Innovation, development and COVID-19: challenges, opportunities and ways forward

This paper focuses on innovation in development and humanitarian efforts in the context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

It examines innovation efforts underway in international development and humanitarian responses to the pandemic, how well these efforts are working, and how they might need to be enhanced to address pressing health, social and economic challenges, as well as to secure societies’ long-term resilience.

The paper highlights opportunities for consideration by the donor community as a whole:

• Moving beyond ‘single point’ product based interventions to look at processes and paradigms
• Seeking to balance ‘innovation for development’ portfolios with more emphasis on forward looking anticipatory innovation and bottom-up adaptive innovation
• Investing in more strategic and focused collaboration, especially with local and national actors
• Ensuring and sustaining a focus on the poorest and leaving no one behind