In due course of finding strategies to scale social innovations for development, there are times, when an experimenter like me binges for scanning scientific methods and processes for experimentation in order to explore observations and answer questions to the problems. However, this journey of experimentation is not that easy, as its full of questions, provocations, confusions and dilemmatic situations. Through this write-up, I am reflecting main four of my observations that I have gone through as Head of Experimentation in Accelerator Lab in Nepal over the past one year.

#1: Ethical dilemma in experimentation

It is very much evident that an experimenter principally should always be sensitive to the ethical issues that may arise in experiments and should balance the potential pain with the potential gain. In Nepal, we are in a quest to work with local governments to transform the misused public spaces to green parks, what we call green pocket parks, which are accessible small parks for general public. We ran a workable prototype of this experiment in the city and at the same time mapping other spaces as well. In that mapping journey, there was one place where we found that a public space is being used as a garbage, waste and debris collection facility. At the same time, we saw a small area in the park is being used by two displaced families as squatters. The ethical dilemma hit me here, and I questioned to myself, “In moral grounds, would I want them to be displaced from there for the sake of the experiment knowing the stakeholders associated in the experiment do not have any provisions for their arrangements”? This was very important to know in terms of nonmaleficence, which still I am in a process of getting answers to!

#2: Hypotheses driven + proven experiments ≠ always a successful experiment

Researchers often use experimentation to test existing theories or new hypotheses to support or disprove them. To move from theories to action, we need to build hypotheses which needs to be true for the assumption one holds. But do all “successful experiments” mean that hypothesis needs to be proven? I was in Miro board, which is virtual collaborative tool, sketching along with my fellow colleagues from the Asia and the Pacific region on something that we are working on called “Manifesto of Experimenters”, which is a platform for us to put our thoughts and insights for reflections. There was a point where we need to mention what a successful experiment looks like. For me, it was simple. I wrote if a hypothesis is tested and proven, then an experiment is successful. However, in the course of my journey i found good example where “successful experiment doesn’t necessarily mean that the hypothesis is proven”. I discussed it with my fellow colleagues and out that “making use of the learning from an experiment” would also mean a “successful experimentation” sometimes rather than a hypothesis being proven. After all, we are a learning lab!

#3: Finding the sweet spot between Rigor and Agility

This was an issue that the global Heads of Experimentation were pondering on, in terms of balancing our experiments as per the dynamics. For example, during the time of COVID-19, I have sensed that many counterparts/partners expect quick and resource-efficient results, which require us to be very agile and flexible in terms of our deliverables as well. However, it should be realized that some of the experiments and research questions are not that flexible and quick, and rather requires investing a lot of time, minds, resources, in-depth planning and discussion to get something tangible and of quality. Henceforth, maintaining a balance between agility and rigorousness is a bummer.

#4: Localized Community of Practice, a major perk

UNDP Accelerator Lab is one of the fastest and largest learning networks, and it has been a great experience learning from countries across the globe on their strategies towards addressing complex developmental issues. Equally important, according to me, is to have a granular, organic and local network at the grassroot where you can talk about best practices- in house! This is why, 3 months ago, I joined a voluntary Community of Practice (COP) group, where a bunch of designers, researchers and development practitioners discuss about Human Centered Design driven experiments. Through this group, I have been able to learn about various tools and techniques that Nepalese designers, tinkerers and makers are using in social innovation and have witnessed some interesting grassroot solutions on various development and socio-economic sectors having potential in terms of scalability, which holds great relevance of scaling ‘locally sourced innovative solutions’.

 Hope to feed you with more candid reflections in the upcoming days in this journey of experimentation.

UNDP Accelerator Lab in Nepal is working closely with development partners, the private sectors and grassroot innovators as a “vehicle” to test innovative solutions around unplanned urbanization and unemployment, It is on a quest of to invest technical expertise on these two frontier issues in order to map, and explore a portfolio of experiments to foresee more possibilities.