By Cian Mcalone
Cian McAlone is Assistant Innovation Officer at the UN Refugee Agency, supporting the Innovation Service’s Strategic Communications and Design portfolio. He is interested in the role of communication, narrative, and organizational strategy in serving the political, social and economic concerns of people forced to flee.
In a community meeting for Project Unsung, we mused on an intervention letter to innovation work, as if innovation were a dear friend who had somewhat lost their way. We thought about a) the ways that innovation is holding itself back, and b) the ways, through new visions and values, that innovation could meet the needs of the future.
Here are some of the responses:
Dear Innovation, you have lots of potential, but you need to stop…
- Putting yourself before the planet and people.
- Being an excuse to not have a plan.
- Thinking of yourself as something only future-oriented and top-down. Rather, innovation needs to be more sensitive to history and context.
- Bragging.
- Being exclusive and disposable.
- De-futuring possibilities in your wake.
Dear Innovation, to be future-fit, please commit to these visions and values…
- Unlearning imperialism.
- Planetary sustainability, decolonization, democracy, and equality.
- Interconnectedness.
- Operate from a place of joy, not cynicism.
- Understand that innovation is called different names in different places.
- Define the collective beyond the human species.
- Ask better questions.
How do you think you, your community or your organization’s practice could change? Write your own letter to innovation, and see where it takes you.
Dear Innovation, you have lots of potential, but you need to stop…
Dear Innovation, to be future-fit, please commit to these visions and values…
This page is part of UNHCR’s Project Unsung collection and portfolio. Project Unsung is a speculative storytelling project that brings together creative collaborators from around the world to help reimagine the humanitarian sector. To discover move about the initiative and other contributions in the collection, you can go to the project website here.