The Black Hole of Humanitarian Innovation

Humanitarian innovation has rapidly emerged to become central to discussions about the future of humanitarianism. Innovation practices are framed as a means by which the humanitarian community can identify the paradigm shift that it needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. However, this framing is based on a misunderstanding of economic theories of innovation and particularly of the nature of humanitarian economics. The lack of both a true market and a profit mechanism in the humanitarian industry means that innovations can be generated but will never be sustained. Unless this obstacle is addressed – perhaps through emerging networked approaches to economic activity – humanitarian innovation will continue to be a dead end. This analysis critically considers what a ‘broken humanitarian system’ means, and goes on to discuss the limits of innovation in fixing that system, and posits that we will not see any sustained returns from that system until we innovate a new financial model.