Congratulations!
Welcome to the Frontier Tech Hub. You are officially a Frontier Tech Pioneer!
We hope you’re feeling proud, excited and eager to get started. We’ve created this digital unboxing moment to help you relish this moment and prepare for the journey ahead. When you’re ready to start scrolling, you’ll find three sections to explore.
1) Your role as a Pioneer
2) Meet your community
3) Your journey ahead
At the end of the page you’ll find a short list of tasks to check off, to make sure you don’t miss anything!
☑️ Are you ready to dive in?
Your role as a Pioneer
As a Pioneer, your role in your pilot’s future is hugely important. You are a thought leader pushing the envelope of how technology is being used to solve global critical challenges. With help from your partners, you’ll share evidence and insights about what works with the global FCDO network and beyond.
This year we received 106 applications. 27 ideas made it to the Dragons’ Den.
Your idea was chosen to start a journey to test, learn, and achieve impact in the real world.
This video welcomes you, and the 15 other pilots that make up this cohort 🎬
Each pilot gets its own profile page
You can see existing pilot profiles below. Yours will appear soon! Over time you will populate your profile page with insights, blogs, photos and stories from your journey. These inspire others across FCDO and beyond.
We’ll help you amplify your insights and stories as you go
A huge part of your role will be supporting your pilot to learn out loud, and together we’ll share across our common spaces.
Make sure you join your FCDO Research and Innovation community on Viva Engage, follow the Hub on LinkedIn and sign up to the FT Network.
Meet your community
Now you know what your role as a Pioneer involves, we can talk about your collective role together. Your pilot is part of a bigger community gathering insights across technologies and sectors. Together, your learning adds up to a greater picture. Since 2016, we’ve worked with over 90 FCDO staff on more than 70 pilots across 33 countries, and now that includes you!
You’ll learn from one another through the FT Launchpad
The Frontier Tech Launchpad is a dedicated space for FCDO Pioneers. Together, you'll experience a series of engaging and practical sessions facilitated by the Hub, designed to level up our shared knowledge and skills relating to multiple aspects of the FT programme. We’ll be bringing you and your peers together to learn more about everything from lean impact and evidence generation to storytelling and narrative mapping.
Check out the Launchpad page to learn more. We’ll add more information here as you start your journey. The first session of your journey Ready to Launch will start in September.
Your journey ahead
Ready? Okay! Let’s start exploring what this journey going to look like, and who will be joining you on your journey. Below you’ll find three key dates for your diary, some further reading and more on what to expect going forwards.
How the Frontier Tech Hub will support you
As the Frontier Tech Hub, our role over the course of the pilot is to coach and support you; whether that’s through bringing together the right people you need for the job, packaging up and collating evidence, or completing necessary paperwork so you can get stuck into your role as custodian of your idea for impact.
There will of course be other partners we work with along the way, offering their unique expertise and working to realise the different experiments we plan together to learn more about a solution, build evidence, and scale quickly.
One of the things that we are really excited about sharing with both you and future partners is our methodology. It’s something we’ve been honing for the past six years and with over 75 pilots.
Our approach works like this: we have combined what we think is most relevant from the world of international funds, startups, and innovation practice into a tailored range of tools and methods. And we’re always reflecting on what works in different contexts so we can share this with pilot teams and the wider sector.
The only thing you need to start reading in advance
There’s just one thing you need to delve into, and that’s the Pilot Quickstart Guide. This will give you a brief overview of the programme, your role and details on sprinting, contracting and learning out loud. It’s a guide you can revisit whenever you need it.
If you’re keen to nerd out even more then we would also recommend Lean Impact by Anne Mei Chang. The book goes into detail on what ‘lean’ experimentation can look like when focused on big, social issues, and has been the major source of inspiration for the programme.
Three dates to put in your diary
📆 August TBC - You’ll have your first call with your FT coach
📆 August 9th - Public announcement of successful pilots (that’s you!)
📆 September - Your first Launchpad session
That’s it for now! Here’s a little checklist to help you with your next steps
☑️ Reply to our email to set up a call with your coach
☑️ Join your FCDO Viva Engage community, the FT Network and follow the Hub on LinkedIn
☑️ Read your Quickstart Guide and explore the Launchpad page