Why David South Consulting (DSC)/David South International (DSI)?

How we work is as important as the results we get. In fact, we believe it shapes the result. Get the journey to the goal right, and the goal will be better for it; more substantial, more effective, more long-lasting. We have developed a methodology and way of working that can take complex and complicated mandates and turn them into clear achievements.

Through our case studies, we show how messy, complex and often conflicting mandates are re-shaped into substantial achievements that inspire others. We have done this for large institutions undergoing great stress and transformation (usually in some way brought on by digital change), and for smaller organizations and start-ups. 

Modern organizations are diverse, often under stress, and buffeted by shifting political demands. 

We understand complexity is the norm for any organization working with highly educated professionals seeking to be leaders in their field. If you do not engage them, they leave for greener pastures. 

We listen, we review the mandates and research the data; we get to know the players and stakeholders; and then we act, with the staying power and focus required to get substantial results. It has made many of our past clients’ careers - and money. 

This includes offering strategic support to senior large institution leaders, including high-profile women leaders and senior UN officials and healthcare professionals. 

For example, we have twice helped in making UNDP (the UN’s development agency) relevant to the digital era, adapting to the new way of doing things, in particular how young people can be better engaged. We have worked in a major crisis in Asia, during rapid transformation to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) (being called a “role model”), and with a wide range of clients, from youth media start-ups to a prestigious academic research institute. 

Quick to spot trends and consistently viewing them from a human development perspective (UNDP’s development methodology, which is championed every year in its global and national human development reports), DSC/DSI was able to build a respected profile and brand for the United Nations, while drawing others into the innovation and South-South space, making it ‘cool’.

When this work had started at the end of 2006, there was very little coverage online and in the media of the quiet solutions revolution in the global South; today there are many services, media outlets and websites covering stories on the global South and innovation. Examples include The Guardian, SciDev, Devex, Planet Earth Institute, Quartz, etc. And the innovation message has been picked up by governments around the world. 

While consulting for UN missions in the early to mid-2000s, we had noticed a disconnect between how development was being done and what was happening in information and mobile technology and its potential. 

As far back as the late 1990s in Mongolia (then embroiled in a major crisis), DSC/DSI was able to leverage the emerging Internet and information technologies to address the crisis response. Called a “role model” for other UN missions in a global UN assessment, this work inspired the wider UN to alter its approach to these new technologies and capabilities.

During several years of working as a consultant in various UN missions around the world, we also noticed further disconnects. The rapid take-up of mobile phones being the most important. This had gone on quietly but it was revolutionary in what it could do for development. In fact, it was clear there was a quiet revolution happening in how people solved problems and dealt with the problems in their lives and it had little to do with ‘high-level’ declarations or elaborate plans. Instead, people were adapting these new technologies and potentialities to solve their problems organically: how to make money, how to support their families, how to get an education and learn, how to live in the rapidly urbanising world of their lived experience.

In 2007 we were hired by the UN’s then-Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) to document this quiet revolution and champion its innovators and pioneers.    

© David South Consulting 2017

Seven Case Studies on the Way

Seven Case Studies from David South Consulting/David South International will soon be posted on the website. They give a snapshot of past achievements as well as key data and links for anyone conducting research, in particular on youth and crisis resilience/austerity, youth and start-ups, health and human development innovators, international development, United Nations missions and policy, design and strategy (especially as a way out of a crisis), and the application of digital and Internet content to achieve goals. 

Highlights include: 

- investigative journalism

- introducing youth start-up culture to Toronto, Canada

- rescuing Mongolia (a Northeast Asian country) from the worst 20th century post-WWII peacetime economic and social collapse

- pioneering work in communications and digital content for the United Nations leading to it being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001

- modernising online and digital content for the UK's National Health Service and becoming an award-winning role model  

- identifying and shaping the response to the mobile and information technology revolution in the global South and celebrating the 21st century global South innovator culture  

© David South Consulting 2017

Southern Innovator Scale-Up Begins: Get on Board! | 4 June 2015

 

Southern Innovator achieved a great deal during its first phase. The magazine’s concept was beta tested as five issues were developed and rolled out across the global South. Feedback and comments came in from around the world and the magazine was refined based on user responses and experience.

