Unlocking the pioneering mathematics of deep interoperability. Unleashing the power of collective human intelligence.
a human-centered future
EXISTING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY ISN’T A MATCH FOR THE WORLD’S HARDEST SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
IDEMS IS BUILDING THE GROUNDBREAKING DIGITAL INNOVATION THAT IS.
We’re ushering in a new era of impact technology built on the frontier mathematics of “deep interoperability”. IDEMS innovation breaks through existing data siloes and breaks open black-box software systems to create public-good digital infrastructure and applications that adaptively scale to work in and across global, social and economic complexity. Together with accountable AI, IDEMS human-centred innovation unlocks global-local collaboration, shared sense making, and collective innovation for continuously improving digital programmes that scale impact in communities around the world.
Teachers access expert-developed high-quality educational resources relevant to their country’s curriculum and shape them to meet their classroom contextual realities and individual student needs. Parents access proven programming for improved parenting and childhood development that works in, and benefits from the ongoing support of, their local communities. Smallholder farmers lead sustainable farming research with support from global experts to develop climate-resilient practices and identify new commercial opportunity as shaped by their on-the-ground circumstances.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR HUMAN FLOURISHING.
The origins of next-gen impact tech
THE IMPACT INNOVATION COLLABORATORY
SHAPED BY GLOBAL EXPERTISE.
SUSTAINED BY COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP.
EVOLVED BY EVERYONE.
IDEMS’ pioneering digital programmes and infrastructure emerge from our Impact Innovation Collaboratories. Our impact-trained mathematical scientists, technologists and social scientists work in multidisciplinary partnership with field-leading experts and stakeholder communities to inclusively, sustainably scale proven social programmes with technology.
From our work across Collaboratories, IDEMS is uniquely positioned to identify and make sense of systemic gaps and impediments to scaling impact with existing technology. The most urgent demand is clear from our team’s decades of collaboration: Deep human-centred innovation that enables local adaptation and ownership of technology and unlocks “collective intelligence” by enabling multidirectional collaboration, sense making and iteration by global experts and local communities at scale.
In this context IDEMS human-centering R&D and product innovation includes:
IMPACT DIGITAL
PROGRAMMES
Conceptualization, pilot impact validation trials and adaptive global scaling (with continuous research validation of impact) of inclusive, context-relevant digital social programmes that enable collaboration among global experts and local communities to address specific impact goals and UNSDGs
IMPACT-ENABLING
INFRASTRUCTURE
Cross-Collaboratory pattern and problem mapping to identify common impediments to collaboratively scaling impact in systemic variability. Conceptualisation, prototyping and applied validation of interventionagonistic enabling sociotechnical frameworks, processes and infrastructure
COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION AT WORK
COMMUNITY IMPACT PILOTS.
EXPERT RESEARCH TRIALS.
ADAPTIVE GLOBAL SCALING.
education >
public health>
agroecology >
climate >
biodiversity >
Impact scales sustainably and affordably when a range of experts and affected stakeholders are empowered to own, control and iteratively evolve impact programming, as relevant to their knowledge, expertise and social networks. Connected, collective community tech.
IDEMS GLOBAL RESEARCH & IMPLEMENTATION PARTNERS INCLUDE
{ SPOTLIGHT INNOVATION }
AFFORDABLE,
ACCESSIBLE
HIGH-QUALITY
STEM TEXTBOOKS
FOR EVERY STUDENT
EVERYWHERE.
IDEMS-led Collaboratory innovation addresses
AN IMPACT TECHNOLOGY GAP
AN IMPACT TECHNOLOGY GAP
A crowded landscape of software and digital solutions creates the perception, among experts and funders, that the tech required to cost-effectively, sustainably scale impact already exists. They can’t understand what’s gone wrong when digital programmes, built with available tech and successfully trialled in one context, fail to deliver impact at scale.
BUT THE INNOVATION NEEDED TO AFFORDABLY, SUSTAINABLY SCALE IMPACT ACROSS GLOBAL SOCIAL, DIGITAL AND ECONOMIC VARIABILITY IS INSUFFICIENT OR DOESN’T EXIST YET.
Current digital interventions fail to effectively scale impact with existing technology for common reasons.
Existing technology is:
😐 one-size-fits-all
Existing technology scales through replication. But low-resource communities are defined by social, digital and economic variability
👎 tech-centring
Experts identify problems and create solutions. Formative inputs are lost in black-box systems that aren’t transparent, accountable to, or alterable by stakeholders
☠️ dependency-reinforcing
Tech developed and data controlled by remote experts reinforces power dynamics, fails to relevantly serve the needs of local contects, and often introduces new harms
The solution lies in
ADAPTABLE, SCALABLE COMMUNITY TECH
Every Collaboratory digital impact programme is different, yet to inclusively, sustainably scale across global variability they share a common need: The ability to enable local adaptation, ownership and
innovation within a single expert-developed, evidence-based global impact programme infrastructure.
Successful programmes enable local adaptation and move toward community ownership while retaining connection to expert-developed, evidence-based impact programming in a single global network.
In implementation across collaborations, different grand-challenge programmes face different barriers to entry, but all share the same set of barriers to achieving scale impact.
Programmes share a need for:
variants
Programme variants develop out of an expert-developed/maintained suite of variables (form, function & content) to serve a local context
governance
System-wide governance maintains global standards of impact alongside local-context governance rules and standards
contextualisation
Non-technologist and/or low skill local stakeholders are empowered to adapt, iterate and innovate local programme variant
data privacy
Real ID-based compliance enforced by local oversight under systemic standards of accountability, no unaccountable, punitive data collection use
retained value
A local context gains and maintains financial independence, capturees and retains generated value and economic benefits
local ownership
A local context owns and controls a digital programme and its data to contribute to ongoing sensemaking, iteration, and innovation
An Innovative Social Enterprise. A Purpose-Led Team.
AS A UK-BASED COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY, IDEMS HOLDS OURSELVES TO THE HIGHEST STANDARDS FOR DELIVERING SOCIAL IMPACT, SERVING COMMUNITIES GLOBALLY AND AMBITIOUS BUSINESS GROWTH AND INNOVATION.
IDEMS is a home for purpose-driven mathematical scientists, social scientists and applied technologists reimagining how technology can work for everyone. We attract top mathematical scientists and field-leading experts by offering a challenging and rewarding “third way” career path as an alternative to
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