Governance Initiative for eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's (IMAGINE) public-private partnership model for water provision. Purpose The processes and decisions that culminated in IMAGINE's model emphasize the need...

How can we measure and learn when promoting systems change? It’s a challenge that has inspired Laudes Foundation to develop a rubrics-based methodology to help us, our partners and the wider field of philanthropy, understand our contribution to change, while learning and adapting to new and unforeseen circumstances. Change cannot be captured by numbers alone because metrics put the focus on what can be counted, not always what’s most important. Rubrics are a framework that set a standard...

In the past three decades nonviolent social protest has become the most reliable path to democracy. However, not all nonviolent mobilization campaigns succeed. To examine why some nonviolent campaigns are more successful than others, we analyze the use of a particular type of activist campaign tactic, the "dilemma action." The dilemma action is a nonviolent civil-disobedience tactic that provokes a "response dilemma" for the target. Collecting original data on dilemma actions during...

Coalitions—groups of organizations and individuals that work together to pursue a common policy goal or reform—are crucial to development. Some of The Asia Foundation’s longest-standing and most successful development programs and portfolios have used coalition-building as an implementation modality. This paper examines successful initiatives in Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste. By delving into each of these, we shed light on this coalition-building...

Systems thinking approaches are gaining traction as an effective way of understanding and working with increasing complexity. They are being put forward by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as well as the World Health Organisation as a way to tackle the complex and unpredictable environments we now operate in. As the world has become increasingly interconnected, national or local boundaries cannot isolate and control social problems. The climate emergency, war and...

We are a dynamic non-profit organization with a unique approach to managing change and catalyzing innovation to support global systems transformation. We know that to achieve equal, just, and safe communities, we must collectively challenge and change the systems that people rely on — especially those most vulnerable. Together, we must RE!BUILD a system's resilience and capacity to take on our biggest generational challenges. Justice, housing, health, and other systems in every country are...

While many knowledge workers may fear that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) will threaten their jobs, this article argues that small evaluation businesses should embrace AI tools to increase their value in the marketplace and remain relevant. In this article, consultants from a research, evaluation, and strategy firm, Intention 2 Impact, Inc., make a case for using AI tools to disrupt business as usual in evaluation from theoretical and practical perspectives. Theoretically, AI may...

Audience This guidance is primarily aimed at development and humanitarian professionals who design or manage monitoring and evaluation processes to support design and implementation of qualitative monitoring using Most Significant Change (MSC), Outcome Harvesting (OH), or Outcome Mapping (OM), which are participatory, outcome-focused qualitative methods. Purpose This guidance is a resource to strengthen qualitative monitoring, specifically addressing commonplace gaps or weakness in the...

Learn from experience. Together. In the complex landscape of international development, organisations need a way to learn from their experiences and build on what works. Propel is the software solution that revolutionises the way organisations capture, access, and reuse learnings to adapt, innovate, and create lasting change on a global scale. Let's stop reinventing the wheel and build on what works, together.

This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: - Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving...