What's Happening
At The DIV Fund

CGD blog says that all three 2019 Economics Nobel laureates highlight Development Innovation Ventures as a U.S. government initiative combining experimentation, scaling, and impact-oriented aid.

Michael Kremer delivering his 2019 Nobel Prize Lecture on “Experimentation, Innovation, and Economics,” and naming Development Innovation Ventures (starting around 23:55) as an institution that crowdsources innovations and funds them for broader impact.

Reporting highlighting the first ten years of DIV, showing the tiered, evidence-driven funding model that reached over 99 million people and promoted cost-effective, high‑social‑impact innovations.

New York Times opinion piece argues that directly giving cash to people in poverty often outperforms traditional aid programs by letting recipients choose how best to improve their lives and discusses DIV serves as a seedbed for new ideas and rigorous evaluati

Moneyball for Government highlights the value and approach of DIV in its chapter on data and evidence in foreign assistance.

Financial Times article describes how development aid agencies are adopting Silicon Valley–style innovation strategies like those behind DIV in order to better attract and incubate new solutions.

Devex article reports that major donors have launched a new Global Innovation Fund (USD 200 million) that explicitly builds on lessons from USAID’s DIV and similar programs to support, test, and scale development innovations.

SSIR article argues that government can adopt a “lean startup” ethos by funding, testing, and scaling new ideas, highlighting USAID’s DIV as a model of applying venture-style experimentation to public programs.

Foreign Policy article argues that while Silicon Valley’s tech ethos offers promise for tackling global challenges, the real innovation in development may come from government-driven models like USAID’s DIV which blend scaling, and rigorous impact evaluation.