One of the areas where complexity thinking has entered the mainstream of development policy and practice is in resilience thinking. Much of this work owes a debt to C.S. ‘Buzz’ Holling, whose work on resilience of ecologies in the 1970s provided the intellectual underpinning to much recent work. Holling was recently awarded an honorary doctorate [...]
Archive for the ‘Meetings’ Category
Global Resilience Requires Novelty – A Speech by Buzz Holling
Posted in Meetings, Public Policy, Resilience on October 25, 2011 | 4 Comments »
USAID’s Complexity Journey
Posted in Conflict and peace building, Evaluation, Innovation, Leadership, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on October 17, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Last week saw a remarkable meeting in Washington, bringing together USAID staff with scientists and practitioners working on complex systems. This post reflects on the event and outlines some of the emerging lessons. Background There have been a number of meetings on the topic of complexity and development in different locations around the world in [...]
Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach
Posted in Accountability, Evaluation, Healthcare, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Malaria, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on June 30, 2011 | 7 Comments »
The international development sector has been in a tug of war around the ‘results agenda’ for the past few months. This post explores the tensions and suggests a way to bring the sides together by focusing on the relevance and appropriateness of different approaches.* I: The Results Tug of War Development results is one of many [...]
Success, failure and what lies between
Posted in Accountability, Economics, Evolution, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Meetings, Public Policy, Strategy on June 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Earlier this week Tim Harford, also known as the Undercover Economist, gave a fantastic talk at ODI on the topic of ‘Development as Trial and Error’. Drawing on his latest book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim provided the audience with a compelling account of the need for a different way of thinking [...]
Reflections on a workshop – exploring ‘complexity sciences’ in development
Posted in Knowledge and learning, Meetings, Reports and Studies on June 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Following on from the recent UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS) workshop on complexity science and international development, I shared some thoughts on the day and the ways forward. This is a cross-post from the UKCDS website. Last month the UK Collaborative for Development Sciences held a workshop to explore the potential of complexity science for international [...]
Latest meeting on Complexity and International Development
Posted in Economics, Meetings on May 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday saw a UKCDS meeting in London on complexity and international development, which I helped to convene and chaired. Speakers included Eric Beinhocker, Yasmin Merali, Melissa Leach and Danny Burns. Duncan Green of Oxfam has already provided an excellent write-up here - watch this space for the detailed meeting report and next steps.
The Humanitarian Groundhog Day
Posted in Chaos, Evolution, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Meetings, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation on March 24, 2011 | 14 Comments »
Humanitarian coordination has been described in a new ODI paper as a ‘wicked problem’ which demands new and radical solutions. This post explores the longstanding incentive issues underlying the lack of effective coordination and suggests possible ways forward. In a paper published last year, Michael Barnett and I argued that the humanitarian system was stuck in much the [...]
Pushing back against linearity
Posted in Accountability, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on September 29, 2010 | 7 Comments »
The Big Push Back was convened last week by the Participation and Social Change team at IDS. With over 70 attendees, the theme of the day was to reflect on and develop strategies for ’pushing back’ against the increasingly dominant bureacratisation of the development agenda. As the meeting background note put it: Development NGOs and researchers are [...]
Towards the Twig-Frame: Update on Complex Adaptive System Conference in Arusha 31st Sept – 3rd September
Posted in Agriculture, Evaluation, Facilitation, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Meetings, Organisations, Resilience, Self organisation, Strategy on September 20, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Two weeks ago we blogged about a fascinating event taking place in Arusha, convened by World Vision, which aimed to explore how complex adaptive systems thinking can be used to transform approaches to rural development. Below is a round-up of the event. Special thanks are due to Miriam Booy of World Vision for both synthesising the material [...]
Compiling evaluation and complexity resources
Posted in Evaluation, Knowledge and learning, Meetings, Reports and Studies on May 17, 2010 | 1 Comment »
For all those interested in or attending the Evaluation Revisited conference this week, here is a very rapid compilation of free-to-download presentations and reports plus details of meetings and websites which may be of interest. Please do add more resources using the comments function below… Presentations: Mokoro Presentations on Monitoring and Evaluating complex development given [...]
