Innovation for Societal Resilience: Shaping Nexus Narrative and Solutions Based on ‘Area, Actors, and Agency’ Triad

Ambitious value proposition of different multilateral development organizations to ensure systemic transformative change across various dimensions, e.g., social, economic, political, cultural, etc. and societal resilience is confronted with ‘how’ question. A major challenge is the translation and implementation of these far-reaching objectives into concrete practice. With growing recognition of (inter)dependencies in societal fabric, there is also growing recognition of the need to explore ‘nexus’—which could be a combination of more than one system(s) variable to allow maximum value proposition in search of solutions to pressing development challenges. Nexus thinking has its own supply and demand side between theory and practice, which is in continuous flux of new concepts and even push for more ‘innovation’ towards both directions. This article develops the approach of triple ‘A’ or ‘area—actors—agency’ triad for societal resilience to ensure that any programmatic efforts target the problem bearers (actors) and key players that can offer solutions (agency) within a specific geographic area (area). The criticality of this approach is such that requires any development pregaming to be hinged on these three ‘As’ for system analysis (to be translated into nexus narrative) and for solutions that would provide viable roadmaps for meaningful development programming. Any joint programming should start with complementarity of intentions to complementarity of mandates, institutional capabilities and shared accountability. Most importantly, this should transcend from high-level discourse to very practical roadmaps to address ‘how’ question to each specific case of triad. Shaping nexus narrative and nexus solutions requires various partners to collaborate, cooperate, and coordinate through mobilizing co-design and co-creation space.