Here some blog posts I’ve read recently and liked. You’ll find the links to the blogs also in my blogroll on the right.

Back to output-only reporting? Duncan Green is writing on results measurement: Can we demonstrate effectiveness without bankrupting our NGO and/or becoming a randomista?

A post also related to measuring results of development interventions by Ben Ramalingam, which dates back a bit longer: Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach

And here a controversal post by Owen Barder where he argues that it is not measuring the results that is the real problem, but the overambitious goals that we are setting for our aid initiatives, i.e., that our aid money should lead to long-term economic growth: MEASURING AID EFFECTIVENESS EFFECTIVELY: BEING CLEAR ABOUT OBJECTIVES

On another topic: Shawn Cunningham has posted a whole series on innovation systems that is definitely worth reading for anyone working in private sector and local economic development:

• Starting the innovation series
• Quick recap: what is an innovation system?
• The difference between invention and innovation
• Innovation is not linear
• The difference between academic and industrial science
• Identifying firms to work with to induce upgrading of industries (with a comment from my side)

Always good for a laugh: xkcd on file transfers

And last but not least an older post by Duncan Green on using games for learning and improved decision-making in complex systems using evolutionary principles: Playing games with the climate – a great way to explore difficult choices in complex systems