LAUNCH Food External Report

LAUNCH Food Report May 2018

CONTENTS Executive Summary

4

Focus on Food

5

Focus on the Pacific

6

LAUNCH Food Objectives LAUNCH

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Food Process

8

Defining the Challenge

11

Sourcing LAUNCH Food

13

Innovators Network-Centered

16

Innovation LAUNCH Acceleration

19

Outcomes Innovators

20

LAUNCH Legends

23

Network

24

Movement

25

Key Learnings

27

Where Next?

29

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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EXTERNAL

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Executive Summary Originally conceived as a health hack for the Pacific, the LAUNCH Food program was born from the marrying of a local challenge with a global program leveraging innovators as catalysts for system change. LAUNCH Food represents the coming together of two development agencies, and the ongoing support of a handful of private sector collaborators for an innovation cycle that has sparked a multi-year movement.

What we set out to achieve with LAUNCH Food changed rapidly as we realized what might be possible. We challenged ourselves to create a worldwide network to design and address a global food challenge, anchored and inspired by cutting edge innovations. However, LAUNCH Food has challenged us on everything from the science of Network-Centered Innovation, to our understanding of the global levers for change for local development challenges.

Through LAUNCH Food, we have sourced and supported innovations that when deployed at scale will increase the affordable and accessible supply of desirable and nutritious food, and reinforce and reward healthy food habits. We have worked to actively increase understanding of the health challenges associated with malnutrition, and the underlying systemic factors contributing to its propagation, particularly in less affluent communities. We have recruited experts from across sectors and disciplines to participate in every step of the program, and have touched hard-to-reach changemakers through targeted social and traditional media campaigns.

It has taught us that well functioning networks are all about leverage; what makes a network valuable for everyone involved is the type of leverage they get from participation - be it investment, procurement or innovation. We are reshaping our program to achieve these leverage results for our network, and are learning how to quantify and value them.

LAUNCH Food has shown us that there is a role for consumer engagement - demand creation - in shifting global and local food systems, and we have initiated a trial in the Pacific. We will continue to support two LAUNCH Legends innovators as they deploy immersive storytelling pilots to inspire more nutritious eating habits in Tonga and Fiji.

Looking ahead, LAUNCH is committed to recruiting partners across the food system to join our LAUNCH Food movement.

LAUNCH brings a unique approach to this work, but we are by no means the only ones addressing this global challenge. We will look to credible thought leaders to guide the development of our vision for the future of food, and the challenges we deploy in support of this goal. We will continue to develop our networkcentered programming to mobilize the most innovative minds in support of a safe, equitable and sustainable food future.

LAUNCH Food has taught us that local development is about global markets; changing the way we eat locally is about changing global systems. Our aha moment came with a realization that the development agenda is really just an expansion of the discussion to include the marginalized and underserved in the dialogue of what it means for everyone to have access to sustainable nutritious food.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Why Focus on Food?

In 2016, LAUNCH took on a challenge we’ve never addressed before: food. With two interrelated challenges – the global LAUNCH Food call for innovations and the regionally-focused LAUNCH Legends call for innovative storytelling proposals – LAUNCH asked innovators around the world to imagine how their work could improve global health outcomes by enabling people to make healthy food choices.

Why food? Let’s walk through the numbers.

The global community has made great strides in curbing hunger worldwide: in the past 25 years, the number of undernourished people has decreased almost 45%. (That’s 216 million people no longer going hungry!). Still, hunger remains a huge public health problem: it kills more people every year than malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS combined.

Undernutrition now accounts for 11% of the global burden of disease and is considered the number one risk to health worldwide. Developing countries bear the heaviest burden – 12.9% of people in developing countries are undernourished, compared to 10.8% of the global population as a whole.

At the same time, 1 in 3 adults worldwide is overweight and 1 in 10 is obese, increasing their likelihood of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, various cancers and osteoarthritis. And while it may seem counterintuitive, some of the regions hardest-hit by undernutrition also have high rates of obesity. The co-incidence of under and overnutrition is known as the “double burden”.

Malnutrition also has major economic consequences. People who were undernourished as children are conservatively estimated to earn 10-20% less over the course of their lifetimes. At a country level, the economic costs of malnutrition are estimated to top 16% of Gross Domestic Product in the most affected places. In other words, hunger is a serious hindrance to economic empowerment, slowing growth and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

The factors influencing people’s healthy food choices are many, diverse and interrelated. They are at once personal, cultural, sociological and economic, while simultaneously driven by global and regional food security, government policy, and industry.

Malnutrition in all its forms

Child Stunting Low height for age

Child Wasting Low weight for height

Micronutrient Deficiency Iron, folic acid, vitamin A, zinc, iodine below healthy thresholds

Child Overweight High weight for height

Adult Obesity Carrying excess body fat with a body mass > 30

Adult Overweight Carrying excess body fat with a body mass index > 25

Noncommunicable Diseases Diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers

Source: Adapted with permission from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI 2016). Global Nutrition Report 2016: From Promise to Impact: Ending Malnutrition by 2030.

“Malnutrition in All Its Forms” infographic. Washington, DC. http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/9780896295841.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Why Focus on the Indo-Pacific?

These challenges are particularly acute in the Indo-Pacific region – in fact, experts increasingly view this region as the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the growing global challenge of malnutrition.

• The region accounts for nearly 63% of the world’s chronically hungry people.

• Nine out of the ten countries with the highest rates of overweight and obese adults are in the Indo-Pacific region.

• In Melanesia, over one-third of children under age five are stunted as a result of chronic undernutrition.

• Diabetes prevalence among adults in the Pacific region is among the highest in the world, topping 47% in American Samoa.

• In Tonga, the BBC reports, “up to 40% of the population is thought to have Type 2 diabetes and life expectancy is falling.

Watch LAUNCH’s short documentary exploring efforts to combat obesity and undernutrition in Tonga and Timor-Leste: Video Link - Tonga and Timor: Turning the Tide on Obesity and Undernutrition

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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What Did We Set Out to Achieve?

LAUNCH was established in 2009 by NASA, Nike Inc., USAID and the US Department of State. Since that time we have run challenges to address water sustainability, global health, waste, energy, clean manufacturing, and more. This first LAUNCH Food challenge marked the start of a broader focus on food systems for LAUNCH.

