By Ronald Eglin

After decades of development throughout the world and in South Africa, we still find people living in extreme poverty, the majority of which live in shacks and without adequate food and energy.  Clearly, previous and existing development theories and practices are not adequately helping us solve our development challenges. We need to start thinking about and approaching development differently. 

Most development approaches of the past saw development problems as something that planning could solve from the top.  Someone somewhere can sit down and figure out what the problem is and then, by throwing money and resources at the problem based on some long-term vision and plan, these development challenges can be solved. 

However the real world does not work this way. Development is much messier. Development involves a large number of people, each with their own goals and plans, each trying to address their own dreams and visions. From a development perspective, no one central person or institution can have all the facts and information that would be needed for large scale centralised planning to be successful.  Individuals and groups of people have their own problems they want to address, or a certain objective they want to achieve; they then do something to see if it will help them achieve their objective.  If it does not work or only works partially, they stop and try something different or slightly modified.    

There is a lot of debate in South Africa at the moment about using planning and evaluation to further development. The president’s office has created positions for ministers of National Planning headed by Mr Trevor Manuel and Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation headed by Mr Collins Chabane.  Both ministers have put out white papers on National Strategic Planning and Improving Government’s Performance respectively. These papers and debates are important. However, they tend to come from the top-down planning school of thought.  They see development challenges as being solved just through good planning and periodic evaluation and review. 

Development Through Innovation and Learning

There is, however, another aspect to development that is not getting enough attention at the moment and that is development through innovation and learning. People need to be encouraged to experiment and try things that are new and innovative. A system needs to be put in place where people can learn from this experience and share these lessons with others so they can be adapted to local circumstances.   

Three elements need to be in place to make this work. The first is access to development innovation funds that encourage people to experiment and try things that are new and different. The second is an evaluation system that allows comparisons and lessons to be extracted from these experiments so that better products and approaches can be identified. Finally, a promotional programme is needed that allows these lessons to be shared more widely and encourages others to build on and adopt that which proved successful in previous experiments so that the cycle of implementation and learning can be continued.   

Innovation Funds

The business sector, especially the electronic sector, provides a good example of how innovation funds could work. One example is the CSIR innovation fund (see www.innovationfund.ac.za), which promotes technological innovation that leads to sustainable business practices. The Support Programme for Industrial Innovation in the Department of Trade and Industry is another example (see www.spii.co.za). The government provides funds and support through these programmes to help entrepreneurs develop products. The products are tested and evaluated to determine if they actually work and market surveys are undertaken to see how people respond to the new product. If the product looks promising, a production and marketing campaign is implemented to get the product to the market. Profit drives this process; products that are able to generate a profit for their initiators are the ones that become successful. 

The medical sector provides another example where innovation is found. Private sector companies often drive this innovation. New medicinal drugs are only brought to the market after they are tested. Strong evidence is needed to back up pharmaceutical companies’ claims of the drug’s effectiveness before they are rolled out through large marketing campaigns.      

Similar approaches could be considered for the development sector. Government could provide funds for social entrepreneurs to create development products and processes to address development needs. These products and process need to be piloted and tested to see if they work and surveys undertaken to determine how people respond to these experiments. Those development products and approaches that show promise can then be tested further and promoted and rolled out through larger government programmes. This way new and modified development products and processes that get to be used more broadly will be based on sound evidence of success in pilot projects and not just on the flavour-of-the-month, or political will. 

The purpose of innovation in the development sector is different from that of the business sector—it is not about taking products to the market and making a profit (although that can happen), it is more about taking products and processes to communities and finding out what helps people address their real needs. It is about changing the way government, communities and the private sector approach developmental challenges and problems so that all intervention is more in line with what supports, encourages and facilitates real development. 

Innovation in Development

In the development sector, innovation refers to that of products and processes. Innovative products include, for example, a new dry composting sanitation system or a new building material. Much of this can be compared to entrepreneurial innovation (getting products to market), but with the added ‘developmental’ focus of how the product helps communities address their development challenges.     Institutions, like Agrément South Africa, that already evaluate non-standardised building and construction products, and the CSIR innovation fund mentioned earlier, would need to be involved.    

Developmental innovation also includes innovating with the procedures and approaches to   development.  A few examples of process innovation include new ways of demarcating plots using the local community to do the plot layouts; new ways of recognising tenure security through, for example, using prepaid electricity meters as proof of occupation; new ways of getting environmental approval for low income households; new ways of getting bigger commercial developers to ‘subsidise’ low income housing, and new ways of providing slabs on columns as the base for double storey, self-build development.  

Developmental innovation happens at different scales. For example, innovation could be driven by small builders who innovate using different housing products and construction processes; or it could be driven by developers who innovate using different planning and settlement development approaches. Other builders and developers would learn from the experience of these pioneers and more builders would start building better houses and developers developing better neighbourhoods.  

Innovation funds would help development innovators deal with many of the bureaucratic red tape and constraints that often hampers innovation. For example, a private developer wants to develop a project where basic services are put in and plots are demarcated. He then wants to rent out the land to low income households. The Department dealing with Land Affairs would tell him they can only give him money for the land but they cannot give money for the basic services. This department would also say that they can only give money for the land if they know for certain that money for the services and houses has already been secured. The Department of Human Settlements would tell the private developers that they can only give funds for the top structure and also only after they know that the issue of accessing land has been sorted out. Such rules and regulations make it difficult for any innovation to be implemented. A dedicated innovation fund would allow projects, as described above, to get funding and be tested, even if they fall outside of what government would normally fund. Innovation-supported projects would need to be able to cut through all the red tape that prevent experimentation and doing things differently. 

