Stewart Kettle | 19 Jun 2025
If you've ever tried adding 'responsible and inclusive' considerations to a fast-moving project, you'll be familiar with the feeling that "we just don't have time for this right now."
We've seen this challenge up close. The Frontier Tech Hub provides valuable space for agile innovation across the FCDO, and therefore champions speed, iteration, and responsiveness. These qualities make the Hub an effective partner for testing and scaling critical new solutions around the world, but can also make it hard to find space for additional responsible and inclusive (R&I) considerations, especially when those goals are introduced separately from core project delivery.
Here's the problem: when R&I is treated as an add-on, it becomes optional. And optional things tend to get dropped when the pressure is on. But when you're building tech in the development or humanitarian space, R&I isn't optional: it's always at the center of your objective.
The goal isn't to build clever tech on its own. It's to solve real problems - and for the many, not the few. That means designing for real people within real systems. That means working with local partners, understanding local constraints, and thinking about long-term consequences from day one.
That's why we believe R&I needs to be built into the DNA of how projects progress, sharpening their focus and leading to more impact. At Colectiv, we've been thinking about how to make sure R&I doesn't come in as an afterthought. In our report we highlight what we think are two crucial elements: working with organisational culture when designing an R&I approach, and integrating R&I into innovation maturity and progression assessment.
This blog is the first of a series of two, with more details on our practical ideas for technologists to follow.
Let's stop thinking of responsible and inclusive tech as an extra when it should be the engine.
