A Global Learning Crisis Globally, 263 million children do not go to school. Another 330 million youngsters go to school, but are not learning. Not only must the global education community expand children’s access to…
Failure, and knowing when to admit failure, are critical to the innovation process. Thomas Edison once famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” Thomas Watson, the CEO…
Less Than 21% of Rural Zimbabwe is Electrified. Once the sun sets, which happens remarkably quickly in this southern African country, if you don’t live in an urban hub, there’s a four in five chance…
Funding innovation for sustainable development; what have we learned… This post shares some lessons from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on how to design a lean innovation fund that doesn’t create additional hurdles for innovators….
In her debut piece in this series about the challenges of Lean Impact Ann Mei Chang identifies impact measurement as one of the top 10 challenges for social innovation. “Quantifying impact” she says, “is much…
Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Although better solutions tend to come from iteration, it can often be a counter-intuitive way to work in large-scale development projects. Not because those who work in the sector don’t see or…
Imagine… You are a farmer in rural Mozambique. You have a cough. You walk five miles to your nearest health clinic to have a tuberculosis test. Two weeks later you go back to find out…
The Lean Startup has helped businesses of all stripes manage risk and maximize their potential by listening to customers, running experiments, and driving fast feedback loops. Nowhere do we find bigger problems and greater uncertainty…
Are you an impatient social changemaker? Are you looking for different ways to test if your organization’s latest idea can plausibly have impact? Then you might have heard of the Lean Startup, which advocates, “experimentation…
This article by Kate Ettinger was originally posted on Ideas That Impact. I attended a Lean Impact Workshop by Leanne Pittsford of Start Somewhere where we used the Javelin Board to practice the Lean method on a social impact project. Within an afternoon, we identified…