In addition, we set out to test the following hypotheses: 1. LAUNCH can generate value to network members beyond individual innovators

LAUNCH Food Program Objectives: 1. To source cutting-edge innovations that: a. Increase the affordable and accessible supply of desirable and nutritious food, and/or b. Reinforce and reward healthy food habits

3. LAUNCH can be effective for a development challenge

2. To facilitate new models of partnership that accelerate breakthrough innovations 3. To increase understanding of this challenge and the issues behind it, inspiring more opportunities for change, particularly in key development markets 4. To create a world-wide coalition of the committed to tackle this challenge 5. To leverage additional investment from new partners

2. LAUNCH can source scalable innovations at a global level that are valuable and appropriate for local application

4. LAUNCH can work effectively outside the US / European context Long-term Target Impact of LAUNCH Food Innovators Innovations accelerated by LAUNCH Food will contribute toward the progress of broad global nutrition goals. Future indicators to be developed with innovators include: 1. 10 per cent reduction in under 5 stunting and/or wasting levels in target sites over the next 5 years.

2. A 10 per cent reduction in prevalence of overweight and obesity levels in adults in target sites over the next 5 years.

3. A 10 per cent reduction in target non-communicable diseases (diabetes and heart disease) in target sites over the next decade.

The outlined timeframe for achievement of these outcomes is 2-10 years. These outcomes helped guide the sourcing of LAUNCH Innovators.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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What Was Our Process?

LAUNCH Food Needfinding: Between March and September 2016, LAUNCH Food scoped and engaged a new and diverse network to support a global food revolution, starting with the technical teams from our partner organizations, DFAT and USAID. These early network members played an active role in the design of the LAUNCH Food challenge through one-on-one interviews and three Think-style meetings (in Australia, the USA, and Sweden), which brought together leaders from government, industry, academia, and civil society, along with entrepreneurs and investors. Their input helped us frame a broad food challenge around two key areas – producing food and consuming food – and to identify areas in need of innovation.

Based on counsel from the LAUNCH Food network, the challenge focused on innovations that offer impact at the level of an individual’s personal choice. The resulting LAUNCH Food challenge was deliberately broad in scope, in an attempt to gain a snapshot of the innovation landscape.

Challenge launch: The challenge was launched by the Hon. Julie Bishop, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Beth Dunford of USAID’s Bureau for Food Security at a Food Revolution dinner hosted by the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and EAT Foundation in New York City on September 19, 2016. Its distribution was aided by a partnership with social networking platform World Pulse, which facilitated a Global Food Diary, attracting social media submissions from 14 countries.

Innovator sourcing: The LAUNCH Food team used a range of tactics to spread word of the challenge among diverse communities of innovators.

INNOVATOR SOURCING We put out monthly email calls to the LAUNCH Food network, as well as more frequent calls on social media. We targeted promising startups in the food innovation space and invited them to apply. We created pages on innovator networks like F6S and the Global Innovation Exchange. Several network member organizations spread the word among their networks, including the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, the Thought for Food Challenge, Big Ideas at Berkeley, EAT Forum, and Food System 6.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

Innovator On-Ramp: Understanding the importance of innovators working to change food systems in their own communities, we also ran an experiment in local innovator engagement. This took the form of a week-long workshop in Timor-Leste that brought together 27 individuals from across the Indo-Pacific to build connections, develop key skills in storytelling and communication, and support individuals to apply to the program. Of those who attended, 19% applied to the LAUNCH Food challenge, of which 7% were progressed to late-stage review. Two of these innovators were selected to receive DFAT grant funding.

Beyond the participants, this workshop gave the program invaluable insights that ensured LAUNCH was able to remain grounded in the realities of the challenge, and had seeded a network in the region.

Innovator selection: The LAUNCH Food challenge netted 280 applications from 74 countries. These applications underwent technical review by a diverse team of 76 experts from across our network, and the top applicants were invited to interview. In the final stage, 11 innovators were selected for their fit for the LAUNCH program and for their potential to support other innovators in the selected cohort.

Innovator preparation: On initiation into the program, the LAUNCH Food innovators met virtually to share their work and their ambitions. They spent two months working closely with a LAUNCH Guide to parse out their goals for LAUNCH participation, to identify capacity needs, and to prepare an engaging presentation for the LAUNCH Food Forum. The LAUNCH innovators came together in San Francisco ahead of the Forum for pitch practice and for workshops in storytelling, and monitoring and evaluation. This marked the start of the LAUNCH Food curriculum.

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LAUNCH Food Forum: Hosted in San Francisco in March 2017, the Forum was a facilitated multi-day event connecting innovators with a Council of 54 targeted representatives from across the food system, including prospective buyers, investors, partners, collaborators, champions, and mentors. Council Members participated from Google, Walmart, IKEA, eBay, the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, the Sara and Evan Williams Foundation, Gates Foundation, IDEO, and more.

At the Forum, each innovator presented to the full Forum audience and participated in tailored ‘impact rotations’, a type of speed-dating that allows innovators fast-paced facilitated dialogue with small groups of Council Members. Impact rotations allowed for the quick iteration of key ideas and opportunities, and for commitments of support from Council Members. In total, Council Members made 344 commitments to the LAUNCH Food innovators across five areas: Connectivity, Capacity, Creativity, Capital, and Credibility.

Acceleration: LAUNCH Food innovators worked with their LAUNCH Guides for nine months post-Forum to leverage the LAUNCH network in support of their innovations. Guides helped each innovator prioritize and follow up on the commitments made during the Forum; they also provided individualized business model support and made connections as needed from within the LAUNCH network. The innovator cohort met virtually every few weeks to share updates and learnings.

At the same time, innovators participated in monthly curriculum sessions matched to identified needs. The LAUNCH Food curriculum included LAUNCH-led learning and/or expert panel sessions on Measuring and Communicating Value, Understanding Your User, The Right Capital, Partnering with Government, Beyond the Pilot, and the B Impact Assessment from B Lab. Accelerator +:

Financial Support For the first time, thanks to our partner DFAT, LAUNCH was able to facilitate grant funding for innovators. Announced by the Hon. Julie Bishop MP, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, up to AUS $5m was dedicated to piloting LAUNCH Food innovators in the Indo-Pacific region. Projects will start early 2018.

Storytelling Social storytelling is a key piece of LAUNCH’s network engagement process, as well as our larger movement– building strategy. Throughout LAUNCH Food we have celebrated the ambitions and achievements of our innovators and network members via social media. Our social media partners for LAUNCH Food included the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, EAT Forum, and World Pulse. In all, our #LAUNCHFood challenge hashtag reached more than 12 million people, and our challenge page received more than 4500 page views.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

The Acceleration period was extended and LAUNCH focused on securing additional capital for innovators and driving policy changes within LAUNCH Food network companies and organizations.

Participating in LAUNCH was great. I was almost overwhelmed by the innovations I got to see and the innovators I met. I kept thinking that I needed to bring the innovations back home with me to the Pacific. I’m working on doing that right now.

LAUNCH Food Council Member Mereia Volavola | Former CEO of Pacific Island Private Sector Organisation (PIPSO) Over the course of the Accelerator, five of the eleven LAUNCH innovators achieved their primary objectives from when they began the program. These accomplishments ranged from securing investment capital, launching their product in grocery chains, creating an endowment fund, and solving a manufacturing hurdle.

