Regional Director's message: Innovation Roadmap for FY13

Mobilizing our Innovation Aspirations and Developing our Innovation Portfolios

Dear Colleagues,

A few days ago you received a communication from Lars Gustavsson, our Partnership Leader for Collaboration and Innovation and Dirk Booy. I am now following up with each of you individually as I would typically do to add my encouragement and endorsement to the outlined messages. As we all know, there are many good things happening in our region. We have lots of creative and innovative people amongst us and we are indeed thankful for that. We can demonstrate advances in numerous areas, creative solutions in others, and even the more innovative efforts yet in others.


As stated in the previous message of some days ago, the March 2012 President’s Summit in London, UK was a cultural milestone for World Vision’s innovation journey1; including having now communicated 350+ such initiatives in process to improve our work and satisfy our donor engagements! In March we all contributed to defining five key outcome challenges, and if we are to succeed in implementing these, we will have to become more intentional about putting into place the necessary steps to lead us in the right direction within our respective remits.

A key next step in our collective innovation journey is for your office to develop your own set of “Innovation Aspirations” for the next three to five years. I know a number of you have already initiated innovation next steps and are well on your way towards adopting both culture changes and specific innovation efforts. Ultimately these efforts should lead towards an “Innovation Portfolio” for your specific office. Innovation is about a mindset and culture change as much as it is about doing things differently. Innovation as a mindset also becomes another “tool” in your toolbox to strengthen already existing plans and strategies. But innovation should also be one of those special tools that you use to sharpen your efforts and lead you beyond the status quo into new territories. It should not be viewed as something one does separately, but rather it becomes a core part of your business DNA. Here in World Vision we may define what innovation means for us as “where our knowledge, passion, and creativity combine to generate new value for child-well-being”. 

We know that “healthy organizations” have a “healthy mix” of innovation. Generally one would expect that 70% of our innovation efforts should focus on the day-to-day improvements; these may be referred to as “incremental” in nature. About 20% of our efforts should then focus on new growth strategies, leveraging our existing investments or infrastructure by developing more structured relationships through collaboration or partnerships, or looking for new business processes, new business models or ministry vehicles; these may be referred to as “break-through” or “transformational” innovation. And then about 10% of our efforts should be allocated towards major change efforts; these may be referred to as “radical” or even “disruptive” innovation.

We also know that “unhealthy” organizations have some “unhealthy habits” and one would want to work towards shifting these tendencies out of the organization. For example – sadly, in most organizations 90% of Manager and Staff time are spent on managing the “past”; 10% of their time is spent on managing the “present” and the “future”. Again, healthy organizations spend no more than half of their time managing the past and the rest managing the present and the future. And this would be true for both “good times” (ie economic up-turns) and “bad times” (ie recessions); plus most likely true for World Vision.

During the next three to five months, I am requesting that your office, in the context of ongoing strategy discussions, to use the simple “Help Kit”3 (attached as Appendix B) to establish your Innovation Aspirations, taking into consideration the following parameters:

a. The five Innovation Challenges and President’s Summit Outcomes you identified as top priorities for all of us in the Partnership to implement
b. The context and competitive environment in which your office operates, informed by relevant local, national and global trends
c. The positioning of your office in the Partnership, taking into account your office’s history and unique contribution, and its strengths and weaknesses
d. The Global Centre-led “Top Ten” Innovations Portfolio for the next three years4
e. Innovations outside of your office, as found in the Master List and elsewhere (attached as Appendix C)
f. Your vision for children, youth, families and communities of your country
g. World Vision Innovation Manifesto5 (attached as Appendix D) 2012-2013

Proposed Time Line:
Nov Initial discussion within your SLT and designate your Innovation Champion/ point person(s)
Dec Develop Innovation Aspirations basic agenda and simple support process and set mtg date(s)
Jan Conduct Innovation Aspirations event(s)
Feb Finalize Innovation Aspiration exercises and develop your Innovation Portfolio
Mar Interface with the respective leaders at our Regional Office with final working version

I am prepared to assist you with this process. Additionally, the Global Collaboration & Innovation (GC&I) team can assist us. In some cases, Global Marketing is also available for those matters that particularly link our work more directly with Support Offices or even Corporate Engagement. I will also seek to set up a specific time(s) for Q&A perhaps with the engagement of GC&I as well to answer any questions and to discuss further if necessary. Our collective participation in this simple (but not simplistic) exercise will significantly strengthen our ability to leverage the ongoing and planned innovations occurring at our national and regional level, but also to all levels of the Partnership. Thank you for your participation!

Conny