This participatory strategy represents the first instance of unification between national actors, including the public sector, private sector, academia, and civil society. This allows for broad representation and a better informed decision-making process. The Strategy is unique with its ‘co-creation’ process; it is not the strategy of just one ministry. Instead, it is the Strategy of everyone, and to ensure that everyone has ownership, there have been several online and in-person ways for people to participate. Increased collaboration at the government level has also improved efficiency, making the policy-making process move quickly.
This strategy is also unique because the long-term vision is not just to address the selected challenges but also to develop the country’s ‘innovation muscle.’ Executing these programs will require many players to work together and will integrate innovation into the thinking and working process for companies, citizens, and government long term.

The National Innovation Strategy is currently in the implementation phase. Starting in October 2019, the team began running in-person workshops around the country to gather the input from local leaders and citizens on the challenges and opportunities faced by Paraguay. In January 2020, an online workshop was also launched to allow more people to continuously participate. Analysis of responses shows that 6 major themes that have emerged, all of which are now being validated with local experts on the topics. The team is working with an economist to develop a set of criteria for the Driving Team to use when selecting the two challenges in April 2020. At the same time, the team is evaluating different structures for the Paraguayan Innovation Unit, which will be formally launched during the first semester of 2020, by Presidential decree. At the same time, the team has been strengthening international connections to help with the design of the initiatives, once selected.

The foundation of the Strategy is collaboration, both nationally & internationally. Seven ministers, the driving team with broad public representation, the UN’s Acceleration Lab, IDB, and the World Bank, among others. Workshops are being held with experts and practitioners on thematic areas to better understand the challenges that have arisen. Partnerships with local leaders are necessary for running workshops and getting input from citizens, and the private sector has supported with public events.

Citizens benefit since the innovation unit will more efficiently coordinate the deployment of national resources for innovation and for the two selected national challenges. Government organisations benefit from increased communication between organisations and ministries, facilitating the sharing of best practices. Civil society and academic groups also benefit as this is one of the first times they get to closely participate with the government and be involved in the decision-making process.

While the strategy is still being executed, it is a very iterative process, meaning that it is continually being adjusted and adapted as new learnings and observations arise. In total, the team has led 9 identifications workshops and 5 expert workshops, speaking with 245 unique participants. To get maximal participation in different cities around the country, the team has learned to establish strong local contact to help rally support and increase turnout at workshops and to also use the online platform. At the same time, the team realised that it is important to focus both on challenges faced and on Paraguay's current assets. Together, these constitute ‘Opportunities to Innovate,’ and the team has discovered over 300 so far. From these, the top few options will be presented to the Driving Team in March, when they will select two of them for the national initiatives.

One challenge the team has faced is the fast timeline of the strategy. Given that the process is less than a year in length, the team has had to move quickly in order to fulfil its mandate. Because of this, it has not been possible to have numerous workshops in all parts of the country; to overcome this challenge, the team has launched an online tool for virtual workshops. However, the fast timeline has made it hard to develop and deploy the technology. Originally, one member of the Driving Team created an online platform for idea submission; however, due to technological difficulties especially in rural areas, it was not deployed. Nevertheless, the team created a video tutorial and is recruiting volunteers to lead virtual workshops in place of this tech platform to ensure that more people can participate.

The strategy needs to have a few key leaders, or champions, who will support such a new approach within the country. Since the new innovation unit will be placed in the government, it is particularly important to have the support of different government leaders and ministries, which can happen by involving them in the co-creation process to ensure that their perspectives are heard. These champions also need to have good relations within the broader community. Since success for the unit and the strategy will depend on the successful unification of different innovation players, it is necessary that there is support from different community and private sector groups. At the same time, international partnerships have also been critical. Because innovation requires doing things differently, it will be useful to learn from what other countries and organisations have done in structuring their innovation units and also addressing national challenges.

Because the Innovation Strategy is still in the implementation phase, it has not yet been replicated elsewhere. However, once created, the new Innovation Unit will continue to push for innovation in the country and will coordinate innovation efforts moving forward. The unit will also execute the initiatives for the two selected challenges and repeat this process in the future, therefore continuously accepting input from the public about ideas and problems faced. This will help the country continue to develop its capacity for innovation. At the same time, the unit will help take the solutions developed in Paraguay and ‘export’ or share them globally, to help address similar challenges in other countries.

One of the key lessons from this strategy is that co-creation is necessary. Leading up to the passage of Decree 2314 by the president, there was roughly a year-long process in which interested community members volunteered their time to discuss what an innovation strategy might look like for the country. This consisted of workshops, meetings, panels, and chats with other countries to get a better sense of what innovation could look like in Paraguay, and to truly uncover what the people wanted to see in their country. This concerted effort from these individuals at an early stage helped gather support from multiple sectors and also fundamentally made this initiative both a public and a private effort. Therefore, one of the major lessons learned from this strategy is to ensure that the initial idea creation process heavily involves citizens before it is brought up to the highest decision-making authorities in the government.