"Our organisations are taking the path of transformation"

Start with "Why"

Innovation needs an intrinsic driving force. In the humanitarian field, the why is the fact that humanity won’t meet the various challenges with traditional means. We launched an innovation fund to support Swiss NGOs to identify, develop and implement innovation within their projects.
Roland Thomann's story, Swiss Solidarity

Role based leadership

We are becoming agile. In 6 different domains, we have defined specific roles with clear accountability, output and decision-making authority. Decisions are consulted in a circle. Translating the model to our daily work is not always easy as we still fall back into old habits.
Anne Bickel's story, Swisscontact

Testing beats planning

First, test whether your project and tools are well understood. Second, test whether your project and tools are used. Iterate where necessary. Be comfortable with testing low-quality and partial solutions.
Patrick Stadler's story, New Incentives

Culture eats strategy for breakfast!

Digitalisation is not simply the introduction and use of new technologies. It requires adjustments in strategy, organisation, processes, competences, working methods and culture. It is about reducing fears and giving people the desire and time to learn.
Alejandro Ortega's story, Swiss Cancer League

It takes courage beyond the conventional

We needed to modernise data management, increase transparency and improve digital marketing products. A chief digital officer was hired to tackle these challenges. We have implemented new working processes.
Thomas Imboden's story, Swiss Red Cross

Digital data management

Our data should be useful, and not end up in data cemeteries. We want to be more efficient and increase the availability, analysis and visualisation of data. Our country offices have proactively started to test digital tools for monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning.
Antonia Does' story, Helvetas

Building communities

We had 3 objectives: work together better, connect HQ and the field, enhance peer to peer support. We moved from a centralised system to a networked organisation. We built 160 online and offline communities that help us transform the organisation and our projects by getting feedback from staff and partners.
Ernesto Izquierdo's story, ICRC

Innovation and novel approaches

We launched a new Migration and Displacement Innovation Platform – an organisation-wide effort, bringing together a broad range of knowledge partners to collaboratively develop innovative tools, solutions, and know-how.
Josiah Kaplan's story, Save the Children

Planning in uncertainty

We cannot predict the future, but we are able to come up with multiple scenarios of the organisation’s future context. Our new strategy process is not based on one future but analyses different scenarios and the position we should take in these various political, economic, social contexts.
Barbara Burri's story, Solidar Suisse

Innovation Box

During my apprenticeship at Swisscom, I asked why my training did not include modules in the field of innovation. This questioning led me to create entrepreneurship training for generations y/z: the Innovation Box.
Morris Gyger's story, Swisscom

Systematic innovation management

Innovation at TdH was driven by ideas from the field. To introduce an innovative mindset, we replaced formal training with awareness-raising sessions, internal thematic conferences on important technological developments, co-construction bootcamps using the design thinking approach.
Thierry Agagliate's story, Terre des Hommes

Scalability is key

Innovation must be done in partnership to work and be scalable. The roles and responsibilities of the partnership must be clearly articulated right from the beginning, otherwise it will not be scalable.
Maya Shah's story, Médecins sans Frontières

Sharing culture

We initiated an innovation award. Innovation is happening in different contexts and is the result of our sharing culture. People microblog on our intranet wall, we have TED-style talks, ‘share weeks’ for strategic dialogues and ‘share days’ for global discussions around emerging topics.
Franz Thiel's story, Helvetas

Shared leadership

The main purpose of our transformation to an agile organisation was to give employees back their ability to act and decide, thereby transforming leadership from an individual to a shared model. Today we guide staff by looking at jointly defined criteria of quality, not by giving them piecemeal tasks.
Christoph Ochsenbein's story, Brot für Alle