Doing Development Differently

October 22-23, 2014
A workshop on Doing Development Differently
Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA

Hosted by the Building State Capability (BSC) program at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) with funding from the Governance Partnership Facility.

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A growing body of work shows that development interventions often have a limited impact, especially when targeting improved governance and service delivery by the state. This observation has inspired many efforts to rethink the practice of development,
and a number of new strategies have emerged for designing, implementing and even evaluating development projects and initiatives.

The evidence base for ‘doing development differently’ however, it still emerging and remains highly fragmented among different communities of practice. Moreover, policymakers still report challenges in operationalizing these findings into changed approaches.

This event brings practitioners and researchers trying these new development practices out or carrying out thorough analytical work on them. These employ different tools but generally hold to some of the same core principles: being problem driven, iterative with lots of learning, and engaging teams and coalitions, often producing hybrid solutions that are ‘fit to context’ and politically smart. This event is an opportunity to share practical lessons and insights, country experience, and to experiment first hand with selected methodologies and design thinking.

This event is the second version of the Untying Development series hosted by the Building State Capability program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for International Development. It will be co-hosted this year with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), with funding from the Governance Partnership Facility. The aim of the event is to start to build a shared community of practice, and to crystallize what we are learning about what doing development differently really looks like in practice.

Background reading | Storify Recap | Sign the Manifesto

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Thursday, October 23, 2014