Development Entrepreneurs

So a Development Entrepreneur has a theory, and he is doing something to test it. What if the result is negative? It would seem like the theory is wrong. Or maybe there is something wrong with the execution, and if the approach can be refined he would get the desired results (another theory).  So he performs the experiment again, a little bit differently now.   This is called perseverance. What if our Dev Ent has tried several times, and has still not achieved the desired reforms.  If he has done his experiments well, he should have learned something from all of them. After all, each experiment ends with an assessment of what happened and why, and a conclusion about the validity of the hypotheses held at the beginning. Several failures should give our reformist some pretty good ideas about which theories are validated and which are not. Perhaps he will have learned enough to change not only the nuts and bolts of his approach but the whole entire concept of what ...

Reforms are basically desired improvements in the way institutions work. These changes may be formally established through policies and are only actualized by changes in procedures. Now, people make up institutions, policies are established by people, and procedures are carried out by people. So when we talk about reform, we are really talking about changes in people’s behavior.   This suggests a strategy for pursuing reform: seek to influence the behavior of key individuals whose support is needed to carry out the desired changes. Identifying these people is the first challenge. While leaders are obviously involved in most institutional changes, influencers who can help convince the leaders are also important. So are the people who will carry out the leaders’ decisions - including, sometimes most importantly, front-liners whose actual work would be affected by the changes. Systems analysts and software developers, in exploring functional requirements for application softw...

I used to call them “proofs of concept” or “prototypes” - working demonstrations of an idea. Then it was pointed out to me that not all ideas are about delivering an acceptable service, utility or good to a client. Sure, I could make a prototype - but if it was not acceptable to a client - if it did not serve his needs, at least in a small way - it was not a “Minimum Valuable Product “. Looking back at the projects I’ve been involved in, I could cite some pretty good MVPs.  On our Project Land Titling project alone. we had several.  The first MVP we had was a standard training program for systematic adjudication. It built on the ideas of LAMP 2, was delivered by LAMP 2 veterans like then-RTD Dian Apistar and then-PENRO (now RTD for Forestry) Edu Inting (both of DENR VII), and involved local government personnel. Prior to the first ever such training we helped a group of Trainers from DENR VII to write down a standardized training design and a complete set of standardiz...

In our advocacy for titling of public lands a Cadastral Map is essential. This is a map of lot parcels containing such information as the Lot Number and lot boundaries, and associated data about the disposition of each parcel.   This map lets us know which lots can still be covered by RA 10023, the Residential Free Patent Act, and which lots are not covered because they may have been titled already, or there is an existing claim, or there is a dispute over the property.   The problem is that this map is not readily available with Municipal Governments.  DENR holds this data, mostly on paper, and mostly in the form of Lot Data Computations - a table of numbers which can be interpreted to form the polygons of lot parcels. We were challenged to come up with a method to convert these DENR data into maps that can be used both by DENR and LGU personnel. We already knew that officials of DENR VII and of several LGUs in Cebu Province wanted to do something about this. D...