Open Innovation Platforms
for Systemic Change

Achieving the 2030 Agenda for transforming our world towards sustainable development, requires a departure from traditional project-based efforts to practical solutions. Evidence shows that ‘Open Innovation Platform Approach’ aligns with such demands.

Open innovation platforms operate on the premise that internal and external resources and ideas are critical to addressing complex problems by providing a more inclusive approach for sustainable development.

A key aspect for initiating systemic change is through understanding concepts of empowerment i.e. for enabling systemic change, entire communities need to feel empowered to take decisions to aid their development. The article will present insights from the Work 4 Progress (W4P) programme to express the potential of an open innovation platform approach to address job creation.

Evidence from an Open Innovation Platform

W4P accelerates entrepreneurship led job creation through platforms for innovation, action and continuous learning. It adopts an innovative approach based on principles of collaboration, community-led and bottom up action. These principles are continuously strengthened by W4P’s social innovation methodology in which it listens to the community through dialogue, finds answers through co-creation, prototypes solutions and shares learnings to create impact at scale. By adopting a community-centered design approach, W4P is increasing ownership of its prototypes by the community – which in turn, secures their sustainability.

How do Open Innovation Platforms operate?
• Activating networks - By identifying partners to leverage existing resources.
• Breaking silos - By tapping into the collective intelligence of the ecosystem.
• Reducing barriers - By reducing transaction costs of collaborating with diverse partners.
• Human centered designing - By adopting signals from the ground and incorporating them into new products.
• Speeding up learnings - By detecting emerging trends and continued experimentations.
• Adopting innovations - By realigning operations with better design solutions.
• Building shared identities - By creating collective narratives that influence decision making.

W4P is creating evidence to demonstrate how a platform approach can trigger transformational change:

• Unleashing entrepreneurial energies of individuals - Solutions are co-created based on the interests of individuals. For example, Meera Kushwaha, a W4P entrepreneur from Kena village provided tailoring services on a casual basis till 2017. After being involved in the W4P programme, she started three enterprises including an e-rickshaw service.

• Nurturing constructive communities - Communities are nurtured to ensure the economic and social wellbeing of all its members. A way in which W4P is doing this is by creating platforms for increasing solidarity between community members. For example, a support system for women to come together in Bundelkhand is challenging patriarchal norms that limit them from becoming entrepreneurs.

• Building a robust ecosystem - W4P drives transformation by synergising resources for joint action. It jointly creates solutions in a neutral space through regional, national and international platforms. An example is the W4P regional enterprise development coalition which is connecting micro entrepreneurs with service providers.

• Building a culture of entrepreneurship - W4P facilitates ownership of its mechanisms by strengthening community-led socio-economic networks. An example of such a network is the multiplying rate of women-led enterprises being set up in patriarchal villages.

W4P’s innovative methodology has created evidence to showcase the potential of an open innovation platform - through accelerated growth in micro enterprise development, a growing culture of entrepreneurship, the power of converging resources and action from diverse organisations, sustainability through community ownership and the potential of replicating interconnected solutions for addressing multiple challenges.

W4P aims to further develop interconnected solutions with diverse actors to drive transformational change at not only the meso but also the micro and macro levels. ■

Stuti Sareen and Vrinda Chopra
ssareen@devalt.org and vrinda87@gmail.com