Category Archives: blogs I liked

What counts in the end: better behaviour or a better ability to explore and learn?

In one of my recent articles I asked the question ‘Should we fix wrong behaviour?’ The article has had great resonance with the community. In particular, it sparked an inspiring exchange among colleagues at ACDI/VOCA, which they shared on their own blog. They gave me permission to repost the article here but given its length I will just link to it – do read it if you have the time. Below, I have drawn out a couple of quotes that I found particularly interesting and insightful and I am also adding some follow up thoughts from my side at the end.

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USAID event on complexity

I had the privilege to participate in a part of an event organized by USAID on embracing complexity and what this means for the agency. I participated by webinar, which unfortunately only covered the first half of the day. However, Ben Ramalingam, one of the speakers at the event, posted a summary of the day on his blog. I highly recommend to read his post here.

Blog-Posts I liked

Here some blog posts I’ve read recently and liked. You’ll find the links to the blogs also in my blogroll on the right.

Back to output-only reporting? Duncan Green is writing on results measurement: Can we demonstrate effectiveness without bankrupting our NGO and/or becoming a randomista?

A post also related to measuring results of development interventions by Ben Ramalingam, which dates back a bit longer: Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach

And here a controversal post by Owen Barder where he argues that it is not measuring the results that is the real problem, but the overambitious goals that we are setting for our aid initiatives, i.e., that our aid money should lead to long-term economic growth: MEASURING AID EFFECTIVENESS EFFECTIVELY: BEING CLEAR ABOUT OBJECTIVES

On another topic: Shawn Cunningham has posted a whole series on innovation systems that is definitely worth reading for anyone working in private sector and local economic development:

Always good for a laugh: xkcd on file transfers

And last but not least an older post by Duncan Green on using games for learning and improved decision-making in complex systems using evolutionary principles: Playing games with the climate – a great way to explore difficult choices in complex systems