Development Entrepreneurs

A fter three workshops on Development Entrepreneurship (held in Quezon City, Davao, and Cebu City), we have gathered plenty of feedback from participants, and so there's much to think about. There are practical ideas for improving the workshop, like spending more time for introductions and small-group work, samples of filled-up Tools, guide questions for writing the Theory of Change, etc. Our participants included development professionals, some funders, and members of the academe.  There's been much discussion about how funders can support the DE approach given their traditional desire for certainty, which they try to enforce with deliverables and timetables.  This reflects the dialogue that's going on with the global development community, as all actors find their footing with adaptive development strategies. Two questions from participants that resonate with me are a) will the DE approach still be useful if policy is not the problem?, and b) can the DE a...

D evelopment Entrepreneurship has been called a “different” approach to reform.   What makes it different?   For me there are three core aspects of the DE approach that stand out from traditional development thinking. The first is about the way reform objectives are selected.  The DE approach picks reform objectives that are technically sound and politically acceptable.  When the most technically sound reform is not politically acceptable, Development Entrepreneurs do not insist on it.  Instead, they are willing to lower their sights, go for the second-best (or third-best, and so on) technical option that is politically feasible. Second, the DE approach is to work with a team of reformers that have certain characteristics. All team members must have grit.  There has to be a high level of trust among teammates.  Within the team, there is a leader, a technical expert, a political operator, and an insider - although one member may perform m...

A bout two years ago I wrote about how DE’s benefit from networks. Networks help reformers meet other people, who may share the same goals and can contribute unique resources to achieve a desired reform. I belong to a network of GIS users.  One of the mentors on this group, Paul Lundberg, introduced me to Maning Sambale.  Maning educated me about OpenStreetMap Philippines, and introduced me to Erwin Olario.  Maning and Erwin taught Provincial Government partners, in one of our reforms, to tap volunteers in mapping local roads. Anybody can be a connector because, like Paul, we all belong to several groups.  Aside from our associates at work, we also have groups of friends, maybe a sports team, a civic or Church-based organisation.   When we introduce a colleague from one group to friends from another group, we function as connectors.  Like when I invite friends from work to breakfast with BCBP on Saturday morning. To get our colleagues t...

D evelopment workers inevitably have to shift either the focus of their work, their approach, or their level of activities.  This could be brought about by closure of projects, opening of new ones, changes in funding level, emerging circumstances, personal preferences or some other factor.  Whatever the reason, change comes. When this happens, it is important to shift "weight" from current work to new focus area in the same way that my Tai Chi idol moves from one position to another: slowly and firmly, decreasing weight from 70% to 30% on one foot while increasing weight on the other foot, all the time maintaining balance and poise. In practical terms, this includes: Keeping friends - just because we may no longer frequently with some partners does not mean we should lose touch with them. The world is round, and we'll probably work with them again in the future. Closure with honour - keep commitments made at the start of the engagement, acknowledge areas where...

I t's getting easier and cheaper to get high-quality, high-resolution orthophotos using drones. Relatively inexpensive quadcopter can be flown according to flight plans that provide the necessary overlap and side-lap. Drone processing software are available online, some for free. More people can definitely generate useful maps (not just pictures) using drones. Using those maps, however, still requires subject-specific competence - and competence in dealing with political/social/institutional matters.   The orthophoto above shows a local community in Cebu City that could benefit from public land titling, particularly the Residential Free Patent. This was taken with a DJI Phantom IV Pro that flew at 75 meters.  The image was processed using DroneDeploy. It took less than 24 hours to fly over the area and process the photos into one orthophoto. Public land titling experts who looked at records related to this site said that part of this area has already been surv...