‘Bright, shiny, inconsequential’? The rise and fall of innovation labs in the aid sector

Abstract

Within the humanitarian and development sectors over the last 15 years, innovation ‘labs’, ‘units’, ‘spaces’ and ‘exchanges’ have become immensely popular. Yet while hundreds of labs have been formed by non-government organisations, United Nations agencies and bilateral and multilateral agencies, many have now been dissolved. Why did leaders in the humanitarian and development sectors so strongly advocate for creation of labs, and then so quickly abandon them? There has been a surprising lack of scholarship, and particularly empirical studies, on the phenomenon of innovation labs in the aid sector. This article draws on the wider public sector innovation lab literature and a case study of the Innovation Space, a lab within a wider aid agency. It argues that the context of bureaucratic culture and political patronage, and innovation as a ‘magic concept’, contributed to both the appeal and vulnerability of the Innovation Space, an initiative that was ultimately dissolved. In dismissing innovation labs in the aid sector as simply ‘bright, shiny, and inconsequential’ experiments, however, scholars and practitioners risk overlooking the deeper ideologies within innovation thinking in the aid sector that the rise and fall of labs reveals.

Keywords:

• Innovation labs
• public sector innovation
• aid
• technology
• humanitarian innovation

Acknowledgements

I express my thanks to the members of the ‘Innovation Space’ for their time and involvement in this research, to the article’s anonymous reviewers, and to Michael McGann for his review of early drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For the purpose of this article, I refer to all of these dedicated innovation units – whether described as ‘spaces’, ‘exchanges’ or other titles – as ‘innovation labs’.

2 This research took place before the COVID-19 pandemic. The global disruption caused by the pandemic has undoubtedly impacted the politics of aid (Day and Wells 2021) and the reduction in the number of innovation labs. As described in the background below, however, the vulnerability of innovation labs in the humanitarian and development sector was evident before the beginning of the pandemic.

3 The focus initiative of the study and participants have been de-identified to align with the study’s ethics agreements and participant consent. University of Melbourne Ethics Committee 2017.

4 For a wider systematic review of barriers to innovation in the public sector, see Cinar, Trott, and Simms (2019).

5 While the humanitarian and development sectors are often considered separately in programming and funding allocations, and often in scholarly analysis, in the case study of the Innovation Space, this distinction was less apparent. The activities of the Innovation Space frequently crossed between humanitarian and development spheres, with participants seldom framing their projects as being in humanitarian or development sectors. In this article, therefore, I refer to the ‘aid sector’ broadly, including examples from both humanitarian and development fields.

6 While this study explored some perceptions of the lab from staff in the broader agency, further research into the interpretations of non-lab staff would be valuable. Future research could also valuably examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of the Innovation Space.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tamas Wells

Tamas Wells is Coordinator of the Myanmar Research Network at the University of Melbourne. His primary research focusses on contested meanings of democracy, human rights and accountability in Southeast Asia, and impact on development policy. His first book, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar (2021), examines the Burmese opposition movement in the lead-up to the historic 2015 elections in Myanmar and diverging narratives of democracy within the movement, and amongst its international supporters. Before entering academia, he worked as an aid and development adviser and consultant with various NGOs, with seven years living and working in Myanmar.