Businesses must be genuinely interested in building the capacity of development partners to operate optimally and deliver projects as efficiently as possible. This may include boosting their ICT capacity in terms of supplying tools and training on how to use those tools especially those connected with M & E.
Very much agree, Priya. See my comments on the question to understand how we are putting this into practice in Zambia with Living Goods, CARE, and Barclays-GSK.
Priya Madina said:
In their partnerships, businesses and the development community must do just that: be partners. Today’s challenges cannot be effectively addressed by unilateral action. It is no use for a business to simply finance the community and for them to take all further actions with their funding. The two entities must interact and each share their knowledge and ideas to drive innovation. This ultimately leads to more efficient action, as well as greater commitment to the projects’ success.
Partnerships work best when the common objectives are clear and agreed upfront and the roles and responsibilities are well defined. Clear leadership and coordination are also key.
Successful partnerships where business can provide professional insight and expertise in whichever field they specialise in, and the development community can provide insider knowledge about the community in which the business is investing/local tailored intelligence, as well as information regarding its needs in order to prioritise when it comes to taking action.
Zahid Torres-Rahman said:Thank you for sharing your insights! Let's move onto the third and final set of questions:
What principles and processes do partnerships between business and the development community need in place to help drive innovation? What are some good examples and what can we learn from them?
I completely agree with the point about time horizons. Corporates and donors need to take a much longer-term view when it comes to impact (be it social or commercial), especially when looking at market system based approaches to development and scaling sustainable innovations. We need more great examples of long-term programmes and partnerships. But what is best practice in terms of time horizon? 5-10 years? Would love to hear people's thoughts.
Jolene Dawson said:
Thanks Lisa - some of the challenges we've certainly seen while balancing both commercial and development agenda's in our partnership work is exactly what you mention - funder apetite.
There is often a fair amount of tension to deliver against 'typical' corporate returns in a development setting, while the development agent, just wants to maximise impact - My opinion is partnership brokers need to balance both sides of this and work to have fair commercial returns, but potentially over longer timelines, while the impacts are delivered on the ground.
Dr. Lisa Bonadonna said:Jolene I concur with many of your points and would add the following:
- Breaking down the challenge to facilitate creating a manageable innovation pilot at the expense of understanding the social system the behaviour change must be embedded within
- Funder apetitie for new undertakings relative to funding initiatives often piloted by others that merit being taken to scale
- Rejecting the role that for profit enterprises can play in addressing social challenges either in the short or long run
Jolene Dawson said:Barriers to Innovation Scaling:
Commitment to move beyond pilots – most partnerships that have been underway in pilot have proven their impact but have stumbled when it comes to scaling. Partly due to financing and investment constraints, but also due to slow responsiveness and lack of agility to “fail-fast”, internalise the lessons learnt in piloting and recalibrate for success.
Harnessing technologies to leapfrog traditional growth trajectories – companies, especially large corporates, like most people, resist change. Delivering innovation at scale is perceived a little like “Fixing what isn’t broken” For innovation to be embedded and truly scalable, traditional growth, business, operating and deliver models should be questioned – is there a completely new way we could do this? Mobile in Africa hold great promise, if the mobile network operators can (1) provide reliable and consistent signal coverage, (2) provide affordable mechanisms for people to adopt new technologies (especially smart phones) and (3) manage allocation of spectrum, a finite resource for all MNO’s
Making funding models sustainable from the outset – A key barrier to scaling innovations beyond pilots is breaking the poverty cycle by supplementing the aid flows sustainably. Two elements are needed to achieve this (1) a tangible mechanism to source and cultivate revenue streams in pilots from the outset, and grow these in tandem as the pilot grows and matures and (2) think like an entrepreneurs and embed and formalise mechanisms to transfer of skills, capacity and knowledge to the beneficiaries, creating ownership of the outcomes and sustainability of the programme without dependence on outside parties, development agencies or otherwise.
