It all begins with a people-centered design process where partners constitute a Leadership Group, conduct successive workshops to identify, prioritize, and select an innovation. The Leadership Group forms the core advisory board throughout the process, where engaging stakeholders early ensures their buy-in, support, and commitment to scale and transition.

With a selected innovation, this stage is a necessary precursor before Introduction whereby the team pressure tests all assumptions and fills out the entire Innovation Launch Plan framework. This exercise helps partners anticipate risks and plan towards transition from the beginning.

With a people-centered innovation selected and a completed Innovation Launch Plan framework, it’s time to officially introduce the innovation. This stage is where many traditional projects start, but the prerequisite work in Stages 1 and 2 will help optimize and accelerate Stage 3.

Also known as interim sustainability, this stage sees the innovation scaled nationally with support from outside the catalytic initial investment. This support could be from other donors or with domestic budgeting. Key to this stage is the inclusion of the innovation in the country’s National Strategic Plan.

This is it, what this entire framework has been building towards. While Stage 1 ensured that the selected innovation was what demand driven, Stage 2 also ensured the team knew who and what was required to transition the project. At this stage, domestic budgets are allocated, any hosting or maintenance responsibilities are transitioned, and the catalytic investment is completely removed for complete local ownership.