DAI Report on Center for Development Innovation Management Services Contract

Global Development Lab's mission is to integrate innovation principles and best practices into development programming around the world. The Lab aims to produce breakthrough development innovations by sourcing, testing, and scaling proven solutions to reach hundreds of millions of people. It also seeks to accelerate the transformation of the development enterprise by opening development to people everywhere with good ideas, promoting new and deepening existing partnerships, bringing data and evidence to bear, and harnessing scientific and technological advances. The Center for Development Innovations (CDI) works in close collaboration with Bureaus and Missions across the U.S. Agency for International Development to source and accelerate groundbreaking solutions to the world's biggest problems. Through a four-year, $25 million professional management services contract with DAI, CDI provides a variety of service offerings to help the Agency reach development innovation programming goals and to ensure the most promising solutions achieve impact at scale. In the first year, $6.5 million was invested in activities such as co-creation processes, strategic partnerships, program design, acceleration, communications, learning capture and dissemination. DAI's portfolio rapidly grew within a year, with 15,031 hours billed from long-term personnel alone. Of that time, 37.9% was billed to overhead codes, while 62.1% was billed to initiatives. The project has achieved significant milestones, including the launch of the Global Innovation Exchange in under 100 days, the release of 10 Innovation Program Toolkits with over 500 pages of guidance and 90 templates, and the engagement of over 230 individuals and 21 partner firms in co-creation processes. The co-creation approach to designing solutions is a new practice within USAID, allowing the Agency to engage partners in a robust and meaningful way throughout the entire process of creating, identifying, implementing, and evaluating solutions to development challenges. This approach recognizes that no one actor has the answer and no organization on its own can solve the problem. By allowing space for multiple organizations to come together with USAID and other donor partners, the Agency opens the possibility to push boundaries, challenge assumptions, and allow for more comprehensive, innovative solutions to be identified, tested, and scaled. DAI has supported the design of 16 programs, including the ACR Disability Prize, the Civil Society Innovation Initiative, and the Fighting Ebola Grand Challenge for Development. These programs aim to address a range of development challenges, including disability, civil society, and infectious disease. DAI has also supported the development of 25 programs, including the Indonesia Inclusive Workforce Development Initiative and the Indonesia Palm Oil Value Chain Launch Initiative. The Center for Development Innovations has engaged with a range of stakeholders, including USAID teams, partner organizations, and individuals from over 30 organizations in Cambodia.