Business not being able to make pilots commercially viable – even at scale. This is partly due to “best-case- scenario” business cases being presented for funding decisions or some vague assumptions caveating the numbers. I believe the cause of this is due to not truly and deeply understanding and proving how the innovation in pilot is solving the real issue faced by the beneficiaries. This, in turn, is an outcome of working in isolation and not taking a systemic, cross-sectoral view on how to address issues. Without deep community knowledge of the issue, often the outcome is not relevant or appropriate to solve the issue that the community faces. Businesses, grantees and governments cannot fund programmes indefinitely, so commercial viability and volume, even with minute margins, must be the
real issue that is solved for in pilotsGovernment’s ability to address fast-paced changes in demand – the bureaucracy under which they must operate directly impedes their ability to respond timeously and proactively to changes in their communities. We live in a orld now where what is true and real today, is not that tomorrow – governments are scrambling to keep up and must not focus in the short –term, but solve for the issues anticipated in 10-20+ years, building resilience and flexibility into their programmes consistently.
Mismatch between Pilot success factors and actual impact delivered – In my experience with partnerships, often pilot measure their success on factors not aligned to the impact needing to be delivered to solve the real development issue. In theory is does, indirectly, but in reality it is seldom measured as a key outcome. I’d like to see business, governments and development agencies working to measure the impacts and communicate successes along the specific goals of the SDG’s e.g. % poverty reduced, % increase in gender balance in schools, number of lives saved through access to healthcare…
Lack of collaboration and true partnering – over the last 10 years, Accenture Development Partnerships has seen an evolution of Partnerships from:
- isolated philanthropic contributions unrelated to business, to
- opportunistic projects that bring the strength of the partners capabilities, to
- strategic partnerships where development issues are addressed directly with long term focus, to
- shared-value partnerships that have a meaningful source of competitive advantage.
Now, we are seeing more partnerships being set up that are transformational in nature meaning they are setting out to systemically change the status quo and work at the market level, improving enabling environments and setting global standards – it is these transformational partnerships that will drive the market-changing innovations that will push us into new paradigms
Zahid Torres-Rahman said:Great contributions! Let's move onto our second set of questions:
What are some of the key drivers and barriers to innovations reaching scale sustainably and what are the essential enabling conditions required for success?
Not surprisingly I believe that a partnership approach is key - and in that partnership there should be no seniors, no juniors - just the acceptance of, and respect for each partner's expertise. And this MUST be coupled with the ability to constructively challenge each other - All with the aim of tackling a social challenge that is relevant to both partners - in our case that is tackling preventable deaths in children.
I would also add that a robust overnance approach that can withstand both partner and external stakeholder scrunity - though not scintillating, is critical. For the GSK-Save the Children Partnership we have C suite sponsorship in both organisations, a joint senior leader Steering Committee, senior leaders managing the Partnership and each of the 10 individual workstreams co-lead.
Agree Simon and I think our GSK/Save Partnership is a good example of this and goes beyond the traditional funding relationship to a much more fundamental partnership - also yes we must avoid tears by embracing our differences!
Simon Wright said:
Partnerships between businesses and development community need to aim for equality. Very hard when one is providing the funding. Understanding different organisational cultures and traditions takes time and effort. For an NGO, assuming that a business can just behave like and NGO will only lead to tears. But understanding the motivation of the company can help to build activities which are likely to have impact and be sustainable.
Dear all - thanks for a great discussion. Much of the conversation has been centred around partnerships for social impact between NGOs and large businesses; but from my vantage point in Kenya, much of the buzz at present is about the impact of SMEs (most of whom are innovating constantly, to survive!). Where does the panel feel like the opportunities might be in this area, and how can we unlock innovation through partnerships with SMEs?
Thanks,
Mike
To Jolene's point "the more successful approach we've seen is where companies decide to collborate with their suppliers and consumers (or beneficiaries) to ensure they are getting the value hey need - a much more collaborative and partnering approach." Exactly!
Hi Mike, I'm not in US State Department, but do have a view on how government can play a role in innovation. Accenture works extensively with US Government, and my perspective on this is:
The role of governments is to set up policies and processes that enable the delivery of the SDG’s. Governments needs to provide:
- the physical infrastructure to support a growing population,
- the digital infrastructure to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies,
- mechanisms for financing and investment to go beyond simple aid-flows and support sustainable funding sources,
- enabling environments for cross-sector partnerships that leverage scalable and sustainable impact, using their assets and capabilities, and
- data and accountability mechanisms that enable timely decision-making and transparently provide insight into the impacts delivered.
