PDIA in Action: Development Through Facilitated Emergence

Harvard HKS

Many policy experts use what we call plan and control methods to introduce new solutions into complex settings. The results are often limited. In many cases this is because the challenges in development are too complex to allow for effective planning or to support the success of ex ante strategies in reform or policy execution. In the face of such complex challenges, we believe that practitioners should be using more flexible facilitated emergence methods, where they focus on problems…