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LAUNCH FOOD PROCESS

NEEDFINDING Australia USA Sweden

LAUNCH Network Engagement

TURNING THE TIDE ON OBESITY AND UNDERNUTRITION FILM

VR/AR Hack

LAUNCH LOCAL

Timor–Leste Innovation On-Ramp

LAUNCH FOOD

LAUNCH LEGENDS

Innovator sourcing

Innovator sourcing

Innovator selection

Innovator selection

ACCELERATION

DFAT INNOVATOR INVESTMENT

Innovator prep

GLOBAL FOOD DIARY

DIGITAL EVENT ANNOUNCING INNOVATORS

ACCELERATION

Innovator prep

DFAT investment recommendations

Forum

Forum roundtable

Due diligence & terms of reference

Bespoke innovator planning, support, access to network

Learning journeys

DFAT investment (ongoing)

Cohort curriculum

Design journeys (ongoing)

Pilot project deployment (ongoing)

Innovator working groups

Technical production and pilot deployment (ongoing)

Innovator promotion

EATING WITH THE SEASONS VR FILM

DISPATCHES FROM THE FORUM

DFAT INVESTMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

#INNOVATINGNOW DIGITAL EVENT CELEBRATING INNOVATORS

DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT

How Did We Define the Challenge?

In the process of developing the LAUNCH Food challenge statement, the LAUNCH team consulted more than 100 experts.

In addition to one-on-one consultations, we held a series of Thinks in Sydney, Australia; Washington, D.C.; and Malmö, Sweden.

During the Sydney Big Think, we identified six potential challenge areas: the first 1000 days of life, behavior change, knowing food (understanding nutritional value), making food (ensuring availability of nutritious food), foodonomics (creating economic incentives for healthy eating), and enabling collective action. Broadly, these areas were categorized into two verticals: making food and foodonomics, and knowing food and changing behavior.

At the US Big Think, we honed in on the home or the household – a global constant across cultures and something specific and personal to us all. Better nutrition in the home (both more nutritious food reaching the home and healthier decisions being made in the home) was, participants felt, the most effective theme to reach the widest variety of people. Also at this Think, there was a heightened sense that new storytelling frontiers and communication are key to connecting the dots to healthy eating.

At the Malmö Technical Think, we focused on what innovations would need to look, feel and taste like in order to impact better nutrition in the home.

Our resulting challenge called for supply or demand-side innovations that will ultimately impact people’s food choices, whether in the home, market, street, restaurant, or community.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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LAUNCH FOOD CHALLENGE Education, incentivization and empowerment

Supply of healthy food My food choice

How can we increase the affordable and accessible supply of desirable and nutritious food?

Make it easy for me!

How can we reinforce and reward healthy food habits?

Producing Food

Consuming Food

We care about: Available, affordable, convenient, desirable and nutritious food.

We care about: People making healthy food choices and building healthy eating habits.

Seeking innovations and solutions that address:

Seeking innovations and solutions that address:

• Supply chain infrastructure and practices across the value chain (harvesting, storage, processing / drying / manufacturing, transport, marketing), including food wastage

• Empowering and incentivizing people to change their eating and feeding behavior

• Food and food technology • Production processes and efficiency • Models of economic incentivization • Financial products or services that drive how and where food is produced

• Reinforcing positive and nutritious cultural and social practices • Educating around the needs of humans and the value of food • Improving people’s understanding of what is and is not healthy • Helping people make better food and feeding choices

• Nutrition-sensitive and climate smart agriculture, including horticulture, aquaculture, and livestock

• Helping reinforce and reward good food and feeding choices

• Harnessing data to understand the supply of and demand for nutritious food

• Food messaging and marketing; creative consumer engagement

• Growing more (and a more diverse range of) nutritious food

• Labeling and packaging

• Decoupling price and quality so that nutritious food is not always the most expensive option

• Using food data to drive understanding and behavior change • Driving inclusivity in the wider food system • Remedying the disconnect between the consumer and the food value chain • Collective action toward policy-making via investment, ‘buying into’ change

How Did We Source the LAUNCH Food Innovators?

We selected innovators based on their: 1. Potential for improving health outcomes

5. Showed a solid understanding of what comprises ‘good’ nutrition (bioavailable, nutrient rich, diverse diet, breast feeding, etc.) per FAO/WHO guidelines

2. Technical feasibility and practicality of use

6. Improve the variety of food on the plate

3. Pathway to scale

7. Acknowledged that eating is fundamentally a human experience, at turns social, nurturing, cultural, and necessary for survival

4. Sustainability of the innovation/solution 5. Evidence of potential for application in lower-income and underserved communities and/or developing markets and countries

8. Were mindful of the end consumer 9. Shifted the drivers and incentives that promote current poor health outcomes

6. Strength of project team and leadership We paid particular attention to innovations that: 1. Promoted inclusion, gender equality, and women’s empowerment 2. Were appropriate at the local level with the potential to scale regionally or globally

10. Promoted the evolution of existing markets, or the development/expansion of new markets Our decision to keep the scope of the challenge broad was intentional. Because this will be the first of several Food cycles, we saw a valuable opportunity to use it as a landscaping exercise, allowing us to gain a comprehensive overview of where innovation is happening throughout the food system.

3. Offered the potential to impact impoverished, disenfranchised and other vulnerable populations in developing markets, even if this was not the original purpose of the innovation 4. Planned for a changing world (increasing occurrence and severity of natural disasters, water availability, population growth and changing population demographics, increased pressures on protein demand, increased need for food storage, increased need for sustainable fertilizers, need for improved price resilience, need for reduced food loss, changing funding landscape, increasing urbanization, growing inequity, among others)

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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LAUNCH FOOD APPLICATIONS

Can a fresh approach to food help create a healthier world?

We asked innovators around the world to send us their solutions.

A SNAPSHOT OF THE INNOVATORS APPLYING TO LAUNCH FOOD 96 Supply chain practices 59 Food and ag technology

47 Empowering behaviour change

11 Consumer engagement

37 Nutrition education

WHO IS INNOVATING? of applicants

38% are women

TYPES OF INTERVENTION Alternative models of production 23

3 Driving inclusivity

8 Harnessing big data

22% Social enterprise

Business/delivery model 41

18% Corporation

Financial instrument 1

18% Individual

New development approach 26 Product 68

11 Other

14% NGO

8 Economic incentivisation

Program 45

7% Academic institution

Service 25

21% Other

Technology 39 Other 12

WHAT DO INNOVATORS NEED? Top 3 types of support needed 1. Funding and financial management

WHERE IS INNOVATION HAPPENING?