Mike Tuffrey said:
Thanks everyone for great discussion. Just to add... somewhere in this question about fostering innovation and the role of the different sectors is a specific role for governments and state agencies in de-risking (but not taking over and directing!). Do colleagues from eg the US State Department of public-private partnerships have a view? Thanks, Mike.
I love this, Lisa. Especially the seniors and juniors comments. Level the playing field when it comes to contributions and expertise.
Dr. Lisa Bonadonna said:
Not surprisingly I believe that a partnership approach is key - and in that partnership there should be no seniors, no juniors - just the acceptance of, and respect for each partner's expertise. And this MUST be coupled with the ability to constructively challenge each other - All with the aim of tackling a social challenge that is relevant to both partners - in our case that is tackling preventable deaths in children.
I would also add that a robust overnance approach that can withstand both partner and external stakeholder scrunity - though not scintillating, is critical. For the GSK-Save the Children Partnership we have C suite sponsorship in both organisations, a joint senior leader Steering Committee, senior leaders managing the Partnership and each of the 10 individual workstreams co-lead.
The most critical principal is to ensure that incentives for each player are clear and aligned with the overarching objective.
There are a number of exciting partnerships out there, one I’m particularly excited about is work we’re doing at Vodafone on access to water. We’re working in partnership with Grundfos, Ericsson, government entities (utilities) and a number of NGOs. To me this a great example of incentives being clear for all actors and sectors, enabling us to service a low income, disparate consumer segment typically considered too hard to reach by the private sector.
Grundfos has designed water dispensers that are connected using M2M technology and can be maintained remotely. Vodafone ensures that consumers can access this water by paying using mobile money. The utilities and NGOs install these systems for their communities and can monetise these without having to man them and worry about maintenance.
http://www.cgap.org/photos-videos/digital-finance-plus-action-grundfos-water-stations
Zahid Torres-Rahman said:
Thank you for sharing your insights! Let's move onto the third and final set of questions:
What principles and processes do partnerships between business and the development community need in place to help drive innovation? What are some good examples and what can we learn from them?
I have a slightly contrarian view on time horizons. I think there may be too much patience in the social sector.
The problems in healthcare and education are big and demand urgency in our work. Look at the “impact investing” space. I’d argue one reason few impact investments have really scaled is that the investors are too patient and the social businesses they fund are too patient. In the venture capital world if a company is not making progress investors pull the plug and move onto the next thing. That’s how capital and capacity is most efficiently deployed.
Nyika Brain said:
I completely agree with the point about time horizons. Corporates and donors need to take a much longer-term view when it comes to impact (be it social or commercial), especially when looking at market system based approaches to development and scaling sustainable innovations. We need more great examples of long-term programmes and partnerships. But what is best practice in terms of time horizon? 5-10 years? Would love to hear people's thoughts.
Jolene Dawson said:Thanks Lisa - some of the challenges we've certainly seen while balancing both commercial and development agenda's in our partnership work is exactly what you mention - funder apetite.
There is often a fair amount of tension to deliver against 'typical' corporate returns in a development setting, while the development agent, just wants to maximise impact - My opinion is partnership brokers need to balance both sides of this and work to have fair commercial returns, but potentially over longer timelines, while the impacts are delivered on the ground.
Dr. Lisa Bonadonna said:Jolene I concur with many of your points and would add the following:
- Breaking down the challenge to facilitate creating a manageable innovation pilot at the expense of understanding the social system the behaviour change must be embedded within
- Funder apetitie for new undertakings relative to funding initiatives often piloted by others that merit being taken to scale
- Rejecting the role that for profit enterprises can play in addressing social challenges either in the short or long run
Jolene Dawson said:Barriers to Innovation Scaling:
Commitment to move beyond pilots – most partnerships that have been underway in pilot have proven their impact but have stumbled when it comes to scaling. Partly due to financing and investment constraints, but also due to slow responsiveness and lack of agility to “fail-fast”, internalise the lessons learnt in piloting and recalibrate for success.
