Assessing the promise of innovation for improving humanitarian performance

Millions of dollars have been invested in thousands of innovations, hundreds of organisations and tens of funds. This report explores the contribution of these innovations to the performance of the humanitarian system through three questions:

1. Over the past decade, what key trends and events have shaped humanitarian innovation?
2. What types of impact do humanitarian innovation funders aim for, and how do they measure impact?
3. What is the evidence that investments in humanitarian innovation have led to improvements in humanitarian action?

This a complementary piece of research to the 2022 State of the Humanitarian System report, and examines humanitarian innovation and its impact in more depth over the period 2011–2021.