2. PR, branding, and/or marketing 3. Sales or innovation/solution adoption

We received innovations from

74 countries

#LAUNCHFOOD SOCIAL REACH 2600+ posts tagged #LAUNCHFood; 10.5 million reached; 25 million impressions across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

9

Pacific countries represented

LAUNCH FOOD INNOVATORS

Future of Food: Edible Insects DARREN GOLDIN, KELLY HAGEN High-quality protein products made from sustainably farmed, free-range insects.

Biofortification: An Agricultural Approach to Improving Nutrition BEV POSTMA Staple food crops enriched to provide between 25% and 100% of daily requirements for vitamin A, iron, and zinc.

Telenor Mobile Agriculture HABIB SAQIB, OBAID KHAN A customized mobile agriculture advisory and direct farmer-to-consumer eCommerce platform.

Digital Solutions for Developing Needs in Horticulture SALAH SUKKARIEH A data-driven digital platform connecting smallscale farmers to a global growing community while helping increase growing capacity.

Coffee Flour DIPIKA MATTHIAS Nutritionally dense flour made from discarded coffee cherry pulp and skin.

Evaptainers JEREMY FRYER-BIGGS, SERENA HOLLMEYER TAYLOR A robust, efficient, and lowcost refrigeration solution powered by only water and sunlight.

Countries of impact LAUNCH Food Innovator

LAUNCH Legends Innovator

Smart Food JOANNA KANE-POTAKA Popularizing Smart Food – food that is good for you, the planet, and the farmer – starting with millets and sorghum.

Pacific Islands Food Revolution (PIFR) ROBERT OLIVER A health education initiative tailored to audiences in the Pacific Islands that includes a reality TV format, multimedia and creation of a social movement.

FoodWall MARC NOYCE, BRENDAN CONDON A modular, userfriendly, and extremely water-efficient urban food growing system.

FoodSwitch BRUCE NEAL A program that helps shoppers choose better foods, industry make healthier products, and government set effective policies.

Breaking the Mold KIRSTY BAYLISS A plasma-based treatment that extends the life of fresh produce by delaying mold growth.

*LAUNCH Legends is a program supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

LAUNCH Legends* Millipede WIL MONTE Our Secret Island is a gamebased learning platform that will teach, inspire, and engage young children in Tonga in healthy eating and traditional foods through fun gameplay, music, and culture.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

LAUNCH Legends * Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Storytelling TASH TAN A creative technology experience to inspire cultural movements that bring pride back to traditional healthy eating within targeted sites in the Pacific Islands.

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Why Network-Centered Innovation?

We use Network-Centered Innovation to accelerate the LAUNCH Food innovators and facilitate network collaboration. The word ‘innovation’ does not inherently include values for the improvement of human life. The current innovation space is driven largely by individual players focused on predetermined outcomes that deliver benefits for a few, elite beneficiaries. Innovation has not traditionally focused on improving things – it has largely been about winning in the market.

This kind of innovation is inherently limited and limiting; it is not designed to meet emerging global challenges that are by definition, too complex to be understood, resourced, and addressed by any one individual actor.

However, ‘innovation’, the process of introducing new ideas products, services and methods – if framed from a broad enough set of perspectives – still contains the opportunity to impact these global challenges.

LAUNCH has been working on a process, driven by a core set of shared values, that invites diverse participation, is aligned around the idea of designing innovations that create prosperity for all, and is driven by the community to produce innovations that benefit people and the world they live in.

Imagine a network focused on collectively incubating innovations that could help humanity.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

What LAUNCH has created is a collaborative innovation process that promotes innovation as a catalyst for transformational change, attracting and aligning a network in support of a common challenge.

Network-Centered Innovation uses innovation to convene and align diverse networks to act collectively. This need for network collaboration is especially evident when addressing development challenges, which express locally, but often have global dependencies. The idea that development challenges somehow sit outside of the domain of business is a fatal fallacy – supply chains, especially in food, are truly global, and the way we source and deliver products around the world is not separate to the development agenda – it is the development agenda.

Network-Centered Innovation recognizes that innovation can come from anywhere and anyone, and considers the voices of beneficiaries to be as valuable as those of powerful organizations.

It reduces costs and risks because it connects ideas with resources, and generates the momentum and commitment necessary for innovations to succeed.

In Network-Centered Innovation, the network is a critical innovation in itself. The network, a collective of people empowered to drive transformational change, is a pipeline through which multiple innovations, ideas and partnerships are formed.

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We believe that networks are the way to solve the most pressing challenges of our time. Programs employing Network-Centered Innovation are designed for and deliver specific results. As the network matures, the ‘network effect’ comes into play, with networks working together in unfacilitated ways to create new products and services, fund new innovations, and introduce policy changes.

So, if our network is the innovation, how do we know that the network is working?

The LAUNCH Leverage Model 2017 saw the LAUNCH team exploring new ways to demonstrate if our network has been successful.The breakthrough was simple and came from the idea that networks are working not when people are signed up and paying, but when organizations and individuals are adding value to the network by doing what they are created to do, in support of network goals.

So, for example, companies would procure products and investors would invest. This would apply to everyone in the network. We started to think of this as network leverage and realized that it can be tracked.We realized that what makes a network valuable for everyone involved is the type of leverage they get from it; we asked ourselves, what if we could define the leverage we are after and drive the design of LAUNCH to achieve those leverage results?

We divided leverage into three parts:

ǩ ,QQRYDWLRQ collecting together the resources and people to find, develop and deliver ideas to market ǩ ,QYHVWPHQW bringing together a network of public and private investors ǩ 3URFXUHPHQW identifying key procurers to see how they might be aligned to getting the innovations we want onto the shelf We call this the leverage model – and, based on our previous programs, we estimate that over five years it could yield up to $55 for every dollar invested into it.

We also realized that this leverage based networking represents a new type of networking – one where network members have a radically different set of expectations for each other – from a set of aligned values and goals to a commitment to explore and drive innovations together. To begin exploring this engaged network concept we have developed the idea of an Engagement Charter – a way of formalizing our most engaged network members’ commitment to engaging in the process. This will allow LAUNCH to fully develop a network framework with predictable and measureable outcomes.

I’ve been battling away on this project for nearly four years, and now I’m in a process where a lot of that is curated with me. For me personally, once I was in the LAUNCH community, I felt that this was real.

LAUNCH Food Innovator: Pacific Islands Food Revolution Chef Robert Oliver

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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A Diverse and Cross-Sector Network

54% Private

9% Academic Institution 13% Government

42% female

701 individuals from 374 organisations

24% NGO 59% male

77 countries 22 from the Indo-Pacific.

