Marking World Book Day and IID’s 13th anniversary, What We Got Wrong First captures 13 reflections on assumptions challenged, lessons learned, and how those experiences shaped IID’s approach to informed development.
Most organizations celebrate milestones by highlighting achievements. The development sector is no different. Reports, presentations, and annual reviews often focus on successes, innovations, and impact. These stories matter but they rarely tell the whole story. To mark its 13th anniversary, IID took a different approach. Rather than publishing a collection of success stories, it published “What We Got Wrong First”– a book reflecting on assumptions that proved inaccurate, ideas that unfolded differently than expected, and the lessons that emerged along the way.
The book raises a broader question: Is there enough space in the development sector to talk openly about what did not work?
Across the sector, there are strong incentives to showcase positive results. Funding, partnerships, and institutional reputation are often linked to how success is communicated. As a result, conversations tend to emphasize achievements, while unsuccessful approaches and incorrect assumptions receive far less attention. Yet development work takes place in complex and constantly changing environments. Not every idea will succeed, and not every assumption will prove correct. In this context, mistakes are not unusual—they are inevitable. The challenge is not avoiding mistakes altogether. It is recognizing them, understanding them, and learning from them. When organizations share only successes, valuable learning can be lost. Others may repeat the same mistakes, and opportunities for collective learning diminish. Honest reflection, on the other hand, helps generate evidence, improve decision-making, and strengthen practice. The stories featured in What We Got Wrong First are not stories of failure for failure’s sake. They are stories about learning about how assumptions were challenged, how thinking evolved, and how experience informed future decisions. As IID reflects on its first 13 years, the book serves as a reminder that informed development is built not only on evidence of success, but also on the willingness to examine, understand, and learn from what went wrong.