During this time, a plan was developed to scale-up Southern Innovator over the next five years. We would like to do this in two phases. Contact us to learn more about the plan, what resources we require and how to get involved. What is on offer is truly remarkable: an ability to connect with the best and brightest of the global South at the very moment they are shaping the new world of the 21st century. Many have failed to grasp this opportunity and thus have been heavily damaged during the economic crisis; principally because they have failed to understand profound global changes and to see how they can use them to improve what they are doing (though, if they had been reading Southern Innovator, they would have been very clued up!).

Southern Innovator is a product of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), so it is able to directly plug into the UN’s network of global resources helping countries and people. This is a substantial resource and not to be overlooked. Getting involved gets you plugged in and switched on!

http://www.davidsouthconsulting.com/case-studies/southern-innovator-magazine-2015-2017.html

Southern Innovator Summary of Impact 2015

Reflecting on What Has Been Accomplished: The David South Consulting Impact Summary | 27 March 2015

 

The title David South Consulting Summary of Impact is now available online. It covers work undertaken around the world from 1997 to 2014. This has included the rising use of the Internet to communicate, publishing during a major crisis, the campaign to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), modernizing online health resources and how hospital’s communicate in the 21st century, and chronicling some of the most powerful trends sweeping the planet as the global South increases its wealth. 

As powerful information technologies find their way to even the remotest and poorest places on earth, what is communicated on these platforms becomes more and more important. While governments may believe they can ring-fence and hold back the spreading of ideas – both good and bad, negative and positive – ideas will spread because human beings are ingenious communicators. Even if mobile phones and the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, people would find other ways to spread ideas. The future will be ever-more shaped by those who can spread useful ideas even faster. With the right idea, a problem can be tackled or solved. Most of the problems plaguing today’s world can be solved. The advances made in science and technology in the past half century are mind-boggling and many innovations are held back because of fear societies are just not ready to adapt, or because certain interest groups would rather not share what should be a common human inheritance. A simple newsletter, humble in its design, can have a profound impact if the content resonates with people’s dreams and aspirations; if the knowledge and ideas it contains makes them more powerful or able to act.

A magazine can be so much more than just pretty pictures and nice colours if its content captures a common and shared experience neglected by other media. Southern Innovator magazine is an example of this at work.

David South Consulting Summary of Impact

© David South Consulting 2017

You Heard It Here First: Influencing Perspectives on the Global South | 24 June 2014

 

In 2013, UNDP launched its yearly global human development report (http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report). The theme was the “Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”. For those who have been following our e-newsletter Development Challenges, South-South Solutions, or, been reading our magazine Southern Innovator, this will not come as a surprise. Both the e-newsletter and the magazine have consistently championed a new perspective on the global South and have shown through solid evidence that a fundamental shift is underway in the world. Both publications have been influential in shifting perspectives and priorities, and most importantly, in drawing attention to the plentiful abundance of innovators: all part of a global innovation culture. As can be seen below, the seeds of the HDR can be found in the first issue of Southern Innovator, launched in 2011.

The cover for the 2013 Global Human Development Report and its theme “The Rise of the South”.

In 1997, I was the Managing Editor for Mongolia’s first national human development report. The challenge was to deliver a report that reflected the new thinking on poverty expressed in the 1997 global human development report – that it was possible to apply human know-how to eradicate poverty within a generation – and to communicate the story of Mongolia’s turbulent transition years in a way that placed the people at the centre of the narrative, and to do it during a major economic crisis. The team decided to take a sharply different approach to the design of the report, placing the photograph of a child on the cover and using children’s illustrations throughout the report. It showed that human development is not just a series of charts and statistics, but is about making life better for the country’s large youth population. The cover also had a minor adjustment to how the title is presented, discarding the staccato breaking up of the words human and development, to run them side by side as “Human Development”. A subtle change but one that was picked up by the global human development report in its future editions. The report also chose to use its design and printing as a spur to improve the publishing industry in Mongolia. Devastated by the economic crisis, the domestic printing companies lacked the resources and skills to publish to modern standards. Working with a Mongolian publishing company, the large print run of the report (20,000 copies) was able to transform the company’s fortunes, enabling them to purchase new computers and equipment.

Human Development Report Mongolia 1997.

The 1997 global human development report and the 2013 human development report.

 

 

© David South Consulting 2017