Afghanistan | Algeria | Australia | Bangladesh | Belgium | Botswana | Brazil | Bulgaria | Burkina Faso | Cambodia | Cameroon | Canada | Chile China | Colombia | Cook Islands | Costa Rica | Democratic Republic of the Congo | Denmark | Ecuador | Estonia | Ethiopia | Fiji | France | Germany Ghana | Guatemala | Guinea | Guyana | Haiti | Hungary | India | Indonesia | Israel | Kenya | Laos | Latvia | Lebanon | Lesotho | Liberia | Madagascar Malawi | Marshall Islands | Micronesia | Mozambique | Nepal | Netherlands | New Zealand | Nicaragua | Nigeria | Norway | New Caledonia | Tonga Pakistan | Palau | Papua New Guinea | Peru | Philippines | Samoa | Saudi Arabia | Serbia | Singapore | Solomon Islands | South Africa | Spain | Sweden Tanzania | Thailand | Timor Leste | Tonga | Tuvalu | Uganda | United Kingdom | United States | Vietnam | Zambia | Zimbabwe

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Post-Forum Acceleration Purpose: The purpose of the LAUNCH Food Accelerator was to provide ongoing strategic support to innovators, and to facilitate access to the LAUNCH Food and wider LAUNCH networks in support of innovator growth goals.

Process: A tailored program was built for each innovator from the activities listed below: ǩ $FWLRQ SODQ LAUNCH Guides worked with innovators ahead of the LAUNCH Food Forum to create an action plan of target milestones and the activities required to accomplish them.

Post-Forum, we evolved the plans based on feedback from the LAUNCH Food Council, and overlaid offers of Council support.

Innovators prioritized follow-up according to their larger strategic plans, meaning that some were ready to capitalize on Council commitments straight away, whereas others prioritized other activites. Innovators used their action plans to a greater or lesser extent – most used the plans as a reference document, but did not update them on a regular basis, while others worked through the plan diligently. ǩ %HVSRNH LQQRYDWRU VXSSRUW DQG DFFHVV WR WKH QHWZRUN: In addition to follow up with the Forum Council, LAUNCH Guides offered tailored mentorship and network outreach according to the needs of each innovator. Depending on the innovator, this touched strategy development, technical advice, business development/partnership development, storytelling and communications, organizational development, and investor outreach (including support for DFAT investment opportunities). ǩ &RKRUW FKHFN LQV The LAUNCH Food innovator cohort was selected not just on the strength of individual innovators, but on the potential for innovators to support one another.

We saw these connections spark at the Forum, and provided monthly video meet-ups to facilitate on-going communication between the innovators. Due to the diverse locations of the innovators, participation in these group meetings often divided on geographic lines, but attendance was generally high despite time challenges.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

ǩ &RKRUW FXUULFXOXP LAUNCH offered monthly curriculum based on the expressed needs of innovators at the start of this program. Each module was delivered in two virtual sessions – one content session with a LAUNCH guide, and one expert panel session with advisors from the network. Our curriculum kicked off during the innovator prep days prior to the Forum with sessions on monitoring and evaluation, and storytelling. Virtual sessions post-Forum covered measuring and communicating value, understanding your user, attracting the right capital, partnering with government, and moving beyond the pilot. We concluded with a practical session encouraging innovators to implement the B Impact Assessment from B Lab. ǩ ,QQRYDWRU ZRUNLQJ JURXSV Seeking opportunities to support innovators while offering a vehicle for network engagement, we experimented with the creation of two ‘working groups’ – one for companies entering the market with innovative ingredients, and one for organizations building hardware for development. LAUNCH has facilitated working group members to explore the sharing of resources and best practice, as well as new opportunities. This is light touch for LAUNCH, directly relevant for innovators and other network members, and has the potential to generate activities well beyond the scope of regular accelerator work. Most importantly, these working groups generate the sense of intimacy and camaraderie usually associated with more costly LAUNCH events. They will present a tool for network engagement in future LAUNCH cycles. ǩ ,QQRYDWRU SURPRWLRQ LAUNCH has championed and celebrated innovator success through regular communications with the network, through original content shared on the Huffington Post and other platforms, through social media, and in partnership with external organizations. We have also facilitated the showcasing of LAUNCH Food innovators to the BOND network of NGOs, to the Private Wealth Network, at USAID’s Innovation Week, at the EAT Forum’s Asia-Pacific Forum, and at the California Academy of Science’s Bitelife event. These activities contribute to our innovators’ overall feeling of support from LAUNCH and its network, provide credibility, and help our innovators extend the reach of their communications.

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How Did LAUNCH Food Innovators Work Together?

LAUNCH Food featured a strong cohort of innovators pioneering products, technologies and programs to improve health outcomes through food. Our innovators addressed both supply and demand, through new ingredients, fortification, distributed production, preservation, and harnessing the power of data. Their geographic and technical diversity offered a wealth of opportunities to share networks, best practice and learnings from across the globe.

Innovator-Innovator Opportunities • Biofilta’s FoodWall system has been installed at the George Institute for Global Health in Sydney to provide fresh produce for the FoodSwitch team.

• HarvestPlus is working with Telenor to explore the potential of supply the telecom’s vast network of farmers with biofortified seeds.

• Biofilta is exploring the use of Digital Farmhand in school garden projects as a strategy to integrate additional STEM learning opportunities for students.

Local pilots 12 innovations sourced through LAUNCH Food will pilot in priority DFAT locations in 2018 thanks to grant funding from the innovationXchange totalling AUD $3.3M.

Consumer Engagement in the Pacific LAUNCH Food innovators Robert Oliver of the Pacific Islands Food Revolution and Fraser Taylor of FoodSwitch will collaborate with the LAUNCH Legends to form a four-piece storytelling toolkit.

1. A reality TV cooking competition by Chef Rob Oliver (Sept 2018) 2. A virtual reality education and immersive storytelling project in select schools in Fiji by S1T2’s Tash Tan (May 2018) 3. A gamification education project in select schools in Tonga

by Millipede’s Wil Monte (April 2018)

• Smart Food is exploring a collaboration with Breaking the Mould to see the viability of using the plasma technology on the Smart Food.

4. FoodSwitch, an app to help consumers, markets and local governments understand data around healthy food choices (Nov 2018)

• LAUNCH Food’s innovative ingredients working group is exploring co-marketing and co-development opportunities in order to streamline their entries into big food companies.

Pieces of the individual projects will be woven into one another’s work to amplify the messaging to the target audience.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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What Did LAUNCH Innovators Achieve During the Accelerator?

Support for the Innovators kicked into high gear starting at the Forum, where they began working with the curated group of 54 council members who formally offered 344 commits to support the innovators grow. Following the Forum, all of the innovators received personalized acceleration support from LAUNCH Program Guides. The innovators achieved the following milestones during the nine month LAUNCH Food Accelerator.

Innovators have secured commitments for AUD $28.6m (US $22m) in external (non-partner) funding during the LAUNCH Food period.

