Background

The Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) based at the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, Thailand, has been established by UNDP Asia-Pacific to leverage innovation to generate new development responses and robust development solutions, by developing new products, services and offers, new ways of solving development issues across the Governments and Country Offices within the UNDP Asia Pacific Region. The Centre provides a safe space to test development solutions through portfolios of policy experiments, new and innovative products and through scaling best practise solutions that exist within the region. The RIC work to foster an innovative culture that helps the UNDP, governments and other partners be on the front foot of spotting, understanding, and integrating new development approaches into their work. The Centre has a key role in helping deliver on the UNDP Strategic Plan 2022 – 2025 which has systems transformation, strategic innovation and digital transformation at its core.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work:

The Regional Innovation Centre (RIC) based in Bangkok, Thailand, established by UNDP Asia-Pacific, is working to develop innovation and digital competency across the UNDP Asia Pacific Country Offices and build partnership with external practioners and organisations who want to develop systems transformation and portfolio practices in their organisations.  The RIC has the job of developing new innovation practice but also scaling current practice and this needs to be supported by purposeful community building, strategic communications and other innovative activities to grow our reach.

The Innovation Community Specialist, working closely with the Team Lead (RIC), is expected to shepherd the ongoing Accelerator-Lab engagement and promote a coherent approach to UNDP’s current efforts on innovation and effective utilization of existing resources to accelerate the achievement of the Strategic Plan, to engage and develop a community of innovation practioners outside the Accelerator Labs and to provide communications leadership for the RIC. The Innovation Community Specialist is expected to document UNDP’s development of new competencies for system transformation, corporate innovation initiatives and work in close collaboration with RIC and COs to embed strategic innovation in country and regional programs, based on these. 

The scope of work includes:

1. Innovation Community Building, capacity building and resource mobilisation

• Develops a community of innovation practioners across the region who are interested in systems transformation and portfolio approaches (including Accelerator Labs). This includes a strategy, plan and scaling plan. Start to execute this plan.
• Designs a RIC advisory function for both innovation and digital and set up first meetings
• Builds capacities on strategic innovation and digital and strengthens expertise of COs by designing and delivery learning opportunities, providing on-the-job support and connecting to broader innovation networks. This includes developing a strategy and plan and begin to execute this plan
• Develops a survey for Accelerator labs that would be executed twice a year.
• Writes a report on Accelerator Lab progress to share learning with funders, partners etc on key themes and successes of labs so far.
• Takes ownership of designing, with the Global Accelerator Labs team, a regional Accelerator Lab retreat for quarter one 2022.
• Provides capacity-building support to RIC for strategic innovation skills and developing longer term opportunities for systems transformation in on innovation and digital within the region.
• Drafts analytical briefs and notes, supports the development of Communities of Practice (CoP) in the region and contributes to internal and external knowledge networks;
• Develops relationships with non-traditional development actors and social innovators, identifies partnering opportunities, creates knowledge partnerships in the area of work

2. Lead on communication and provide advice on future strategic Innovation activities

• Sets the agenda and executes  on Communications celebrating and promoting innovation across all of UNDP in region.
• Develops a Communications strategy and Plan for the RIC and executes that plan
• Runs the RIC twitter and other social media profiles
• Keeps abreast of discussions, developments and main events within UNDP, RIC, Regional A-Labs and broader networks, contributing to documentation of lessons-learnt and best practices. Adapts evidence into development of new initiatives at the regional and country levels;

Expected Outputs and Deliverables:

The expected outputs and deliverables will be agreed between the consultant and the Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, while working with the team members in the RIC. Deliverables will be reviewed and approved upon the delivered quality by the Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP BRH. The consultant is expected to deliver:

Institutional arrangement:

• The consultant will work closely with the RIC team and under the direct supervision of the Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub and working closely with the project leads for each project.
• The Head of Regional Innovation Centre, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub will review and approve the consultant’s outputs and deliverables.
• The Consultant will be given access to relevant information necessary for execution of the tasks under this assignment, and will be responsible for providing her/his own working station (i.e. laptop, internet, phone, scanner/printer, specific software, etc.) and must have access to a reliable internet connection

Duration of the Work:

From 12th January 2022 – 31st August 2022, with maximum of 132 days worked.

Duty Station:  The consultant will be home-based. No travel is required for this assignment.

Expected places of travel: not required.