Innovation should be supported in other sectors as well. For example, looking into innovative adult education techniques that could be tested for the education sector, and innovative community policing procedures could be explored in the crime prevention sector. Innovation needs to be supported across all development sectors. 

Learning Lessons from Innovation Projects

As mentioned earlier, the second element needed for innovation is drawing on lessons from the experiences of pilot projects. Dedicated evaluation and analysis capacity would need to be available to work closely with those that disburse innovation funds to make sure that innovation projects are set up properly so that conclusions can be drawn and lessons can be learnt. Funds for monitoring and evaluation need to be attached to all innovative projects. There must be no temptation or opportunity to use evaluation funds for other purposes. 

For evaluation to be successful there needs to be direct feedback from those benefiting from or are most affected by the innovation to those implementing the innovation project. The views of the actual end users as to the success or otherwise of the innovation experiment needs to be obtained.  People need to be asked directly what their opinions are. To ensure success, evaluation also needs to use scientific practices; such as random sampling, comparisons between options while holding certain variables constant, comparisons with baseline data, and undertaking longitudinal impact surveys as many developmental benefits or problems only emerge some time after the completion of development projects.  Evaluation also needs to be independent. Those that do the evaluation and analysis should not be the same as those who would likely benefit from any successful outcome of the evaluation exercise.     

Development innovation and experimentation will most likely involve experimenting on development projects that involve real people. Systems need to be put in place to address situations where innovative experiments go wrong. Examples of such systems include:   
•    Make sure the people involved know they are part of an experiment and they indemnify government against anything that goes wrong.  
•    Create a guarantee fund that can be tapped into to fix ‘mistakes’ so that peoples do not have to live with bad consequences of experiments gone awry.  
•    Provide for independent mediation and arbitration.

Those responsible for evaluation need not only focus on the evaluation of pilot projects. Lessons can also be learnt from more standard development projects implemented as part of larger scale development programmes using more traditional funding mechanisms (for example, the Integrated Residential Development Programme of the Department of Human Settlements).  It is important to ensure that these more traditional projects are still working and performing to beneficiaries’ satisfaction, and opportunities can be unpacked for where further innovation projects are needed.

Promoting Lessons Learnt

It is important to ensure that the loop of lessons learnt, from planning projects through to implementing projects, runs its full course and is fed into future rounds of planning projects. If this does not happen, then the whole learning experience is a waste of time.   

Communities, the private sector and government must be made aware of the results from innovative projects. Government will then be able to accommodate better products and processes into future development policies and programmes. Private sector organisations and community groups will be able to see what products and processes are working and begin to adopt similar products and processes for their situations.   

In the long term, better approaches will emerge from all this experimentation and be used by more people. However, just like in the natural world, one product or approach must not be allowed to dominate. Monocultures are very dangerous when organisms are unable to adapt to changing circumstances. It is important that innovation encourages a diversity of products and processes over time for long-term sustainable development.   

Lessons from innovative projects need to be promoted though some form of central clearing house where all lessons are channelled, as well as circulated in a more decentralised manner by the role-players who were directly involved in the innovative projects. If all learning and promotion is only channelled through a central point, this may create blockages in sharing lessons. Project initiators and developers need to be allowed to also analyse their own and each others’ experiences and share information directly between each other and more broadly. Once again, dedicated funds need to be put in place to ensure that sufficient resources are channelled towards sharing of lessons. 

It is important that the lessons are shared in a manner that is useful to those who will benefit from this information. In other words, communities that are supposed to benefit from this developmental innovation need to understand what lessons have been learnt. Sharing lessons is not just a technical exercise between so-called experts. Any analysis needs to unpack the key lessons so these can be shared and made available without having to read detailed and complex analysis reports.

In Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to open up the debate around the need for an innovation programme and fund (or funds) in pursuit of long-term sustainable development.  Many questions still need to be addressed, like where should the innovation fund be located? Should it be located in a central place, like the President’s office, with a Minister for National Innovation, and/or should each department, like the Department of Human Settlements and the Department of Public Works, have their own innovation funds? Where should the funds for innovation come from? What role can the private and grant-making sectors play in supporting such an innovation fund?   

A national innovation ‘hit list’ could be developed where government outlines areas where it feels innovation is needed. Questions that could be asked as part of this ‘hit list’ include: How can well located land for settlement purposes be accessed? How can land prices for low income housing be kept affordable for poor people into the future? How can onsite sanitation be provided in urban contexts? How can incremental housing be accommodated in higher density contexts?  

The emergence of such an innovation programme and fund (with its associated evaluation and promotion grant components) will open up many opportunities for non-government and community-based organisations, the private sector, government agencies and others to all become initiators and drivers of innovative pilot projects where lessons are systematically unpacked and shared across the development sector.

The concept of an innovation fund compliments the ideas of government for planning and performance review, as outlined in the green papers prepared by the President’s office on National Strategic Planning and Improving Government’s Performance. An innovation programme provides a mechanism for development strategies and approaches to emerge from the bottom up through trial and error. Such strategies will then also help to inform future policy.