033 – IDEMS’ Vision and Mission

Description David and Santiago delve deeply into IDEMS’ vision and mission. David explains how these guide most of what IDEMS does and engages in, while going into detail about their meaning and implications. Transcript [00:00:00] Santiago: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow, and I’m here with David Stern, founding director of IDEMS. Hi, David. [00:00:20] David: Hi, Santiago. We’re discussing mission and vision today. Exciting. [00:00:25] Santiago: Yes! It is something that most companies have and advertise in their websites, but I don’t think they live by it necessarily as much as we do. And getting into our mission and vision it’s important because it informs so much of what we do. [00:00:50] David: Well, and also our mission and vision is not actually that well received within IDEMS, which is interesting. Danny and myself have actually had discussions about this recently that we really like it. But others within the organisation don’t, and so I’m really happy to have this discussion. I’m not going to go into at this point the criticisms why some people don’t resonate. I want to sort of have this episode to be able to say this is why I like our mission and vision, even if other people don’t like it, and even if we’re going to have to change it soon. I at least want to talk about this mission and vision while it’s ours because it means a lot to Danny and myself. [00:01:35] Santiago: Great. And just for reference, Danny is the other founding director of IDEMS. [00:01:40] David: Thank you, yes. [00:01:42] Santiago: So shall we start with the vision? [00:01:47] David: I think we should. That’s, that’s the big thing. [00:01:50] Santiago: So, the strapline of the vision is Impacting Grand Challenges. [00:01:56] David: That’s the vision. Arguably, reflecting on it, we could add a word, it could be positively impacting grand challenges. We’re not wanting to negatively make the world worse, we’re wanting to make the world a better place. And so, our hope is, as a vision, we will be happy if IDEMS is positively impacting Grand Challenges. [00:02:19] Santiago: I think anyone that listens to this podcast or knows IDEMS would get that positive implicitly. So, positively impacting grand challenges. [00:02:31] David: The main thing of course, which is one of the criticisms is a lot of people don’t actually resonate with the word ‘grand challenges’. They don’t understand what that means. It’s something which has become part of development landscape vocabulary. The Gates Foundation has adopted this as a big part of what it does and how it thinks. So it isn’t our wording, but it is not universally understood or universal wording. [00:02:59] Santiago: Maybe that’s why it’s described or defined somewhat in the website. [00:03:05] David: And particularly the relationship of grand challenges being ‘wicked problems’, which is again a term which is understood in certain circles, but it’s not widely used. That’s an interesting discussion, which I’m sure we’ll dig into, what does it mean? [00:03:24] Santiago: I was hoping we would do very soon another episode specifically on wicked problems. But maybe a very brief description. [00:03:37] David: I like the idea of recognizing that grand challenges are essentially developmental wicked problems. If you want wicked problems in development, international development, whatever that may mean. And so wicked problems are problems where you cannot have a solution. My favourite example of a wicked problem is education. Secondary school education is being able to educate your population as a whole within a country. That is a wicked problem. Because it doesn’t matter how well you do, there’s always elements that could be improved, there’s elements which should be studied, there is no solution to that problem. You can work on it as a developmental challenge. How can you improve secondary school education in a country is a fantastic example, for me, of a wicked problem. There’s no solution, but there are things which can be done, and it’s complex, and if you improve one aspect, you then might find that there’s another aspect which needs addressing. And so, there’s just complexity behind it. [00:04:52] Santiago: And it’s an almost unbounded process. [00:04:58] David: Yes, it’s unbounded, in this particular case. Healthcare is another example. You could make healthcare as good as you want, but there’s no end to what you could do, where you could say healthcare is solved. [00:05:13] Santiago: Yes, there’s loads of underlying issues in specific contexts about how healthcare is provided and so on. Those can be tackled, but healthcare as a whole will never be solved, there’s always going to be improvements to be made in systems, in processes, in problems that arise, and so on. [00:05:37] David: Exactly, however good you are at providing healthcare, there will be problems to address within healthcare. This is a fantastic example of what it means to be a wicked problem. [00:05:51] Santiago: Yes, and the same applies to education which is more directly related to one of our areas of work. [00:05:58] David: And what you particularly care about. [00:06:00] Santiago: And what I particularly care about, exactly. And I’ve seen this happen, where, you know, you propose a solution, you apply the solution, you make improvements, but those improvements might lead to some kids doing better than others. [00:06:17] David: Exactly. This is a wonderful example. If you provide innovations in education, which help some children more than others, you’re creating inequalities in education. Yes, maybe on average you’ve improved education, but you’ve also maybe increased inequalities. If you provide other innovations where you could decrease inequality, maybe you’re holding some children back. There’s all sorts of issues, there’s no end to the complexity. There’s no solution to education. [00:06:50] Santiago: And we already discussed the need for an episode on the UK’s policy of leave no child behind in that sense. [00:06:57] David: Absolutely. [00:06:58] Santiago: Because