Competencies

Core competencies:

• Innovation: Ability to make new and useful ideas work
• Leadership: Ability to persuade others to follow
• People Management: Ability to improve performance and satisfaction
• Communication: Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform
• Delivery: Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement
• Entrepreneurial Attitude: Ability to see opportunities and offer up solutions.

Technical/Functional competencies:

• Knowledge Management: Ability to capture, develop, share and effectively use information and knowledge
• Knowledge Curation and Packaging: Ability to turn raw information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to stated need
• Communications: strong customer focused communications skills
• Substantive Networking: Ability to substantively engage and foster networks with academia, research institutions, and think tanks
• Collaboration & Partnerships: Ability to develop, maintain, and strengthen partnerships with others inside (Programmes/projects) or outside the organization who can provide information, assistance, and support.  Sets overall direction for the formation and management of strategic relationships contributing to the overall positioning of UNDP

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications:

Education: Minimum Bachelor’s Degree in a development related discipline (e.g., social science, development studies, international relations, business and/or public administration, knowledge management, economics, etc.)

Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant progressively responsible work experience at the national and international levels in innovation, digital engagement, social innovation
• Minimum of 5 years of demonstrated experience in community building
• Minimum of 5 years demonstrated experience with communications plans, executing strategies and other communication disciplines
• An understanding of systems approaches, innovation approaches etc. is desirable.

Language: Fluency in English, both written and speaking

Core competencies:

• Innovation: Ability to make new and useful ideas work
• Leadership: Ability to persuade others to follow
• People Management: Ability to improve performance and satisfaction
• Communication: Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform
• Delivery: Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement
• Entrepreneurial Attitude: Ability to see opportunities and offer up solutions.

• Technical/Functional competencies:

• Knowledge Management: Ability to capture, develop, share and effectively use information and knowledge
• Knowledge Curation and Packaging: Ability to turn raw information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to stated need
• Communications: strong customer focused communications skills
• Substantive Networking: Ability to substantively engage and foster networks with academia, research institutions, and think tanks
• Collaboration & Partnerships: Ability to develop, maintain, and strengthen partnerships with others inside (Programmes/projects) or outside the organization who can provide information, assistance, and support.  Sets overall direction for the formation and management of strategic relationships contributing to the overall positioning of UNDP

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Payment will be made after satisfactory acceptance and certification of the deliverables and in accordance with UNDP procedures as per below percentages:

Evaluation Method and Criteria

Cumulative Analysis: The candidates will be evaluated through Cumulative Analysis method. When using the weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
• Having received the highest score out of set of weighted combine technical evaluation of desk review and interview (70%), and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment. 

Technical Criteria weight: 70%
Financial Criteria weight: 30%

Technical evaluation (70%)

***Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points or above in the Desk review would be considered for interview.

Financial Evaluation (30%)

Financial proposals from all technically qualified candidates will be scored out 30 marks based on the formula provided below. The maximum marks (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal.

All other proposals will receive points according to the following formula:

• p = y (µ/z).

Where:

• p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated;
• y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal;
• µ = price of the lowest priced proposal;
• z = price of the proposal being evaluated.

Contract award: Applicant receiving the Highest Combined Score and has accepted UNDP's General Terms and Conditions will be awarded the contract.  

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS

Instructions to Applicants: Click on the "Apply now" button. Input your information in the appropriate Sections: personal information, language proficiency, education, resume and motivation. Upon completion of the first page, please hit "submit application" tab at the end of the page then the uploading option for the required document will be available.

Please group all your document into one (1) single PDF document as the application system only allows to upload maximum one document.

Interested candidates must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document:

1. Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability with Financial Proposal (in USD) using the template provided as Annex III 

Financial proposal: Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided for the entire assignment. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the proposed fee submitted in the proposal.

If an Offeror is employed by an organization/ company/ institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

2. P11 / Personal CV, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references with contact details.

3. Brief technical proposal (methodology, approach and implementation plan) that meets or exceeds the requirements of the TOR. 

**Failure to submit the above-mentioned documents or Incomplete proposals shall result in disqualification

**Please group all your document into one (1) single PDF document as the application system allows to upload maximum one document.

The short-listed candidates may be contacted, and the successful candidate will be notified.

ANNEXES

Annex I - TOR_ Innovation Community Specialist
Annex II - General_Terms_and_Conditions_for_Contracts_Individual_Consultants

Annex III - Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and financial proposal

All documents can be downloaded at: https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=85471