Background
II. Job Purpose and Organizational Context |
The UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021 embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and inequality pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the Country Accelerator Lab Network. The initiative is a recognition that increasingly interrelated development challenges require going beyond business as usual and single point, linear and silver bullet responses in development. Instead, they call for an interdisciplinary approaches and non-linear solutions that crowd in the collective efforts of variety of partners and tap into local insights and the knowledge of people closest to the problem and the solutions. The initiative is also a recognition and an investment in the emerging momentum among a growing number of UNDP Country Offices around joining together disruptive, cutting edge methodologies with contextual, country-based insights and expertise to accelerate impact and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
UNDP:
We are building the largest and fastest learning global network of Accelerator Labs (initially setting up 60 labs in 60 countries) embedded within UNDP’s global architecture and country platforms. The new offering builds on the latest thinking from the fields of complexity science, lead user innovation and collective intelligence to accelerate development impact.
Our network will surface and reinforce locally sourced solutions at scale while mobilizing a wide and dynamic partnership of actors contributing knowledge, resources and experience. The idea is to transform our collective approach by introducing new protocols, backed by evidence and practice, which accelerate the testing and dissemination of solutions within and across countries. This will enable the global community to collectively learn from local knowledge and ingenuity at a speed and at a scale that our societies and planet require. This will be achieved by:
- Building on locally-sourced solutions, finding things that work and expanding on them; - Rapid testing and iteration to implement what works and go beyond the obvious solutions; - Combining the best understanding, ideas and expertise to generate collective knowledge; - Accelerating progress by bringing expertise, creativity and collective intelligence to bear.
The Accelerator Lab will undertake i) external facing interventions addressing priority development challenges, and ii) internally facing experiments to embed new ways of doing development within the existing UNDP portfolio.
You: You are capable and excited about starting, design and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed. You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance. You are curious, quirky and fun, natural strategic thinkers and talented designers. You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within them to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values. |
Duties and Responsibilities
III. Duties and Responsibilities |
· Proactively explore and identify the new methods/approaches and frontier knowledge to tackle development challenges, collaborate with the Experimentation lead to turn these into learning options for addressing specific policy issues in the country · Contribute to the formulation of the Accelerator Lab service lines to the UNDP Country Programme based on findings from horizon scanning, systems’ mapping, and local knowledge |
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Competencies
IV. Competencies and Selection Criteria
| Description of Competency at Level Required (For more comprehensive descriptions please see the competency inventory) |
Core |
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Innovation Ability to make new and useful ideas work | Level 4: Adept with complex concepts and challenges convention purposefully |
Leadership Ability to persuade others to follow | Level 4: Generates commitment, excitement and excellence in others |
People Management Ability to improve performance and satisfaction | Level 4: Models independent thinking and action |
Communication Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform | Level 4: Synthesizes information to communicate independent analysis |
Delivery Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement | Level 4: Meets goals and quality criteria for delivery of products or services |
Technical/Functional |
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Innovation Ability to manage organizational resources and deployment in pursuit of innovation approaches and initiatives | Level 5: Originate: Catalyzes new ideas, methods, and applications to pave a path for innovation and continuous improvement in professional area of expertise |
Required Skills and Experience
V. Recruitment Qualifications | |
Education: | Master’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, or related field and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization
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Bachelor’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, or related field and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization
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Experience: |
Experience in following areas is desirable:
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Language Requirements: | Proficiency in written and spoken English. Working knowledge of Tetum and Portuguese is an advantage. |
Other: | * The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities around that focus on exploration, experimentation and ethnography. As such the Accelerator Lab team will report directly to the UNDP Resident Representative/Deputy Resident Representative. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, the core team will be expected to double up on the functional roles and in consultation with the UNDP Country Office, manage operations and scale innovations into the UNDP Country Office, story-telling and communications, and interface with the broader Accelerator Lab network. Accelerator lab capabilities will cover:
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