UNICEF OOI | Landscape Assessment of Youth Innovation to accelerate results for children

Innovation has been identified as an institutional priority for both the UN and UNICEF; and for UNICEF, is defined as a new or significantly improved solution that accelerates results for children or young people. On this basis, UNICEF Office of Innovation (OOI) and dot. have worked closely to uncover the key drivers of change and the leading innovators who are making a positive impact on children and youth through their innovative projects.

As a result of this collaboration, we have developed a new Youth Innovation Landscape that aims to amplify UNICEF’s capacity to deliver impactful transformational solutions for children and youth, fostering their empowerment, leadership, and agency, while also strengthening accountability of decision-makers to uphold young people’s rights in both development and humanitarian contexts.

This process began with a shared vision and collaborative goal-setting between UNICEF Office of Innovation (OOI) and dot., supported by a tailored methodology based on in-depth research and mapping of key existing initiatives and stakeholders within the youth innovation ecosystem. This quantitative and qualitative analysis on a global scale led to the design of a new youth innovation portfolio capable of driving new short-, medium-, and long-term strategies, as well as establishing a new ecosystem and pipeline of alliances for its development.

About 24 people from both internal and external UNICEF were interviewed and 6 generative sessions with key stakeholders were conducted to explore current culture-led narratives and identify emerging opportunity scenarios. Additionally, over 100 organizations and reference cases were analyzed and synthesized into a system visualization, which facilitated the identification of potential initiatives that could enrich the Youth Innovation Portfolio and turn into impact for UNICEF.

This comprehensive research process enabled us to identify the key areas of impact that young people are prioritizing worldwide. It provided crucial insights for defining the themes that the Youth Innovation portfolio should focus on, while also clarifying the role UNICEF should play in supporting these young changemakers.

As a result of this work, UNICEF's global youth-focused and youth-led innovation strategy priorities were redefined. The problem statements guiding the work of UNICEF's global portfolio of solutions were modified and new partnerships were defined both within UNICEF (creating cross-cutting work streams with other portfolios or other initiatives such as UReport and Fundoo) and with international companies and organizations.