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Innovation Nodes

Illuminating 'unknown' domains of impact and uncovering new practices and pathways for transformative innovation for children

Asma’a, 6, in her KG class in Za'atari Refugee Camp.

The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.

Socrates (Plato's Apology)

Innovation Nodes are transdisciplinary and collaborative spaces that focus on reflecting and generating novel wisdom in new and unknown areas of potential innovation for children.

UNICEF’s Global Innovation Strategy looks “to identify gaps and opportunities and uncover unproven approaches and technologies to be explored.” This is the focus of the Innovation Nodes. The nodes inquire about realms of impact for children yet to be explored and discovered, launching new areas of expertise in emerging domains with unknown impact on innovation for children.

Our approach

We collaborate with pioneering organizations to explore and probe “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”.

These new transdisciplinary collaborations will reduce our ignorance, risks, and opportunity costs and increase impact for children.

Why transdisciplinary?

The transdisciplinary approach to research and innovation includes multiple perspectives and diverse knowledge systems - resulting in new conceptual, theoretical and methodological insights that transcend traditional discipline-specific domains and practices, as illustrated by McPhee et al. (2018).

Transdisciplinarity requires participants to challenge assumptions, including their own, thereby encouraging mutual learning and nurturing an open, holistic and integrative ethos to knowledge co-production and innovation.