UNDP Serbia Accelerator Lab

Faced with one of the world's fastest shrinking populations, Serbia needs to redefine what it takes to be a thriving, productive society. We bring a new perspective and framing to depopulation.

Our job is to bring new ways of working to UNDP and its partners. This means new methods but also new partnerships and ways of organizing. It also means pushing the boundaries of the possible. We use collective intelligence to mobilize ideas, new insights and a wider range of information to solve problems hindering development.

We use digital technologies, new sources of data (i.e. satellite, mobile, social networks) and AI to leverage the enhanced knowledge, skills and possibilities created when people work together (e.g. the Depopulation Data Challenge).

We experiment to learn about our challenges and to be able to take actions based on our findings, by designing and running multiple interventions in parallel and extracting insights about the system as a whole. We treat interventions as opportunities to learn about a system, its dynamics and effects. (e.g. Returning Point; work on attracting digital nomads).

We build portfolios to change the trajectories of entire systems by working in parallel in several parts of the system. Strategically placed, these experiments allow us to learn about the system, anticipate uncertainty and be flexible when responding to complexity.