Insights

The Art of Leadership in the United Nations: Painting perspectives, staying true to principles

Dag Hammerskjöld Foundation

UN leaders play a pivotal role in setting the internal organisational narrative. To innovate in large bureaucratic organisations, leaders need to frame key challenges while giving people the space and resources to solve those issues creatively.

Scaling Digital Solutions for Wicked Problems: Ecosystem Versatility

Journal of International Business Studies

Digital solutions are increasingly used to address “wicked problems” that are locally embedded but require global approaches. Scaling these solutions internationally is imperative for their success, but to date we know little about this process. The paper analyzes how four digital solutions driven by the United Nations are built and how they scale internationally.

Die Kraft der Innovation

Zeitschrift Vereinte Nationen

The United Nations is often criticized for its lack of innovative spirit. However, there are many groundbreaking innovations emanating from the UN. Important drivers of this are entrepreneurship and digital technologies, which enable even large bureaucratic organizations to develop new capabilities and launch transformation processes. IN GERMAN

Creating People-Centric International Organisations With AI

INSEAD

The United Nations is both a fascinating playground for artificial intelligence applications and a showcase of AI implementation problems and solutions. This Knowledge Piece explains why. Based on on the research by the same authors "Ethically Embracing the New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence Initiatives in International Organizations (2021)" also curated on this page.

Annual Report 2021

Geneva Innovation Movement Association

Read all about the accomplishments of the Geneva Innovation Movement Association in its first year of operations, as well as its plans for the future.

Innovation for Impact: An International Business Perspective on Transforming the United Nations (2022)

AIB Insights

The UN organizations are major players in international governance and are characterized by bureaucratic, globally dispersed and politically driven structures, but are hardly ever considered in IB research. The UN organizations are struggling to create innovative approaches to fulfil their core missions in today’s digital world and evidence shows that intrapreneurship and scaling innovation will be critical for transformation.

The Relational Work of Systems Change (2022)

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Collective impact efforts must prioritize working together in more relational ways to find systemic solutions to social problems.

Innovation Projects Can Reinvent the UN (2021)

Journal of Management Studies

Innovative projects spearheaded by UN country offices are remodeling the institution and expanding its role. Digital initiatives and initiatives that scaled through headquarters were shown to have the strongest impact, changing ways of working, embedding new skills, and restructuring teams across the UN. The research highlights that fostering even single innovative projects could lead to fundamental transformations in the UN through mechanisms of imprinting.

Ethically Embracing the New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence Initiatives in International Organizations (2021)

Center for Innovation and Partnerships, Geneva Innovation Movement, UNIGE, INSEAD & UNIN

What are best practices for innovation in INGOs? How does the organization’s innovation journey evolve? Which challenges do organizations face and how could they be addressed? This paper presents a snapshot of innovation in NGO’s today. It highlights key opportunities and challenges to fostering further innovation as we move into the post-pandemic world.

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