A week ago I came across an interesting blog by Dave Algoso - http://algoso.org . He used the concept of “hype cycle” developed by the consultancy Gartner to measure different ideas in development cooperation. I had a “heureka moment” and realized that development cooperation can be defined by two words as “applied philosophy”. Let me elaborate.

I like the point about academia as an important counter-hype actor that challenges the too optimistic view on some innovations. But the problem is that only few people read academic research and so the views that are contrary to current group-think cannot spread fast enough.

What is development cooperation in two words? From building bridges to democracy promotion - it is everything and nothing. Bridges would be built even without ODA, so we need to grasp it with something grander than definition of one tiny sector (measured by media attention) with a huge annual 150 billion turnover. I think, “development cooperation is applied philosophy”. Since Marx, philosophy should not just define the world and words, but change it. In this context we can also view the whole “changing the narrative” and “policy coherance for development” debate. Inequality ceases to be only a continuous left vs righ debate, but changes the perception of the economic success of various nations. Take the Human Depvelopment Index as an example. If you adjust it for Gini (IHDI) you get a totally different picture where for example my country Slovakia ranked in 2011 higher than USA.



As for the hype cycle - it is a nice concept but only two-dimensional (time + some value of hype measured e.g. by Google n-Grams or Google Trends). And we shouldn’t mix tools with concepts, methods, paradigms…

As for the utility of development interventions - the model of optimal landscape is interesting way how to view different policy solutions. You can have a local optimum, but sometimes you need to go “down the valley” to find a better optimum on “a higher hill”. For example you need to close the economically ineffective old factory, retrain the people who lost jobs and change economic policy to clean tech innovations. Take Finland as na example. They are looking for another Nokia in the clean tech sector and made a strong push into green economy, where they support clusters of innovative companies. These focuse e.g. on building whole new cities in China.

My concept I mockingly call Finding Omega (the oposite to Seeking Alpha, the popular financial blog. Alpha is a risk adjusted measure of return on investment). It is based on the best cost/benefit ratio solutions that are similar to Copenhagen Consensus Center approach. But the difference is that here you look for hidden inefficiencies that can change the political narrative or completely redefine one sector.



My examples or solutions:



1) Ban or tax the Per Diems - big impact in many fields



2) Treat organized crime and terrorism as two sides of one coin - one joint threat - redefines the security sector where huge resources are misalocated. Would give a much bigger boost to advocates of ending the drug wars, etc.



3) Support the establishment of Laozi Institutes as a competition to China’s soft power strategy of Confucius Institutes. - Something similar to US approach of Democrats vs Republicans and their institutes.



4) Hacktivism is counterproductive in the long term - only “hacking the political narrative” changes the system - the old school advocacy supported by some new tools like Innovation Jam by IBM. I have my personal accomplishment in this field to showcase (2012 Security Jam report and the 10 top recommendations for NATO, page 34).

What are your opinions on DevCo as applied philosophy or some other models that can help us define the right strategies?