Realizing the potential of collective intelligence for the SDGs will be a collective task, but will build on much that is already underway. This report sets out some key roles that existing institutions could play.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) could help to establish the protocols and standards that will be needed to underpin the shared data and knowledge infrastructures that will allow collective intelligence to be orchestrated more strategically.

The development banks could make it standard for any investment plan to include a complementary strand on the organization of intelligence – including the orchestration of data, science and evidence, as well as grassroots insights and wisdom.

Universities could help build the skills and experience that graduates will need to work in a collectively intelligent way. Many are now using the ‘challenge based’ model where, alongside their degree, students work on practical problem solving in teams that draw on multiple disciplines as well as insights outside of higher education.

Development partners could help grow civil society’s capacity to mobilize collective intelligence – supporting the skills needed, as well as speeding up the development of new methods and tools.

The private sector should make it easier for development organizations and innovators to access data and cloud services for SDG-related work.

The key strategic challenge for the UN is how to better orchestrate a broad range of intelligence relevant to the SDGs – from science and data, to public policy evidence and emerging findings from experiments – to help innovators on the ground work more effectively.