Joseph D'Cruz from UNDP visited Sitra Lab's HERÄÄMÖ XL breakfast event on 21.11.2019. Joseph D’Cruz works as a senior advisor in strategy and planning at the New York office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where he supports the work of the Accelerator Labs network that functions in 60 countries. Joseph will be speaking about the ways in which the network simultaneously helps the resolution of local problems and improves learning internationally.

1. The UNDP Accelerator Lab
Network
Reimagining International Development Cooperation
to tackle 21st century challenges

2. Why
What
How
Why UNDP?

3. Why

4. We need to re-imagine development
for the 21st century
We are facing a new set of social, economic and
environmental challenges. These challenges are
more intermingled and fast-moving than ever.
Our current approaches were designed to address
20th century problems - but not enough to tackle
problems faced by governments and societies at
the speed and scale needed in the 21st century.
Effectively addressing 21st century challenges
doesn’t just require new solutions. It requires new
strategies for understanding challenges as they
unfold. It requires new approaches to identifying
solutions. It requires addressing not just the
problem in front of us but the broader systems that
led to this problem.
Current
approaches
21st century
challenges
Impact gap

5. 21st CENTURY CHALLENGES
Traditional approaches to development are
struggling to keep up with today’s social, economic
and environmental challenges.
These 21st century challenges are difficult to
address because they are fast-moving, inter-
connected, and often getting worse despite the
best efforts to address them.
THREE KEY QUESTIONS
1. How do we better tackle complex and fast-
moving challenges?
2. How do we find the most relevant solutions
that work locally?
3. How do we learn more quickly about what
works and what doesn’t - and then bring
solutions to scale?

6. What

7. 1
UNDP Accelerator Lab Network:
The Mission
To catalyze positive change by
finding and sharing solutions that fit
the times we live in, and generating
new ideas for the times yet to come.

8. The Accelerator Lab Network currently covers 78 countries
• Algeria
• Angola
• Argentina
• Azerbaijan
• Benin
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Burkina Faso
• Cambodia
• Cape Verde
• Caribbean (Based in Barbados)
• Chad
• Colombia
• Laos
• Lebanon
• Lesotho
• Libya
• Malawi
• Malaysia
• Mali
• Mexico
• Morocco
• Namibia
• Nepal
• Niger
• Pacific (Based in Fiji)
• Pakistan
• Palestine
• Paraguay
• Philippines
• Rwanda
• Serbia
• Sierra Leone
• Somalia
• South Africa
• South Sudan
• Sudan
• Tanzania
• The Gambia
• Timor-Leste
• Togo
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Uganda
• Ukraine
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe
• Côte d’Ivoire
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Republic of The Congo
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Eswatini
• Ethiopia
• Ghana
• India
• Iraq
• Jordan
• Kenya

9. The Lab is part of the
world’s largest and
fastest learning network
around development
challenges and solutions
60 Labs around the world are testing not
just new solutions but new ways of
working to address development
challenges.
Being part of a globally integrated
network, each Lab can draw inspiration
from both local solutions and solutions
identified by the global network.
If multiple Labs are working on similar
challenges, they benefit from each
others’ learning in real-time, creating a
powerful collective learning effect.

10. The UNDP Accelerator Lab Network :
● Brings new capabilities to those
already existing in UNDP in country and
globally – these capabilities include:
the Heads of Exploration,
Experimentation and Solution Mapping
● Creates new ways of working,
including new protocols and an
approach that brings in new kinds of
partners
● Expands our global network where
learning is accelerated and so is the
potential for impact.
AccLabs Service Stack
Accelerator
Labs Services
Way of
Working
Team
Lab Network
Experimentation Exploration Solutions
Mapping
Governance Social
Protection
Livelihoods
Partners
Create
learnings
To carry
out
To
deliver

11. How

12. Sensemaking
Understand emerging
challenges and
opportunities in the
local context and
determine where to
focus attention
Collective Intelligence
Keep the finger on the
pulse to understand
problems, develop new
approaches to uncover
solutions, and learn
what works and what
doesn’t
Portfolio Approach
Design & execute
portfolios of
experiments until they
work and to scale
Solutions Mapping
Branch out to discover
solutions, bottom up
innovations, and
workarounds people
in local communities
have developed to a
challenge
The UNDP Accelerator Labs are finding and sharing solutions
that fit the times we live in and generating new ideas for the
times yet to come…

13. The Accelerator Lab cycle
The Accelerator Lab continuously loops
through four key activities:
1. Sense is about understanding what are
emerging challenges and opportunities in
the local context and determining where
we need to focus our attention.
2. Explore is about looking for solutions,
particularly by looking at how citizens are
already addressing these challenges and
opportunities.
3. Design & test is about assembling a
portfolio of potential solutions and
continuously testing them until we are
confident they can work.
4. Grow is about handing over the portfolio
of solutions, advocacy for policy change
or spinning solutions off as private
ventures.
Sense
Grow
Explore
Design
& Test
The ecosystem
around us
The Lab
initiative

14. 1. Sensemaking
Looking for patterns, identifying the
relevance gap
Together with partners, the Labs will analyse
the local context challenges to identify
connections and patterns to anticipate new
avenues of work and act effectively to
accelerate development.