Media outlets with global reach recognize the work LAUNCH Food innovators

• Biofortification leader, HarvestPlus was awarded a US $15 million grant as part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition. The global challenge seeks bold solutions to critical problems of our time. After careful consideration, the MacArthur Foundation’s Board of Directors remains convinced HarvestPlus’ work provides a viable and much needed solution to one of the world’s greatest problems—hidden hunger. LAUNCH supported with presentation design and storytelling during the competition.

• Evaptainers has won numerous recognitions for their groundbreaking food preservation container, including the Gold Prize at Food+City, winner of Innovative Ideas and Technologies in Agribusiness from UNIDO ITPO Italy, winner of ASME ISHOW, winner of MIT Enterprise Forum Pan-Arab Innovate for Refugees, and the People’s Choice Award at FoodBytes San Francisco. They were also recently one of the featured social entrepreneurs at USAID’s Global Innovation Week, where they pitched the potential impact of deploying Evaptainers around the world. Finally, they have acquired written commitments from three of the world’s biggest outdoor distributors to bring Evaptainers to stores across the US. • Telenor Mobile Agriculture achieved a huge milestone when their Khush’haal Zamindar (Prosperous Farmer) platform reached four million farmers in Pakistan. They continue to grow and strengthen their focus on reaching more women farmers.

Now operational in Punjab Province, with support from a DFAT grant, the team will customize, contextualize, and localize the Prosperous Farmer service and expand their range of suitable nutrition education content, reaching up to 10 million people.

Telenor’s increased focus on women farmers was a direct result of council member suggestions at the LAUNCH Food Forum. Their ability to reach 10 million people is due to collaboration with LAUNCH partners DFAT and USAID, as well as network members GSMA. • .LUVW\ %D\OLVV RI %UHDNLQJ WKH 0RXOG has been selected for CSIRO’s On Prime accelerator for her plasma-based treatment that extends the life of fresh produce by delaying mould growth.

She has also been selected for Murdoch University’s Start Something program (and awarded its AgriStart Innovation Prize), and the Center for Entrepreneurial Research & Innovation’s (CERI) Entrepreneurial Mindset bootcamp in Western Australia.

Breaking the Mould has been awarded a provisional patent for the plasma treatment of fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds. With support from a DFAT investment, Breaking the Mould will test and validate the technology on a broad range of molds and produce (particularly whole fruits and vegetables) in the Indo-Pacific region.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Innovator Awards:

Asia and the Pacific to develop the partnerships needed to continue their expansion.

• With funding from a DFAT investment, Biofilta will scope and trial its efficient modular urban food growing systems, FoodWall and FoodCube, in one Indo-Pacific country, allowing for testing and contextualising for local conditions. They’ve been collaborating with fellow LAUNCH Food innovators the George Institute and Sydney University, and are also working on a proposal to create a Sky Farm in the heart of Melbourne through a submission to the City of Melbourne’s Urban Forest Fund. The project will aim to help feed Melbourne’s foodinsecure and supply fresh produce to local cafes, restaurants and the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre. Biofilta is benefitting from on the ground support in the Indo-Pacific from local applicants to LAUNCH Food who weren’t selected but remained engaged.

• After securing three years of program funding, Robert Oliver will begin implementation of the Pacific Island Food Revolution by the end of the year. The celebrity chef presented the first screening of his Pacific Islands Food Revolution (PIFR) “sizzle” to senior ministers of Samoa, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Tuvalu, Niue, New Zealand, and the head of the Pacific Island Forum. Their response was overwhelmingly positive for the health education initiative tailored to audiences in the Pacific Islands that includes a reality TV format, multimedia, and creation of a social movement. LAUNCH supported PIFR in their initial push in making the idea a reality through providing a global storytelling platform as well as the technical support to partner with international development agencies.

• FoodSwitch expanded its data and technology platform into the United States and Hong Kong, empowering consumers to make healthier choices, encouraging industry to make healthier products and helping governments enact and enforce policies that will deliver healthier food environments. With DFAT funds, FoodSwitch will trial in Fiji and Samoa in order to engage food retailers, policy makers, and consumers on the importance of having access to healthy food options and making healthy food choices. FoodSwitch has utilized the LAUNCH network across

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

• Joanna Kane-Potaka of Smart Food has been laying the groundwork to scale up her efforts to get the world eating healthy and sustainable foods that also benefit the farmers.

Most recently, Joanna has won approval from ICRISAT to establish the Smart Food Endowment Fund, with an initial commitment of US $2m and a target of $10m within 3 years.

The ambition is to create a $100m fund for Smart Food. Thanks to a DFAT grant, the Smart Food team will identify suitable smart foods in two Indo-Pacific countries, and explore whole of value chain approaches to popularize said foods. Smart Food’s Kenya team is now working on the second season of a Smart Food reality show, using input from a LAUNCH council member representing the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation. Finally, Smart Food has been working with women’s groups in India to develop curriculum about how to use smart foods to diversify diets and overcome malnutrition and specific health problems, while also bringing millets into school meal programs. Joanna credits LAUNCH with providing her with the credibility to raise the Smart Food Endowment Fund.

• Salah Sukkarieh will trial his Digital Farmhand robotic agriculture technology in up to three Pacific Islands countries, thanks to a DFAT grant. Salah and his team are also advancing the Digital Farmhand technology to be used as an educational tool for STEM instruction, working with Biofilta on potential collaborations between the two systems. The Digital Farmhand was profiled in an hour long documentary on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s program, Catalyst. LAUNCH mentors provided Salah with the strategic support that led him to change his target market to the Pacific.

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LAUNCH Legends

LAUNCH Legends is a new initiative aimed at promoting healthy eating and better nutrition in Fiji and Tonga through the use of emerging, interactive education and storytelling technologies.

LAUNCH Legends was run in parallel to LAUNCH Food.

The program has distinct outcomes but participated in key LAUNCH events and curriculum. The Legends Innovators also collaborated with Food innovators.

Still a program in action, Tash Tan of creative technology agency S1T2 and Wil Monte of game-based education developer Millipede, are in the process of adapting and implementing their immersive education pilot projects in Fiji and Tonga, respectively. Through fun and engaging gameplay and learning, the Legends projects aim to reconnect children with traditional foods in the hope of creating happier, healthier lifestyles.

Our theory of action is that by instilling children with renewed pride in their culinary history and traditions, immersive technology can educate children about healthy food choices and nutrition, and inspire them to consider the effects food has on their future livelihoods. Ultimately, this will lead to a demonstration of the underlying assumption that immersive storytelling can be used to influence the behavior of children to lead more nutritious lives.

