State of the Humanitarian System: Innovation report
State of the Humanitarian System: Innovation report
Research study on the contribution of innovation in the humanitarian sector
The problem
ALNAP publishes its seminal State of the Humanitarian System (SOHS) report every three to four years, capturing the latest achievements, challenges and trends in the sector. When the last report was published in 2018, participants at the launch events noted that the report was inconclusive about the contribution of innovation to humanitarianism. To fill this gap, ALNAP commissioned us to explore the contribution of innovation to the humanitarian system over the last decade.
What we did
Data for the study was collected in three ways:
We reviewed 50 academic and gray literature documents on the key trends and events that have shaped innovation in the past decade. We used these sources to analyse the main areas of innovation and the evidence that exists for how those innovations have contributed to the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of the humanitarian system.
We convened an advisory group of the eight innovation funders. We conducted in-depth interviews with each funder to understand what they’ve funded and the evidence they’ve collected for the impact of those innovations. We then worked with them to pull together a unique database of 582 innovation projects and the ways those projects have contributed to humanitarian operations.
We interviewed four individual innovators to develop detailed case studies on specific innovation projects, how they measured impact and lessons learned for other innovators.
Making it accessible
A standalone summary of the findings will be published in the 2022 SOHS report on 7th September. The full report will be published later in 2022 as an accompanying paper. We will carry on using the framework and findings from the report to guide our own research and evaluation on innovation - and would love to hear from others who would like to do the same.