How to Prototype Faster in Development

Singularity University Executive Director Saleem Ishmail told us that every year their curriculum must be updated to keep pace with technologies at the frontiers of innovation. This made me ask myself how we at the Bank have been able to keep up with cutting edge approaches and technologies. We are often guilty for taking cookie cutter approach, for which the Bank is imfamous. More of us should be saying that this is no longer really acceptable, particularly given that every innovation has its own specific aspects that inform its design to fit it's cultural context. Not having this specificity often results in expensive failure that a country is ultimately responsible for and must pay back.

IDEO talked about prototyping to keep pace with innovations which automatically made me ask, how does the WB prototype? The simple answer is that it doesn't really. Yes, it does launch pilots but this is not an explicit strategy that ensures the approaches we are taking are truly innovation.

We at WBI are continually reflecting on our role and contribution to the mission of the WBG. So how can we at the Bank do development faster, better, smarter? IDEO approaches this problem by prototyping ideas to quickly test innovation.



I met with a Berkeley enineering professor who was working on a co-designed housing project with a Native American tribe in CA. They worked with the tribe on a housing project to design a single family dwelling that would ge them out of the government issued trailers where they lived. The tribe approached Native American Berekley students and collaboratively designed multiple iterations of a house that would be culturally relevant and would support their lifestyle and beliefs. Without these prototypes that were created and refined, this community may have ended up in another housing development project that was no more useful or appropriate than the trailers they were trying to escape.

In development we have seen many visions and designs created in the West plopped down in a community of a developing country only to be abandoned, destroyed or left vacant. With this in mind, grounded in the knowledge of the inumerable expensive white elephants the Bank has funded, a list of critical questions come to mind:

• How can we ensure that a mindset, or practice of prototyping is an implicit part of project design at the Bank?
• How can interdisciplinary teams help foster an iterative process without highjacking the process when collaborating with a country/community? More about IDEO's key components of productive brainstorming and collaboration in the next post.
• What kind of cultural changes within the Bank will be required to foster more open communication and innovation?
• How can risk be reconceptualized to inspire and support innovation within Bank operations that are loans that a developing country is obliged to pay back?

More later on our trip...! What are some of the questions that keep you up at night????