Envisioning an Innovation Culture at the UN
The conversation around building an innovation culture at the United Nations has been ongoing for more than a decade — that’s when formal innovation teams began to emerge.
In September 2023, the United Nations Secretariat formalized its commitment to creating a future-proof system with the release of its policy brief, Our Common Agenda. This marked the launch of the “Quintet of Change,” a set of five core elements to drive transformation across the UN: Data, Behavioural Science, Digital, Strategic Foresight, and Innovation.
Our Common Agenda targets to impact over 50 organizations within the UN system, affecting around 100,000 employees spread across 4,000 locations in 162 countries. It’s a massive undertaking, right? And while the framework is in place, the real challenge lies in making it all happen.
For those unfamiliar with the work being done, you can explore more at UN 2.0 Network. The UN Innovation Network has also been crucial in fostering collaboration by creating spaces where organizations can share innovation practices, each shaped by their unique contexts.
Now, the next step is to bridge the gap between these efforts at the organizational level and the broader UN strategy. I argue that a common starting point across organizations, independently of the shape that innovation teams take inside each of them, is the need to foster an innovation culture.
Where do we start then?
1. Involvement of Senior Leaders
When it comes to building an innovation culture, senior leaders must take the first step—both in rhetoric and in practice. It’s not enough for them to support innovation efforts from the sidelines; they need to actively participate in some of the activities.
Senior leaders should feel accountable for the direction of innovation in their organizations, working toward a consensus that aligns innovation initiatives with strategic priorities. Without this alignment, innovation efforts lose momentum, and many end up getting discontinued.
When leadership demonstrates that innovation is a priority, the rest of the organization takes notice, and efforts become much more impactful.
2. Curated Spaces for Interaction
We can call these spaces Labs, Hubs, or Incubators—what matters is that they provide opportunities for community building, creativity, and learning. These spaces, whether online or in person, are essential for fostering a culture where ideas can flourish, and where change makers feel they have the freedom to experiment.
However, for these spaces to be truly effective, they must be integrated into the overall innovation vision set by senior leadership. They shouldn’t be expected to carry the entire burden of driving innovation for the organization, but they can serve as crucial incubators of new ideas or platforms for scaling successful projects, depending on the organization's strategic goals.
3. Transparency as a Baseline
Innovation thrives on knowledge—especially the kind of knowledge that comes from past failures and hard-earned experience. Organizations need to cultivate an open-source mindset, treating every project’s lessons, both successes and failures, as valuable resources that can benefit everyone.
Senior leaders should encourage more openness in sharing practices that didn’t work as expected. They should also promote rigorous analysis of what was learned from those experiences, guiding future efforts. Transparent sharing of knowledge helps build an environment where innovation is constantly improving, rather than being stifled by the fear of failure.
When it comes to culture, it is true that is hard to change a culture that has established itself for decades. However, we shouldn’t sit discouraged by this idea that there are things we can’t change because in reality everything could change if the people entitled to take decisions have the will. Sometimes senior leaders underestimate this, and we end up creating gigantic imaginary walls when there are immense opportunities ahead.
