The State of Affairs
At The Rockefeller Foundation, innovation has driven our long legacy of impact. Today, we build on our lessons with the latest innovation tools and methods to meet pressing and persistent challenges.
Our Innovation team cultivates big ideas and solutions that expand human opportunity and reverse climate change. We ask crucial questions and combine the world’s best thinking and capabilities to tackle problems from new angles. Our team works at every stage of the innovation process, so we know how to mobilize the people and resources necessary to move from game-changing ideas to solutions that have impact at scale.
We work across the Foundation’s strategic priorities and the global agenda using three main capabilities:
- The New Frontiers team looks around the corner to spot opportunities and problems that warrant more attention. They advance big ideas and build collaborative platforms to shape new solutions.
- Data scientists by trade, the Data Science for Social Impact team makes technical grants and create products to expand capabilities.
- The AI for Development team integrates technologies into social impact applications through partnerships designed to achieve scale.
Why it Matters
- 0%%
of U.N. Sustainable Development Goal targets are directly benefited by digital technologies
- $0TrillionTrillion
will be AI's contribution to the global economy by 2030
- $0MillionMillion
in joint commitments to advance digital public infrastructure and data science for social benefit
Our Strategy
- 1Connecting thought leaders: We believe innovation sparks with the collision of ideas and leaders, and grows into a flame with well-timed applications of diverse expertise, strategic choice-making, and execution discipline. We seek out and support thought leaders, often at pivotal moments in their careers, who can partner through well-designed processes and platforms to develop breakthroughs and solutions.
- 2 Building transformative solutions: We leverage our research, analysis, funding, and partnering capabilities to apply the most advanced technologies into new solutions that are demonstrably better than the next best alternatives. We obsess about involving users early to incorporate their needs into solution requirements.
- 3Partnering for scale: The Foundation’s Innovation team builds trust with partners from all disciplines, sectors, geographies, and ideologies to harness resources and align capabilities required to take solutions to scale. We often act as systems integrators and strategic advisors, shifting our role as needed, including stepping off the stage when the time is right.
Initiatives
Related Grants
The Rockefeller Foundation’s grantees and global partners are advancing inclusive innovation to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. Click to learn more.
Impact Stories
Climate Data for Community Action
Watch the #RFBreakthrough: Climate Data for Community Action to hear experts from DataKind, Ecological Citizen’s Project & Initiative for Energy Justice discuss solutions using data to combat unequal access to energy, from grassroots to the policy level.
All Livestreams