ǩ Hosting a LAUNCH Legends roundtable at the LAUNCH Food Forum in San Francisco featuring a number of pioneers in the emerging technology storytelling space. ǩ Exploring and/or establishing global and regional partnerships, including with IBM’s Science for Social Good, Institute for the Future’s Food Lab, Digicel, and regional media outlets in the Pacific. ǩ Headlining plenary opening session on LAUNCH Food consumer engagement to some 500 people at the inaugural Asia-Pacific EAT Forum Jakarta. ǩ Featuring in The Australian, ABC Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat, the VR/AR Association, and the Huffington Post.

From its inception, Legends has been created to complement and support regional and national health programs, and has been designed in partnership with the Fijian and Tongan Governments as well as with local partners and experts on the ground.

The project focuses on two main health areas: ǩ Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) - such as stroke, diabetes and cancer. ǩ Malnutrition - including both over and under nutrition.

LAUNCH Legends is predominantly targeting primary school aged children but is designed to also include their families and communities in a collective experience.

ǩ Hosting a VR Development Hack in Canberra, October 2016 focused on food and nutrition.

It is great to see the emergence of new approaches to help us tackle some of our most persistent development challenges, not only in Fiji, but in the Pacific region as a whole.

ǩ Selecting the first two LAUNCH Legends innovators, Tash Tan of S1T2 and Wil Monte of Millipede. Both have begun the process of adapting and implementing immersive storytelling prototypes in the Pacific.

I’m very confident through the work led by the LAUNCH Food initiative, we will soon start to see improvements in our diets, which in turn, will flow

Since Legends was launched in November 2016, the team has made a wealth of progress:

ǩ Undertaking a total of six learning journeys to Fiji and Tonga provided the Legends program with the learnings to develop project prototypes. The Ministries of Education of both Pacific nations have invited us to produce immersive storytelling projects in select schools.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

through to better health outcomes.

THE HONOURABLE ROSY SOFIA AKBAR, FIJIAN MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND MEDICAL SERVICES

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What Did LAUNCH Food Network Achieve?

LAUNCH Food set out to seed a world-wide ‘coalition of the committed’ to tackle this challenge. We recruited our network through interviews, Big Thinks, the Innovation On-Ramp event, the LAUNCH Food Forum, through our acceleration process, and the LAUNCH Legends program. We define ‘network members’ as those who have interacted in a meaningful way with the program,

Expert review 76 network members collectively reviewed 280 innovator applications

Thinking big 115 network members participated in three Big Think events on three continents

share our common goal, and are committed to coming with us on this LAUNCH Food journey. Network members are seeking a like-minded community of peers willing to try something new to effect change against a stubborn challenge.

Commitments 54 LAUNCH Food Council Members made 290 commitments to innovators at the LAUNCH Food Forum

Network Leverage Network members invested approximately 3935 hours of volunteer time to date.

Evidence of Institutional Change Within the Network Target Regions

Global

• Innovator Telenor has shifted to focus on women farmers in Pakistan, more than tripling its Mobile Agriculture team based on the economic potential of the Prosperous Farmer program, as well as to accommodate the expanded focus on women and farmers in conflict regions.

• The largest Canadian food retailer created their first insect protein private label product in collaboration with Entomo Farms.

• The Ministries of Health and Education of Tonga and Fiji are working with two LAUNCH Legends producers on an immersive storytelling program for healthy eating tied to their school curricula beginning in April 2018.

• LAUNCH Food Council Member, Mereia Volavola, is working with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU to integrate LAUNCH Food innovators into their programs.

• After participating in a LAUNCH Food mini-forum with Biofilta, HarvestPlus, and Coffee Flour, the Private Wealth Network and its members have furthered their commitment to impact investing in the Pacific region. LAUNCH will facilitate a workshop at their national congress.

• The largest Indian meal provider to kids in poor schools has linked with Smart Food to introduce millets into their meals.

They provide 1.5 million meals a day.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

• Council member Anthony Myint from the restaurant Perennial is leading a movement across the world to make restaurants carbon neutral. LAUNCH is supporting this movement that has already grown from a half dozen restaurants to over 100 in the past year.

• Council members, Justin Siegel (UC Davis) and Victor Friedberg (Food Shots) have partnered to increase the commercialization of innovations originating at universities and their access to venture capital.

• LAUNCH partner, the California Academy of Sciences launched Planet Vision, a consumer engagement program, book, and exhibit aimed at changing our interaction with food, water, and energy.

• Entomo Farms received their next round of funding from a major Canadian consumer packaged meats company. This was the first investment that the company made in insect proteins.

• IKEA Food is piloting a vertical farming program in an attempt to understand how they can produce all of the produce that they use in their restaurants and products. Biofilta has been in discussions with IKEA to understand what role it might play in the program.

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How Did LAUNCH Tell This Story to the World?

Movement With our social media, storytelling, and movement-creation work, we aimed to help audiences gain a better understanding of the challenge of malnutrition and offer ways to take action. Our storytelling paired worldwide data with regional stories, helping audiences understand both the scope of these health challenges and their human-level impact. We celebrated food innovators, advocates of traditional cultural foods, and people who work at the intersection of the traditional and the innovative. And we opened our platforms to global audiences to share their stories – in doing so, we helped our audiences realize that they are part of the solution.

Meaningful collaborations across the network: ǩ Global women’s leadership program World Pulse co-produced Global Food Diary showcasing healthy meals from around the world. ǩ The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, which featured LAUNCH Food innovations as part of a series on movement-building around healthy eating. ǩ The BOND network of NGOs, which showcased LAUNCH Food Innovators to their collaborators. ǩ The Private Wealth Network, which showcased LAUNCH Food innovators in its closed meeting. ǩ EAT Forum, which showcased LAUNCH Food innovators at its inaugural EAT Asia-Pacific Food Forum.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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LAUNCH FOOD CHALLENGE REACH

6M

LAUNCH FOOD FEATURED ON JAMIE’S FOOD REVOLUTION:

6.27M

GLOBAL FOOD DIARY & CHALLENGE LAUNCH:

2.38M LAUNCH FOOD FORUM:

1.5M INNOVATOR ANNOUNCEMENT:

1M

DFAT INVESTMENT ANNOUNCEMENT:

TWITTER CHAT:

687K

600K

GLOBAL INNOVATION WEEK 2017:

420K 400K Needfinding

Sourcing

Selection

Forum

Acceleration

• Total #LAUNCHFood Twitter and Facebook reach between March 2016 and March 2018: 13.1 million + • Total number of tweets tagged #LAUNCHFood for same time period: 5973 • Number from Australia and New Zealand: 559 • Number from Indo-Pacific and Southeast Asia regions: 275 • LAUNCH Food Magazine has 3695 impressions on Issuu • A LAUNCH Short Film – Tonga and Timor: Turning the Tide on Obesity and Undernutrition: viewed 1300 times; featured at LAUNCH Food Forum, US Big Think, and Malmö Big Think. Received a Bronze Telly Award in the Non-Broadcast Health and Wellness category.

