Insights

Strong, well-connected networks are essential to addressing complex social challenges by coordinating action, sharing learning, and adapting to changing conditions. These networks play a crucial role in mobilizing resources and supporting innovation across various sectors, including philanthropy and social investment. However, many networks struggle with outdated or incomplete information about their members and activities, hindering collaboration and progress. To overcome this, an increasing number of networks are adopting dynamic, data-driven approaches like AI-enabled analysis and real-time feedback to maintain up-to-date, actionable insights that enhance their effectiveness in diverse and evolving contexts.
Financial services, ICT, Health, Education
Supercharging Network Intelligence
Gender data has advanced, enabling comparisons of women’s labor force participation, legal reforms, and workplace representation across countries. However, current measurements focus more on women’s presence in systems than on how well these systems serve them. An IFC report reveals that despite 429 indicators across 129 countries, many metrics show existence rather than impact, lacking insight into outcomes like mobility, safety, productivity, and social norms. Crucial areas such as supply chains, digital access, care systems, and gender-based violence remain poorly measured, highlighting the need for better data that tracks performance, trajectories, and lived experiences rather than mere compliance.
Angola, Botswana, Chad, Guinea, Mali
From data gaps to action: measuring women’s economic opportunities better
Maintaining healthy communities requires real-time, accessible information on hazardous chemical exposures and pollution, especially during industrial accidents or facility transitions. Communities near energy infrastructure need a shared, long-term knowledge base to track pollution data before, during, and after changes, facilitating comparisons of risks and outcomes. Current data systems and funding models are inadequate for sustaining such collective environmental knowledge. Developing an environmental knowledge commons—shared and maintained by diverse users—would enhance evidence-based public policy and community resilience, providing a sustainable model for scientific collaboration despite uncertain federal support.
Constructing a New Knowledge Infrastructure
Green hydrogen, produced from renewable energy, offers a fossil-free energy source that can be stored and transported via supply networks. However, hydrogen infrastructures face risks from natural disasters, sabotage, or political issues, necessitating resilient network planning. Researchers at Fraunhofer EMI have developed a hydraulic simulation tool that models dynamic reactions of hydrogen networks, identifying weak points and predicting impacts and recovery times under extreme disruptions. Building on a natural gas network simulation algorithm, this tool accounts for hydrogen’s distinct properties and integrates storage systems. It supports rapid, continuous prediction of system behavior before, during, and after disruptions, aiding the development of mitigation strategies such as increased storage to enhance network resilience.
Innovative Numerical Simulation Methods for Resilient Hydrogen Networks
By 2028, most enterprises will embed AI within workflows to drive actions, but many currently struggle due to a gap between AI investments and operational integration. Organizations must incorporate AI into core systems and processes to scale its use and link outputs to measurable performance outcomes. Successful companies treat AI as a capability to build, embedding it to enhance efficiency and influence key decisions like pricing and product development. Partner-supported AI platforms, combined with domain expertise, enable scalable, governed AI implementation, transforming pilots into repeated enterprise outcomes such as faster delivery, cost reduction, and improved customer experience. This integrated approach drives sustainable growth and modernization across industries.
Education
How an Organizational Shift Can Unlock Real Value from a Stalled AI Strategy
AI is reshaping finance leadership and teams by blending traditional financial expertise with digital, data, and analytics skills, alongside vital soft skills like creativity and empathy. Despite expectations that AI would reduce transactional work, many finance employees still handle these tasks, and CFOs increasingly prioritize digital upskilling over hiring for AI-specific skills. Finance roles now demand fluency in AI and digital tools, yet challenges remain in employee engagement, tech resistance, and talent shortages. Workers value job flexibility and recognition more than compensation or career growth, signaling a shift in workforce priorities. To thrive, finance leaders must align talent strategies with these evolving needs and values.
