We’ve recently been pondering the question of how innovation and service delivery are facilitated in real world markets. This is a particularly sticky question in the development industry, where significant “search friction” occurs.

To address the problem, we’ve come up with a theoretical approach based on making supply and demand more efficiently organized when connecting funders with development service providers.

We’ve wrapped this theory up as a submission for Nokia’s Africa Innovation Summit. From the proposal:

“Introducing the Development Score, an index or ‘credit score’ for groups working for social impact. The Score considers both objective and subjective measures of a given supplier/do-gooder’s methodology, successes, and overall accountability, with the algorithm/metrics determined by a group of experts in development, business, and public service.

From this index, ‘buyers’ of development work gain a standardized, transparent method for judging investments. Especially for on-the-ground buyers like local community groups, the Score becomes a reliable way to gauge the various groups that say ‘they just want to help’.

As the Score would affect do-gooders’ ability to deliver positive impact — by leading to appropriate carrots and sticks — development service providers will be motivated to apply recognized best practices in pursuit of a good ranking. Best practices might include elements of project design and methodology (ie. how much do you engage the local community in programme design?), data openness and broader utility (ie. can other groups access/use your information for other ends?), and monitoring and evaluation (ie. how well/poorly did it go, and how does this affect future iterations?) “

Click over to Nokia’s site to read the full proposal. We welcome your criticism and feedback as we work to improve the idea.