• 360/VR Film – Eating with The Seasons viewed 1117 times on Vimeo; featured at LAUNCH Food Forum, USAID Global Innovation Week 2017, and Crawford Fund Conference. Also appeared in a VR/AR Association whitepaper as an example of VR for social impact.

• All LAUNCH Food innovators were featured on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution blog.

Social media reach is defined as the number of people who have seen a post.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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What Were Our Key Learnings?

LAUNCH Food is the 12th challenge hosted by the LAUNCH platform, however our experience with this challenge has been fundamental in solidifying LAUNCH’s theory of change, and charting a path for the future of the program. Our learnings have influenced the way we think about our own business model and about the unique value a program of this kind is able to offer innovators. It has shifted our thinking on building and catalyzing a network to action, and has also reminded us about the essence of innovation itself.

LAUNCH model The ongoing challenge for a program like LAUNCH is funding for the platform itself – the infrastructure and the core team that form the foundation for all LAUNCH activity. During this first cycle of our work in Food, we have developed and are starting to test the ‘leverage model’ outlined in this report. LAUNCH estimates a return on investment over a 5-year period of 55 times the program investment, measured by open innovation value, financial capital invested in innovators, and procurement of innovations.

Valuing the leverage generated by a program like LAUNCH builds the investment case for public funders to underwrite the basic infrastructure, while offering pathways for private funders to support specific activities. The big learning from this cycle is that public-private partners value different aspects of the program; integrating this difference into the design of the program from the beginning will allow partners to realize full value from participation in LAUNCH, and allow the program to reach its full potential.

LAUNCH process As we build LAUNCH into a truly global program, we must invest in new tools and processes that allow global innovation to be integrated at the local level. Our finding through the first year of our Food program was that while the global program did yield game changing ideas, networks and partnership opportunities, we had missed the need for more regional networks to help test and deliver ideas locally. This presents a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. We saw a degree of success from our first Innovation On-Ramp event in Timor-Leste, which built awareness of both the challenge and the LAUNCH program in the Indo-Pacific region, and spurred a number of local applications to LAUNCH Food. We have built more substantial networks in Fiji and Tonga through the LAUNCH Legends program, which has prioritized meaningful engagement with government ministries, professionals, chefs, schools, and other key thought leaders.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

The Legends program has also highlighted the need for LAUNCH to consider consumer engagement programming as part of LAUNCH Food, and perhaps part of any global LAUNCH challenge. The biggest hurdle for uptake of most of the LAUNCH Food innovations is consumer demand, often requiring the changing of hearts and minds. Through LAUNCH Legends we are testing whether immersive storytelling can be used to influence the behavior of targeted communities in the Pacific to lead more nutritious eating behaviors. We are also launching a consumer engagement / communications campaign in the Pacific Islands around four innovators who will be piloting there in 2018.

LAUNCH value to innovators LAUNCH is not a traditional challenge program, nor is it a traditional Silicon Valley-style accelerator. We do not offer a cash prize for participation, nor do we take an equity stake in innovator organizations. The value of our program is captured in our ongoing support, rather than in a single event. The value of the accelerator lies in our ability to connect innovators into a diverse, senior, accomplished and friendly network of advisors and collaborators. It lies in our ability to create a high-trust, familial LAUNCH experience. It is difficult to communicate the value of this type of experience to innovators before they enter the program – especially when many are (rightly) prioritizing core activities such as business development and fundraising. This is a challenge that LAUNCH will need to address in order to continue to attract high quality innovators.

LAUNCH Food specifically recruited a diverse but complementary set of innovators for a broad LAUNCH Food challenge. We immediately saw the benefits of this diversity – as earlier and later-stage innovators with products, technologies, programs and system solutions started to understand their value within the broader food system. This diversity was not without its challenges, however. We have learned that system-level innovators require a different acceleration approach in order to thrive in a program like LAUNCH. We have learned that network members find earlierstage innovators easier to mentor, but harder to action. LAUNCH will need to weigh the advantages of a diverse cohort with the challenges of accelerating very different innovators; the answer is likely to lie is a flexible toolkit that is deployed across the whole LAUNCH experience.

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LAUNCH network It goes without saying that the network is at the heart of NetworkCentered Innovation. LAUNCH has a long history of building and leveraging the network in support of our innovators, and creating the conditions for inspired network members to innovate themselves. Going forward, we recognize the need to:

Perspectives on innovation LAUNCH promotes innovation as a catalyst for transformational change, attracting and aligning a network in support of a common challenge. As we navigate the day-to-day minutiae of program implementation, it is important to remember some fundamentals about innovation:

ǩ Be clearer about what it is to be part of the LAUNCH Food network

ǩ Innovation never works for your organization; innovation is not about continuing to do what you have always done. This means that innovation is always an uncomfortable process.

ǩ Secure network member commitment and track their engagement ǩ Actively accelerate network member innovation, rather than assuming it will spontaneously occur

ǩ You don’t know what you don’t know. Innovation is inherently unpredictable; even mid-experiment we can believe we are creating one thing when actually we are doing something entirely different. An element of flexibility is key.

ǩ Build tools for ongoing network member engagement around real opportunities

ǩ To ask a world class innovator exactly what they are going to do and how to measure it is to misunderstand what innovation is.

ǩ Bring the network to life for members so they can see and interact with each other

ǩ Measuring the results of an intentionally unpredictable experiment is really hard!

ǩ Continue to seek out communications partnerships with mission-aligned organizations to help promote LAUNCH network activity

ǩ Innovation is all about change, and change works best when we change together.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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Where Next?

LAUNCH Food has closed the accelerator period for its first innovator cohort, however we continue to run experiments in consumer engagement in the Pacific, and network engagement more broadly. Our LAUNCH Legends program is ongoing, and we are joining forces with the Institute for the Future’s Food Lab to document our work in Fiji and Tonga and make recommendations for scaling.

Looking forward, LAUNCH is committed to recruiting partners across the food system to join our LAUNCH Food movement.

LAUNCH brings a unique approach to this work, but we are by no means the only ones addressing this global challenge. As we continue to build LAUNCH’s Food movement, we will work with a select group of credible thought leaders to guide our vision for the future of food, and the challenges we deploy to reach this goal. This work will kick off in early 2018 with a subsection of the LAUNCH Food network to refine LAUNCH Food’s system map and set a roadmap of challenges we will address over the next 5 years. In 2018, we will work with these industry leaders, LAUNCH network members and others in the food space to develop our network-centered programming to mobilize the most innovative minds in support of a safe, equitable and sustainable food future.

I see a future where people don’t fear food, but love food.

LAUNCH Food Council Member Jackie Saumweber | Former Senior Manager of Walmart’s Food Sustainability Team

Join us.

#LAUNCHFood www.launch.org/food @LAUNCHorg

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