Harnessing technologies to leapfrog traditional growth trajectories – companies, especially large corporates, like most people, resist change. Delivering innovation at scale is perceived a little like “Fixing what isn’t broken” For innovation to be embedded and truly scalable, traditional growth, business, operating and deliver models should be questioned – is there a completely new way we could do this? Mobile in Africa hold great promise, if the mobile network operators can (1) provide reliable and consistent signal coverage, (2) provide affordable mechanisms for people to adopt new technologies (especially smart phones) and (3) manage allocation of spectrum, a finite resource for all MNO’s
Making funding models sustainable from the outset – A key barrier to scaling innovations beyond pilots is breaking the poverty cycle by supplementing the aid flows sustainably. Two elements are needed to achieve this (1) a tangible mechanism to source and cultivate revenue streams in pilots from the outset, and grow these in tandem as the pilot grows and matures and (2) think like an entrepreneurs and embed and formalise mechanisms to transfer of skills, capacity and knowledge to the beneficiaries, creating ownership of the outcomes and sustainability of the programme without dependence on outside parties, development agencies or otherwise.
Business not being able to make pilots commercially viable – even at scale. This is partly due to “best-case- scenario” business cases being presented for funding decisions or some vague assumptions caveating the numbers. I believe the cause of this is due to not truly and deeply understanding and proving how the innovation in pilot is solving the real issue faced by the beneficiaries. This, in turn, is an outcome of working in isolation and not taking a systemic, cross-sectoral view on how to address issues. Without deep community knowledge of the issue, often the outcome is not relevant or appropriate to solve the issue that the community faces. Businesses, grantees and governments cannot fund programmes indefinitely, so commercial viability and volume, even with minute margins, must be the
real issue that is solved for in pilotsGovernment’s ability to address fast-paced changes in demand – the bureaucracy under which they must operate directly impedes their ability to respond timeously and proactively to changes in their communities. We live in a orld now where what is true and real today, is not that tomorrow – governments are scrambling to keep up and must not focus in the short –term, but solve for the issues anticipated in 10-20+ years, building resilience and flexibility into their programmes consistently.
Mismatch between Pilot success factors and actual impact delivered – In my experience with partnerships, often pilot measure their success on factors not aligned to the impact needing to be delivered to solve the real development issue. In theory is does, indirectly, but in reality it is seldom measured as a key outcome. I’d like to see business, governments and development agencies working to measure the impacts and communicate successes along the specific goals of the SDG’s e.g. % poverty reduced, % increase in gender balance in schools, number of lives saved through access to healthcare…
Lack of collaboration and true partnering – over the last 10 years, Accenture Development Partnerships has seen an evolution of Partnerships from:
- isolated philanthropic contributions unrelated to business, to
- opportunistic projects that bring the strength of the partners capabilities, to
- strategic partnerships where development issues are addressed directly with long term focus, to
- shared-value partnerships that have a meaningful source of competitive advantage.
Now, we are seeing more partnerships being set up that are transformational in nature meaning they are setting out to systemically change the status quo and work at the market level, improving enabling environments and setting global standards – it is these transformational partnerships that will drive the market-changing innovations that will push us into new paradigms
Zahid Torres-Rahman said:Great contributions! Let's move onto our second set of questions:
What are some of the key drivers and barriers to innovations reaching scale sustainably and what are the essential enabling conditions required for success?
Absolutely Chuck, the things we can do with basic connectivity never cease to amaze! Great to hear about your work.
Chuck Slaughter said:
Let’s talk more about MOBILE tech innovation. In addition to founding Living Goods I invest in wide range of sectors via private equity. Nearly every sector has been or will be disrupted by the Internet and mobile technology. So if you’re going to innovate you need to be thinking about how mobile technology is going to play a part. At living goods we began investing deeply in developing on mobile technology backbone for our social business three years ago. That toolkit has moved from being a useful accessory to being the heart, lungs, and central nervous system of our organization.
Every Living Goods Community health entrepreneur now has an android phone with the living goods designed Smart Health app. Our treatment app makes diagnosing child illnesses easy and accurate; it also sends daily dosage reminders to the patient. The pregnancy app helps flag pregnant women at high risk of complications and sends timed SMS health messages to them every week. These tools enable us to track and report on every customer contact. Any staff member can see the performance of any agent, using any device, in real time. Living Goods also uses this system to broadcast health messages and money-saving promotions to customers via SMS. This drives better health behaviors and increases demand and sustainability.
Governance may not be scintillating but is, in the end, perhaps the most important key to many partnerships. I've seen too many instances where a change in personnel in a key position undermines the entire process.
