“Development is being disrupted,” says Raj Kumar, President of DevEx, a site devoted to helping the international development community deliver foreign aid more efficiently and effectively. Beyond the buzz generated by the “social entrepreneurship” and “impact investing” communities, I’ve seen a significant shift coming from traditional aid agencies in the past two years.

In 2010, USAID, the agency responsible for administering US foreign aid, launched the first-of-its-kind Development Innovation Ventures quarterly grant program. Its funding model is inspired by traditional venture capital and the focus is on scalable and entrepreneurial solutions to poverty alleviation. Similarly, in 2012 the World Bank hired a former Silicon Valley Google.org director to lead their new “Innovation Labs.” UNICEF and the Inter-American Development Bank have also launched their own “Innovation Labs” with similar goals of promoting open-dialogue, new methods, and cross-pollination of models that enable innovative activity.

So with all this talk about “innovation,” where are the designers, the technologists, and the entrepreneurs? The folks behind these initiatives are still folks with international and economic development backgrounds, economics and finance. If they’re serious about innovative approaches, it’s time creative problem solvers are added to the equation. Specifically, here are five strengths designers have that the development industry direly needs:

1. We are systems thinkers.

The problems that plague our world are complex, interwoven, and multifaceted. As designers, we solve problems through a combination of analytic and creative thinking. Many of the best designers I know are themselves multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary. In addition to a design degree, they’re also engineers or MBAs or economists. It takes both sides of the brain to generate solutions to social challenges.

2. Fresh eyes.

Einstein’s “We can’t solve the world’s problems by using the same type of thinking we used when we created them,” couldn’t ring more true. Many of the social issues we’re fighting today have existed for decades and consistently been addressing using old mechanisms—policy, aid, and philanthropy. We are long overdue for fresh thinking to old problems.

3. We have a prototyping culture.

We make a lot of mistakes in development—mistakes that sometimes negatively impact people with everything to lose; mistakes that could potentially be avoided if the development sector fostered a culture of iteration and refining ideas before rushing to scale. Instead, I see a lot of money going towards untested ideas or worse yet, “solutions in search of a problem.”

4. We focus on people.

Many decisions made today that affect the poor are made by people completely removed from their issues. A designer’s viewpoint, driven by an understanding of the needs of people or end-users, is completely unique and lacking within the development sector. The key to better policy, better products, and better public services is rooted in understanding of the key players and what motivates them.

5. We create capacity.

We build things. We build products, services, websites—and by doing so we are intrinsically building the capacity of those who make, distribute, sell, or use what we create. On a fundamental level, giving people access to tools that enhance their capacity is what drives economic development. We play a central role in creating those tools that are useful, relevant, and meaningful.

$22.8 billion of our projected fiscal budget is earmarked for poverty-reduction activity in 2013. Traditionally, international development agencies use the amount of the money put towards poverty alleviation as a metric for efficacy. I’m hoping the next few years shift that metric towards understanding underlying problems and funding new solutions that address those problems. In order to do that, we need a new breed of development thinkers. The next generation of designers is inspired by careers that provide meaning and impact. Now is the perfect time for the development sector to start connecting the dots.

Hulu.com

Raise your hand if you’re familiar with the TV show MacGyver. The main character is truly a phenomenal human being. The plot of the 60-minute show is pretty consistent: He’s a secret agent whose specialty is finagling himself out of the most impossible situations. He had an uncanny ability of taking everyday objects from his immediate surroundings and transforming them to solve problems. He could turn a coffin into a get-away jet ski. He could disarm a nuclear warhead using only a safety pin. In one of my favorite episodes he builds a long-distance bomb using a rubber glove, a gas pipe, a light bulb, and shards from a toilet bowl. He’s a universal symbol for resourcefulness, ingenuity, and creativity.

If you deconstruct his actions in every episode, there are four factors that enable his success. I’ve called them the four enablers of creativity:

1. He is a do-er. It’s easy for teams to sidestep creativity when taking on a new endeavor by quibbling over objectives. Ambiguity is uncomfortable. MacGyver uses action to work through the ambiguity. He could sit and have a discussion about his options, or create a tradeoff matrix, but he chooses to learn by doing.

2. His resources are defined. One of the first things we do at the start of a design project is figure out what we know and what we don’t know. We make constraints. It’s a contrast to what we associate with creativity—which is blue-sky, free-thinking, no rules. But the lack of constraints, or lack of a creative process, is in fact a deterrent to producing innovative results.

3. His goal is clear and a deadline is imminent. For MacGyver, the bomb is always ticking down. He has a defined amount of time. Failure is not an option. It’s similar to that feeling you get the night before a deadline, when the creative adrenaline rushes in at 2 a.m. The pressure is necessary to drive action.

4. He doesn’t have to ask for permission. Imagine if MacGyver had to stop with 15 seconds left on the bomb ticker to get clearance to use a set of pliers. Creating an enabling environment—tools on hand, creative ‘places,’ ‘time’ for creativity, diversity in thought—is what helps him get the job done.

There are a number of websites dedicated to debunking this TV character’s ingenuity, but he’s not entirely fiction. There are real-life MacGyvers throughout the developing world exhibiting the same resourcefulness and creativity, as well as entrepreneurship. This past November I bought a Rwandan-made LED lamp (pictured above) for 800 RWF (about $1.25 USD). It’s simple—some re-purposed wood, spent batteries from a radio, an LED, and some wire. There’s not even an on/ off switch, just exposed wires to complete the circuit.

This isn’t a solution that will produce IP, and yet it’s a prominent source of lighting in rural Rwanda, which makes up nearly 95 percent of the country’s population. It’s a great example of how creative individuals within the local context have ‘MacGyvered’ solutions to their needs.

Between 70-95 percent of the creative economy’s economic output in Africa comes from SMEs, the informal sector. They are local craftsman, operating under the radar, using their creative wits to survive. They are among the most resilient people on the planet.

In my previous career I was a product design consultant in Silicon Valley—the land of abundance. I worked on new technologies for American households, all for companies who wanted to build reputations for innovation. The irony is that I see more innovation, and less volatility, coming from what we call “the developing world” or the informal sector, where innovation is born every day from extreme constraints and necessity. (Just like in MacGyver).

In these places, the landscape is littered with broad meaty challenges like the lack of energy access, cross-cultural barriers, and the digital divide. They’re addressing these challenges in new ways and new models that are poised to leapfrog anything we can imagine in Silicon Valley. And I’m not alone in my thinking. This week at the World Economic Forum 2013 Annual Meeting in Davos, Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, shared that Coke’s innovation, which he referred to as “frugal innovation” is coming from emerging markets.

With that in mind, how might business leaders leverage the global creative economy to enable the MacGyvers working within their company and perhaps to support economic development in new economies? If you can’t answer the question, you might find yourself struggling to catch up sooner than you think.