In that context, the Strategic Innovation Unit within the Bureau for Program and Policy support has worked with various UNDP teams, governments and other partners on exploring portfolio approaches that can accelerate system transformation. This work progresses along the two parallel tracks – one that focuses on building capabilities for developing a different value proposition to tackle complex development challenges and another that addresses institutional redesign necessary to enable a shift from projects to portfolios. This critically implies a rewiring of core systems –  from M&E and finance to new capabilities & ways of working.

The SIU team does this through the work of its distributed regional and a global team and a network of colleagues embed within country offices and other corporate units. The global SIU team is responsible, among others, for a number of initatives including a seminal Innovation Facility and a more recent investment of the Gates Foundation in the M&E Sandbox that it set up in 2022.

The portfolio approach has been applied in the Europe and Central Asia region since 2020, focusing on three key areas: green transition, digital transformation and urban transformation.  To learn more about UNDP’s work in this area, check: innovation.eurasia.undp.org & https://medium.com/@undp.innovation

Provision of Country Office Support:

• Advise offices in the Europe and Central Asia region in identifying new entry points and value-propositions in line with needs in the country and UNDP’s mandate;
• Provide specialized advise to offices in the roll-out of the portfolio policy, design of portfolios of interventions, including though designing the process, supporting consultations with stakeholders and facilitating ideation of interventions;
• In collaboration with country offces, advise and develop context specific  monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks, and support operationalization of portfolios;
• Connect offices with top notch expertise in the area of innovation, as well as identify emerging areas and partners that may be relevant to their needs;
• Supports strategic outreach and engagement with donors and Governments for the integration of innovation in their work;
• Organize training and capacity-building workshops for UNDP offices and partners on topics related to system innovation, portfolio design and management, and other related topics;
• Keep abreast with the latest knowledge and skills in innovation.

Partnership and Advocacy:

• Support resource mobilization effort at the country and regional level, through donor mapping, identification of new partners and design of advocacy events;
• Forge key partnerships with governments, CSOs, academia and the private sector; encourage South-South partnerships;
• Forge key partnerships with leading innovation agencies, think tanks, experts;
• Support strategic partnerships with UN Agencies and Funds, IFIs, Multilateral development banks, Impact Investors and the Private Sector;
• Identifies and engages with the relevant private sector partners for bringing in expertise, technology and other private sector resources for the formulation and implementation of innovation.

Innovation Community Building and Knowledge Codification:

• Ensure that the region’s innovation community, including the Accelerator Labs, is kept abreast of latest trends, proactively shares insights and experiences and develops compelling knowledge products;
• Lead knowledge management efforts – including through connecting offices with one another, connecting to external knowledge;
• Identify and lead on opportunities for codification of knowledge and practices, based on CO experiences, through reports, multi-media, books, snapshots, and/or other materials;
• Ensure that UNDP’s innovation efforts in the region result in the creation of new knowledge that maintains UNDP’s offering relevant vis a vis governments when dealing with complex development challenges;
• Identify opportunities to scale practices across geographies, in collaboration with the SIU and CDO;
• Leads the provision of training and capacity building to COs in areas related to innovation, system and digital transformation;
• Contribute to regional team’s  ‘working out loud’ by continuously sharing challenges, successes, lessons learnt for knowledge sharing across the clients’ base and for active participation in the regional and global international networks.

Other Tasks:

• Contribute to regional efforts, as needed, for the mainstreaming of innovation in IRH and at the country level;
• Contribute  with knowledge and expertise to global efforts, as needed, including through connecting with other regions, participating in the innovation community, and contribution to knowledge products,
• The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Institutional Arrangement

The incumbent will report to the Regional Team Leader, with the overall guidance of the Istanbul Regional Hub Director.

• Achieve Results: LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact
• Think Innovatively: LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems
• Learn Continuously: LEVEL 3: Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences
• Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands
• Act with Determination: LEVEL 3: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results
• Engage and Partner: LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration
• Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity

• Customer Satisfaction/Client Management:
  • Ability to respond timely and appropriately with a sense of urgency, provide consistent solutions, and deliver timely and quality results and/or solutions to fulfill and understand the real customers’ needs.
  • Provide inputs to the development of customer service strategy. Look for ways to add value beyond clients’ immediate requests. Ability to anticipate client’s upcoming needs and concerns.
• Collective Intelligence Design:
  • Ability to design, lead or manage processes that help a collective to become smarter together by bringing together diverse groups of people, data, and technology.
  • Ability to define and articulate why and how collective intelligence can add value to development programming (understanding problems; finding solutions; decision making and mobilising action; monitoring progress in real time, learning and adapting)
  • Being able to integrate different types of data (real-time, ‘ground- truth’ and novel data) to unlock fresh insights. Understand guidelines and principles around data privacy, ethics and protection.
  • Increase diversity of inputs – and look beyond the ‘usual suspects’, ability to navigate and manage a variety of actors, appreciate the diversity in perspectives, opinions, expertise.
  • Ability to facilitate platforms or sessions where people can contribute by providing their views and ideas independently and freely.
  • Being people-centred: ensure people understand and can determine how their data is used. Feed back inputs and insights to empower people, don’t extract data.
• Knowledge Generation:
  • Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.
• Co-creation:
  • Ability to design and facilitate a process that enables a diverse group of stakeholders to solve a common problem, develop a practice, or create knowledge together.
  • Ability to embrace diversity, work with a diverse group of stakeholders understand their interests, perspectives and views and tap into to them as a source for creativity.
  • Ability to facilitate processes and create conditions that are open for diverse inputs, stimulate collaboration and sharing.
• Creative facilitation:
  • Ability to design workshops that considers and addresses multiple interests, agendas, worldviews; set out clear objectives and engaging activities; select appropriate tools, materials, resources that are needed to enable or support the activities.
  • Ability to swiftly build rapport with participants and create a safe space (on- and offline) where they feel comfortable to share their views, concerns, experiences and reflections; supporting this with a range of tools to stimulate active participation.
  • Ability to facilitate inclusive conversations, ability to work with a diverse set of people with different backgrounds, seniority and expert levels, using different approaches tailored to fit the people in the room, drawing out the perspectives and ideas of each individual and making decisions through deliberation and discussion across a group.
  • Ability to pace a session, adjust to the abilities and energy levels of attendees and the nature or purpose of an exercise. Being flexible and able to improvise; adapting and changing approaches in response to the needs, while staying true to the intent and objectives of the session.
• Sensemaking:
  • Being curious about “what’s going on?” in the world or direct business environment, grasp ‘thick data’, separate signals from noise, adopt new frames to identify (non-obvious) patterns.
  • Ability to facilitate group reflection and induce collective learning to extract meaning from experiences; socialise these insights to inform problem solving, decision making, strategic planning or future work.
  • Ability to share and disseminate new perspectives or understandings influencing how key stakeholders socially construct meaning.
• Storytelling:
  • Ability to empathise with people’s perceptions, motivations, feelings and mental models and craft narratives to build an emotive argument for change accordingly.
  • Ability to present data, insights or information in compelling ways to mobilise resources, talent or action.
  • Ability to choose media and channels that is fit for purpose to reach specific target audiences.