Financial services, Education
How AI Is Changing the Needs and Values of Finance Leaders and Their Teams
Organizations often undermine their competitive advantage by adopting fixed performance rankings, like annual stack ranking systems, that cause employees to over-copy established top performers ("overshooting") and rely on outdated evaluations ("frozen targets"). Such dynamics stifle innovation by preventing the real-time recognition and recombination of diverse, distinct knowledge held by emerging high performers. Continuous updating of performance information through "live targets" enables employees to learn selectively—those far behind learn rapidly, while those near the frontier learn judiciously—accelerating innovation on complex problems. Success depends less on hiring diverse talent than on designing systems that continuously surface and integrate diverse contributions.
Education
Stop Trying to Replicate a Single Star Performer
Insurance policies often exclude war-related losses through “war exclusions,” but this does not mean businesses are entirely unprotected during conflicts. Recent wars, like those in Ukraine and Iran, have demonstrated that insurance can support companies in managing risks and recovering from disruptions affecting energy, prices, and supply chains. Although the insurance industry has historically shied away from war coverage due to high costs and unpredictability, specialized markets now offer war and political violence insurance, including parametric policies that cover specific conflict-related events. Companies should actively assess their coverage and consider alternative risk financing approaches to enhance resilience amid growing geopolitical instability.
Will Insurance Protect Your Company in Times of War?
Critical minerals are vital for energy technology, industrial competitiveness, and economic resilience, with demand rising sharply this decade. Despite ample geological availability and capital, investment is hindered by bankability issues due to market fragmentation, concentrated processing steps, and delayed revenue visibility from qualification cycles. Effective strategies to increase supply focus on tailored policy interventions addressing mineral market structure, jurisdiction risks, and project stages. Deploying public support strategically can de-risk projects, enhance revenue certainty, and attract private finance, enabling diversified and resilient critical mineral supply.
Financial services
Making Critical Minerals Bankable: Policy Tools to Unlock Investment
Embedding a victim-centric approach in the implementation of the UN framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace enhances its effectiveness. Focusing on real-world human, societal, and systemic impacts of cyber operations through mechanisms like the Global Mechanism and Dedicated Thematic Groups promotes more inclusive, resilient, and effective global cyber governance.
Centring Victims in Global Cyber Norms
Tourism in Asia and the Pacific is recovering strongly from recent shocks, driven by a growing middle class, better connectivity, and diverse offerings. In 2024, arrivals nearly reached pre-pandemic levels, with revenue exceeding 2019 figures. Regional cooperation is essential to build resilience, moving beyond national competitiveness by harmonizing policies and reducing cross-border barriers. Four key policies include improving seamless connectivity (notably air and road infrastructure), liberalizing visa regimes with digitalization, setting regional tourism standards, and diversifying products and markets. These measures will enhance travel accessibility, reduce costs, boost arrivals, and mitigate risks from geopolitical tensions and external shocks.
Africa, ASEAN, Latin America | Financial services
4 Policies for Asia and the Pacific to Build Resilience of Tourism Together
Artificial intelligence can significantly enhance public sector performance across Asia and the Pacific by supporting continuous, on-the-job learning aligned with real-world practices. AI tools enable timely guidance during routine tasks, facilitate peer learning through digital communities, and personalize formal training with microlearning tailored to diverse roles. These technologies help retain institutional knowledge, enhance inclusion by reaching remote officials, and support regional cooperation through shared standards and knowledge networks. Ultimately, AI-driven learning strengthens public institutions’ adaptability and service delivery, fostering a more connected, efficient, and resilient public sector in the region.
ICT, Education
AI Can Help Build a Smarter Public Sector Across Asia and the Pacific
Mongolia can capitalize on its critical mineral deposits such as copper and lithium, essential for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies, by enhancing infrastructure and attracting foreign investment. With growing global demand and proximity to major Asian markets, the country should implement stronger environmental, social, and governance standards, adopt investor-friendly policies, and build capacity. These measures will drive revenue, create jobs, diversify the economy, and position Mongolia as a trusted, strategic supplier in the global clean energy transition.
Lithuania, Mongolia
Market Assessment of Critical Minerals in Mongolia
Artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated into everyday life in Australia, influencing communication, services, and relationships. The Relational Futures project, led by Indigenous researchers Bronwyn Carlson and Tamika Worrell, investigates how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples encounter and respond to AI technologies such as generative systems, automated decision-making tools, and AI companions. Using a mixed methods approach with surveys and yarning circles, the study reveals diverse Indigenous experiences with AI across community and professional settings, highlighting the importance of Indigenous sovereignty in AI governance.
