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Innovation Carve-Outs
Creating space for innovation to be freely pursued and scaled
Across Brink’s work with FCDO, city mayors, the World Bank and everything in between, we’ve heard the same thing time and again: “it’s easier to sign off £50m than £50k”.
We design programmes and funds to address this challenge, by creating a space for innovation to be freely pursued within existing organisations or systems.
Typically this involves designing a combination of a fund, non-financial support and innovation culture that supports investigating, testing and proving (or not!) the validity of an idea in order to catalyse change in the bigger system.
Brink addresses cultural and systemic barriers to innovation through
- Dedicated funding vehicles like the £25M EdTech Hub (2020-present) influencing national education policies
- City-level programmes such as the Africa Smart Towns Network supporting 11 municipalities with €50-55K grants to test digital initiatives that eventually shifted city hall strategy
- Frontier technology experimentation across FCDO including £14.3M in drone/AI pilots for development challenges
Key features include
- Adaptive grant structures (from £25K ideation grants to £500K scaling funds)
- Creating conditions for innovation cultures within existing bureaucracies and forging pathways for mainstreaming innovation like OECD and FT Hub
- Lean methodology coaching that helped Kampala reduce traffic solution development time by 40% and mainstream innovation methods and new services into city hall strategy
Read our whitepaper, The Carve-Out: Innovation's Next Evolutionary Step.
Related work
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Full case studyISC Digital Journeys
Strengthening the digital maturity of science organisations
Science, technology, and innovation (STI) systems are evolving rapidly, but organisations in low-resource settings, especially in low- and middle-income countries, face significant challenges in adopting digital tools like AI and online platforms, as well as developing the necessary ways of working that underpin them.
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Frontier Tech Hub
Supporting e-mobility pioneers in Africa
Motorcycle taxis are a dominant mode of transport in East Africa, yet high fuel costs and emissions burden drivers and the environment. While electric motorcycles offered a solution, adoption was hindered by high upfront costs, battery limitations, and lack of charging infrastructure.
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Full case studyASToN
Creating innovative ways for a city council to provide effective local services
Challenged assumptions and introduced ‘bureaucratic innovation’ right across the council, leading to smart, citizen-centered services that make paying taxes simpler.
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Full case studyEdTech Hub
Realising the potential of technology to transform education
Leading innovation as part of the FCDO-funded Global EdTech Hub, Brink’s role is to make room for experimentation and to convert evidence into implementation in Kenya, Malawi, Zanzi.
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