Development Innovation Accelerator Frequently Asked Questions

Global Development Lab on May 14, 2014. It describes the Agency's research interest and expresses an opportunity to co-create, co-design, collaborate, and co-invest in the nine focus areas of interest to the Lab. The Accelerator BAA is a method to communicate to the market the Agency's general interest in research regarding a development problem, providing flexibility in crafting the final relationship with the partner. The focus areas of the Accelerator BAA coincide with the nine initial areas of interest of the U.S. Global Development Lab, which reflect development and foreign policy priorities. These areas include Food, Security, and Nutrition; Modernizing Food Assistance; Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths; Energy Access; Water Solutions; Child Literacy; Financial Inclusion; Rights, Participation, and Accountability; and Humanitarian Response. The primary goal of the Accelerator is to create a space for collaboration that will discover breakthrough solutions to the most intractable development problems by harnessing Science, Technology, Innovation, and Partnership (STIP) in the Lab's nine focus areas. The BAA construct of the Accelerator allows USAID to reach out to potential partners with recognized expertise in relevant areas, co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate with partners, and meet federally mandated competition requirements. The Accelerator consists of an umbrella BAA with individual Critical Development Challenge Addenda (Addenda) underneath. The umbrella BAA provides the basic information and general administrative requirements, while the individual Addenda provide the specific area of research interest and solicit public participation. Interested parties respond to the individual Addendum, rather than to the umbrella BAA. Each Addendum will describe the particular research area of interest, the evaluation criteria, and administrative information such as the requirements for concept papers, statements of interest, and response deadlines. The Accelerator can be used by the Lab, Missions, Bureaus, or any offices within USAID to engage public, private, for-profit, and non-profit organizations, as well as institutions of higher education, public international organizations, non-governmental organizations, U.S. and non-U.S. government organizations, and international organizations. The Accelerator workflow involves an expression of interest, concept note, and statement of interest stages, followed by a review and selection process. The Accelerator BAA may lead to a contract, grant, cooperative agreement, public-private partnership, Development Innovation Agreement, Inter-Agency Agreement, Government to Government Agreement, Donor to Donor Agreement, Memorandum of Understanding, or even a specific, hand-crafted agreement of a new type that is appropriate to the particular relationship. The Accelerator BAA provides flexibility in crafting the final relationship with the partner, allowing USAID to leverage the procurement process to support the development solution rather than jamming the development solution into a particular procurement process. The Accelerator BAA is not an instrument but a method to communicate, giving USAID tremendous flexibility in crafting the final relationship with the partner.