15. 2. Explore
Tapping into uncommon data sources and
inputs to find potential new solutions
Solutions Mapping: The Labs will identify
grassroots solutions together with local actors
and validate their potential to accelerate
development. Solutions can come in many
different forms, from a farmer discovering a new
way to prevent floods to other grassroots
innovations in health, energy or water
management.
Collective intelligence: The Labs will also harness
the potential of real time and citizen generated
data for better decision making to solve
development problems.
What challenges
should we be really
focusing on?
How do we find the
most relevant
solutions?

16. 3. Design and test
Design and run experiments to find
out what works and what doesn’t
The Labs will design and conduct
experiments around portfolios of
solutions rather than individual
solutions, enabling us to learn about
what works and doesn’t in weeks or
months rather than years.
COMPLEX
DEVELOPMENT
PROBLEM
COLLECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
ANTICIPATORY
REGULATION
PREDICTIVE
ANALYTICS
BEHAVIOURAL
INSIGHTS
MACHINE
LEARNING
INNOVATIVE
FINANCE
How do we learn quickly about what
works and what doesn’t?

17. 4. Grow
Growing solutions: The ability to bridge to scale
Within the each of the country labs, scale will be
targeted in three ways:
What combination of solutions
can be used by UNDP and
partners?
Influence on development programming
Influence on government policy
Spin-offs of Lab initiatives into independent
ventures

18. Why UNDP?

19. #NextGenUNDP
Worldwide presence
in 170 countries
Thought
leadership
50+ years of
experience
Innovating on the way
we think, invest, manage
and deliver
Where past, present and future meet.

20. NextGen UNDP: catalyzing positive change
At UNDP, we are disrupting the way we think, deliver, invest and manage to perform
faster, better and at scale.
The UNDP Accelerator Lab Network is part of our effort to inject innovation into
development practice. This network of 60 Labs covering 78 countries are creating
new capabilities for partners to respond to exponential changes – challenges and
opportunities - in the 21st century.

21. Combining the agility of Labs with the
scale, reach, and relationships of UNDP

22. For example…
UNDP is helping North Macedonia use a diverse
portfolio of potential solutions to test out new
ways of addressing air pollution.
In India, the Lab is partnering with the Honey
Bee Network to grow ideas that have taken root
through grassroots innovations. Work is starting
on biodiversity, circular economy, waste
management, health solutions and women’s
entrepreneurship.
In Serbia, which is among the world’s 10 fastest
shrinking populations, the Lab is working to find
out how to reverse this trend by designing and
testing a portfolio of experiments, focusing on
circular migration and finding ways of retaining
skilled and unskilled workers.
The UNDP Accelerator Lab Network
Combining UNDP’s expertise and the largest and
fastest learning network of solutions, we can help
governments address 21st century problems
together with people, civil society, and business.
We find and grow local solutions that are already
working and speed up the learning process about
what works and doesn’t by experimenting with
many different approaches to a problem.

23. TODAY TOMORROW
How do Labs change the way we work?
Disconnected pilots without adequate
learning and scaling
Pursuing “unicorns” – invest in a single
solution for complex problems
Best practices lag behind challenges
that are constantly shifting
Development actors working in
isolation “re-learn” what other offices
have already learned
Looking at the usual data sources
leads us to the usual answers
Faster learning through experiment-
driven testing
Learning from existing, local solutions that
are closer to reality
Bringing in new sources of data to real-
time evolving challenges
Portfolios of potential solutions allow us
to consider multiple solutions in parallel
Collective intelligence through a globally
integrated network

24. How can you
get involved?

25. Types of Partners
Core investors co-build the Accelerator Lab Network as a joint venture.
Our core investors are part of our Strategic Advisory Group.
Strategic partners include governments the Labs serve and work with,
organizations supporting the scaling of solutions, as well as other
investors.
Knowledge partners contribute subject matter expertise, specialized
skills, or tools to the Network
Engagement partners extend the network of the Labs, enabling them to
reach out to and collaborate with global, regional and/or local
audiences.
Action partners extend the capabilities of the Labs in carrying out their
work by adding new services or capabilities.
ENGAGEMENT
ACTION
KNOWLEDGE
STRATEGIC
CORE
INVESTORS