Dr. Lisa Bonadonna said:
Not surprisingly I believe that a partnership approach is key - and in that partnership there should be no seniors, no juniors - just the acceptance of, and respect for each partner's expertise. And this MUST be coupled with the ability to constructively challenge each other - All with the aim of tackling a social challenge that is relevant to both partners - in our case that is tackling preventable deaths in children.
I would also add that a robust overnance approach that can withstand both partner and external stakeholder scrunity - though not scintillating, is critical. For the GSK-Save the Children Partnership we have C suite sponsorship in both organisations, a joint senior leader Steering Committee, senior leaders managing the Partnership and each of the 10 individual workstreams co-lead.
Thank you for this excellent discussion Zahid, and the panelists!
From our experience at Global Development (GD), key for success is:
1) all partners at the leadership level (with their Board members supporting them) share common objectives of what social and economic impact they aim to achieve, and we mean by scale
2) share an understanding what they mean by a sustainable business model and what are their respective roles and responsablities to achieve it.
These expectations and commitments have to be very clear at the start of the collaboration, or else time and resources are often not utilized effetively.
We have also seen how important is to include systematicaly various and new stakeholders to scale up solutions. Governments are key, various parts of their structures with different ministreis involved, these are often the main bottlenecks. It is also so importnat to involve various platforms to leverage raising awareness what we are aiming to achieve, and why. Business Fights Poverty is playing an important role as one of such platforms. And I want to add that we often forget to integrate other importnat actors such as artists, to create new dialogueto open and accelerate possibilities and enable us all to think, feel and act different.
Hello-Thank you for hosting this incredibly important discussion. I will be sharing highlights with my AIM2Flourish.com.
Please allow me to invite all to AIM2Flourish. We are a UN PRME-sponsored learning and Business for Good platform. We believe we are the first (and as of today) only higher education curriculum devoted to teaching the Global Goals.
In a year we've grown to more than 100 professors in 46 countries. 22 professors have made AIM2Flourish a core curriculum requirement for their students. We give business students the opportunity to interview an innovative business leader who is helping to achieve the UN's Global Goals. Please reach out to me at claire@AIM2Flourish.com to learn more or follow us on Twitter at @AIM2Flourish. Thank you.
Really great principles Jolene. I'd just add 'Understanding'. All too often partners think they know or understand the other but the nuances or even difference in language/terminology can cause challenges when working towards a shared goal - especially when working in innovation (which is often uncomfortable for organisations as it's new and different). So i'd encourage those embarking upon new partnerships to spend time getting to know each other's organisation before rushing into things. This should be time well invested.
Jolene Dawson said:
In order to set up a partnership that focusses on using innovation, some things to consider are:
- Transparency and trust: Partnerships and innovation can make things significantly more complex. Upfront planning and embedding of good governance, clear reporting and open communication are key to a healthy and successful partnership that delivers.
- Alignment on Roles & Value: Goals of the partnership must be clearly defined upfront with accountability, roles and responsibilities defined before the partnership in formally launched. Perceived value that each party brings must be defined upfront and balanced as far as possible.
- Manage Communication Closely: Sometimes, the excitement of what the partnership intends to do gets the better of the parties and, once in the public domain, is easily misconstrued or misrepresented. Ensure that communications about intended outcomes, investments, scaling plans and key success criteria are realistic and attainable and can be measured. Also, embrace digital in all its forms – for content creation, content management and dissemination (social media), crowd sourcing and collaboration etc.
- Set realistic financial expectations: The models that are used to make decisions can sometimes not be based on realistic expectations or even feasible on the ground. A good example of a flawed model here is that on driving financial inclusion in South Africa. A critical success factor here was uptake, but no-one thought to measure usage – commercial institutions poured money into making their products work with high operating costs, not reaching the usage requirements they needed to make it viable for them to pursue, long-term. An additional contributing factor was that the South African government mandated banks need to address financial exclusion, making it a grudge spend, as opposed to a market changing innovation like M-Pesa that is now competing directly with banks in Kenya an looking to expand into credit.