Education
Relational futures: Indigenous sovereignty and the governance of artificial intelligence (AI)
Inclusive Innovation in the Age of AI and Big Data, edited by Daryl Lim and Peter K Yu, examines the impact of artificial intelligence and big data on economies and societies, highlighting concerns about inclusion, equity, and global justice. The volume brings diverse global perspectives to explore how gender, race, and socioeconomic factors influence innovation and intellectual property ecosystems. It addresses structural barriers, diversity initiatives, metrics for inclusivity, and changes driven by new technologies. The book offers policy recommendations to create more equitable and socially responsive innovation systems amid rapid technological change and rising inequality.
ICT, Education
Inclusive Innovation in the Age of AI and Big Data
For millennia, oracles and seers have used predictions to influence leaders and communities, often masking power struggles and limiting personal agency. Today, technology and artificial intelligence play a similar role by making critical decisions affecting loans, jobs, housing, and healthcare. Carissa Véliz reveals that modern tech predictions perpetuate bias, lack accountability, and create false security, ultimately serving as tools for domination rather than genuine foresight. Her analysis warns that prophecy—ancient or modern—is used to control the future, urging resistance to maintain individual autonomy.
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
Artificial intelligence systems increasingly rely on persistent contextual memory, drawing on users’ preferences, behaviors, and past interactions to operate effectively. This relational context is foundational for AI function but introduces significant risks, including privacy vulnerabilities from aggregating data across domains and cognitive risks as AI shapes users' understanding and decision-making. These dynamics challenge digital self-determination by shifting agency from individuals to opaque systems that continuously influence how people are represented and acted upon. The concerns span various AI technologies and are especially critical for vulnerable groups like children, highlighting the need to balance AI’s benefits with protections for privacy and cognitive autonomy.
Education
The Context Loop: How AI Remembers Us, and Shapes Digital Self-Determination
AI readiness, defined by an economy’s digital infrastructure, skilled workforce, innovation, institutions, and economic structure, is crucial for benefiting from AI technologies in Asia and the Pacific. Significant gaps exist between advanced and developing economies, with developing nations facing challenges in infrastructure and skill availability. Advanced economies engage more in AI-enabling trade and adopt AI more rapidly, leading to greater productivity and growth gains. Simulations estimate AI could boost growth by 0.6–2.1 percentage points in advanced economies by 2030, compared to 0.2–1.8 pps in developing ones. Targeted investments in digital infrastructure, skills, and industry integration are needed to enhance AI adoption, support job transitions, and reduce growth disparities across the region.
Africa | ICT, Education
Your Questions Answered: What Is AI-Readiness and How Will It Reshape Asia and the Pacific?
Many governments rely on policy-advising organizations to convert academic research into actionable policies. However, high-quality evidence often fails to influence decisions because it must pass through multiple hierarchical layers within these organizations. Information can stall at junior or senior levels, creating bottlenecks that hinder the effective use of rigorous research. While studies have explored policymakers’ engagement with evidence and training to improve its use, less is understood about how evidence spreads internally—such as who shares it, how hierarchy affects diffusion, and the role of peer dynamics in sharing decisions.
How does evidence diffuse through organisations?
The rapid growth of generative AI is transforming the creation, sharing, and governance of cultural and knowledge resources, revealing significant shortcomings in current intellectual property regimes (IPRs). While IPRs help artists, creators, and Indigenous knowledge holders protect their work and secure fair value, they struggle with the scale, speed, and opacity of AI systems that use vast datasets. This situation enables the privatization of public domain knowledge, raising tensions over economic rights, cultural sovereignty, and development, especially for marginalized communities. These impacts are gendered and intersectional, exacerbating labor precarity and cultural erasure. There is a critical need for an accessible, independent repository led by civil society to support equitable, rights-based AI governance that respects cultural diversity and sovereignty.
Education
Democratic Infrastructure for Creative Futures: Building the AI, IP & Culture Repository

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