Head of Exploration

The UNDP Strategic Plan 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 rising inequalities 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 UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering. 

* The Accelerator Lab is comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation, and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:

1) Coordination

2) Training

3) Communications

The Core team of the Accelerator lab have capabilities in: 

• Experimentation (instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
• Mapping Solutions: ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom-up solutions for the policy design
• Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs.  Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration.  While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management.

Position Purpose

The Head of Exploration is expected to be excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks; driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors; tell stories of emergent solutions and gravitate to solving global development challenges.

The Ideal candidate needs to possess a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity; 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. The ideal candidate should be open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive in working with public sector authorities. The candidate should be comfortable with ambiguity, 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. They should have superb competencies in program and portfolio management. Additionally, they need to be at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance.

The position holder also needs to be curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er; needs to understand systems, both the positive and negative aspects to be capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution. Your digitally savviness and keenness will contribute to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.

• Identify, visualize and communicate emerging development trends, data, technologies and issues with a particular focus on the edges and “below the radar screen” events, opportunities and players, and systemically map their impacts on economy, environment, society, and livelihoods of the poorest; 
• Identify new sources of evidence and insights, analyze, and visualize patterns in unstructured sources of data, present new insights in accessible and comprehensive ways to enable sensemaking and analysis;
• 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;
• Provide technical guidance for horizon scanning, foresight and data analysis for colleagues and partners;
• 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.

2.) Tapping into new data sources

• Set up partnerships with private sector companies including mobile network operators among others to gain access to anonymized data sets that can be used for sustainable development; 
• Demonstrate through exploratory tests the utility of new data sources for UNDP’s development work;
• Create partnerships for analyses of real time and other data to better inform decisions and policies;
• Design and deliver workshops, tools, or platforms that tap into the collective intelligence of communities and mobilize action; 
• Transform unstructured data sets into insights for UNDP and partners; 
• Proactively manage risks with using data and technology, including those related to ethics and privacy.

3.) Working out loud

• Share findings from the exploration on future trends, new methodologies/approaches, potential partnership, and others within UNDP and with partners;
• Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends; 
• Liaise with UNDP’s global Accelerator Lab network and share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience ;
• Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab.

4.) Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP

• Set up tools and partnerships to transform information into actionable intelligence;
• Design and deliver horizon scanning trainings for partners and UNDP, help embed horizon scanning and attention to the ‘edge’ activities in the CO and with the partners ;
• Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and exploration in particular; 
• Organize and implement knowledge sharing and network events;
• Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab;
• Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from explorations.