- Lobby Government to get buy-in, early: many partnerships fail to scale, despite significant impacts they have proven as they either clash with or do not directly support existing or planned government interventions. Be sure that the markets you operate in are going to be an enabling environment and the communities you work in really are involved
Partner for the ‘right’ reasons: Sometimes, it simply does not make sense for businesses, government and the development sectors all to partner, chiefly due to the complexity that can arise from multi-stakeholder, multi-beneficiary partnerships. Partner in order to deliver bigger impacts faster. Finding the ‘right’ partner means critically looking at the solution you want to achieve and probing exactly where it is weak or lacking – it is here you should find partner (preferably an entity, government, business, development agent or otherwise, who leads their industry in this aspect) to bring on-board what you don’t have. Be clear on who will delivers what, especially where more than one entity in a partnership has a strong capability.
Zahid Torres-Rahman said:Thank you for sharing your insights! Let's move onto the third and final set of questions:
What principles and processes do partnerships between business and the development community need in place to help drive innovation? What are some good examples and what can we learn from them?
100% agreement.
Wendy Smith said:
Governance may not be scintillating but is, in the end, perhaps the most important key to many partnerships. I've seen too many instances where a change in personnel in a key position undermines the entire process.
Dr. Lisa Bonadonna said:Not surprisingly I believe that a partnership approach is key - and in that partnership there should be no seniors, no juniors - just the acceptance of, and respect for each partner's expertise. And this MUST be coupled with the ability to constructively challenge each other - All with the aim of tackling a social challenge that is relevant to both partners - in our case that is tackling preventable deaths in children.
I would also add that a robust overnance approach that can withstand both partner and external stakeholder scrunity - though not scintillating, is critical. For the GSK-Save the Children Partnership we have C suite sponsorship in both organisations, a joint senior leader Steering Committee, senior leaders managing the Partnership and each of the 10 individual workstreams co-lead.
That brings us to the end of our live segment. Thank you so much to our panel and to our audience for joining us.
We will leave this discussion open, so please do feel free to continue to post your comments.
This discussion took place as part of our Shared Value Partnerships Challenge with GSK and Save the Children. If you'd like to learn more about this topic, check out these articles:
Darian Stibbe: From Transactional to Transformational to Systemic Collaboration
Jane Nelson: Four Reasons Why GSK and Save the Children’s Partnership Stands Out
Lord Nigel Crisp: Save the Children & GSK Partnership Points way for Cross-sect...
Lisa Bonadonna and Natasha Parker: To Help Save Children’s Lives, We Need to Be Bold
Ali Forder: Why We Are Working to Increase Supply and Demand for Healthcare i...
This is very interesting especially for me who works on brokering cross sector partnerships around developmental challenges. I world for a project called Zambia Business in Development Facility that is housed under the African Management Services Company (AMSCO) in Lusaka. I was a two year pilot to see if cross sector partnerships that involve government, private sector, NGOs, development agencies etc to look into three focus areas i.e. agriculture (finding solutions to integrate small holder farmers and link them to markets), extractive sector (linking SMEs to the mining value chains) and skills development (bridging the gap between graduates that come out of technical training institutions and what industry expects). We have made some strides in the three areas and players in the various partnerships have appreciated the need for such innovative and collaborative partnerships in resolving developmental challenges. We now want to use these partnerships to demonstrate how we can domesticate the delivery of SGDs in Zambia.
I would go a step further and say we should utilise our differences to the max as well as bringing in others - An example of this is the Research & Development (R&D) Board we set up under the Partnership which has representation from both partners as well experts external to both organisations. The board meets 2-3 times a year and provides insight and guidance on the morbidity and mortality challenges facing children. This Board helps direct GSK's R&D efforts in this area and has enabled us to not only focus on the major causes but also start thinking about solutions that will work best in low reasource settings - a great example of this is the reimagined chlorhexidine gel to prevent neonatal sepsis.
Priya Madina said:
Agree Simon and I think our GSK/Save Partnership is a good example of this and goes beyond the traditional funding relationship to a much more fundamental partnership - also yes we must avoid tears by embracing our differences!
Simon Wright said:Partnerships between businesses and development community need to aim for equality. Very hard when one is providing the funding. Understanding different organisational cultures and traditions takes time and effort. For an NGO, assuming that a business can just behave like and NGO will only lead to tears. But understanding the motivation of the company can help to build activities which are likely to have impact and be sustainable.