My main takeaway from the 2025 Goalkeepers Report is that we’re off track, but there’s still hope.
The subtitle of the report is: “We can’t stop at almost.” This is because, for the first time this century, an estimated 200,000 more children will die before the age of five. Progress is reversing. Not only is child mortality rising, but we’re also off track on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and this year’s tightening budgets and funding reductions have pushed those goals further out of reach.
The report marks a shift in development, where the challenge is no longer only how to expand progress, but how to protect it. In this shift, the kinds of innovations that matter most begin to look very different. We’ve entered a moment where constraints, urgency, and tradeoffs determine which innovations matter, and this reality changes how philanthropy and development actors should act.
I was particularly struck by a section of the report titled “Innovations that stretch every dollar”. The section goes on to discuss malaria vaccines that deliver the same protection in fewer doses, as well as innovators finding ways to do more with less.
As a researcher at the Christensen Institute, my first reaction was: Oh, this sounds like an efficiency innovation. Do more with less. But as I continued reading and reflecting on the report through my business-theory lens, I realized the report was calling for three other, very clear types of innovation. The underlying logic of this section is that when resources are tightening, progress depends less on new breakthroughs and more on how investments, systems, and incentives are designed. So yes, innovations that stretch every dollar are needed. But what’s also required are innovations that build the systems necessary to scale, and the inclusivity necessary to save lives.
Efosa Ojomo wrote about these innovations earlier this year.
Financial, ecosystem, and social innovation
Financial innovation is about capital that unlocks more capital. It involves leveraging philanthropic resources to crowd in additional investment, because as well intentioned as philanthropy is, it is insufficient on its own. Philanthropy can, however, play an essential catalytic role by absorbing early risk and validating innovative models. When development practitioners view philanthropy as catalytic capital, they unlock significant potential to create new markets that serve the poor.
In the current funding environment, with shrinking budgets and rising needs, financial innovation becomes essential, not optional.
Ecosystem innovations are system-level solutions that radically increase productivity and lower costs. Ecosystem entrepreneurs build the interconnected networks of people, resources, and organizations needed to solve a specific problem for a specific group of people. Their activities include mass production, marketing, distribution, financing, standardization, and specialization. Together, these efforts reduce the cost of production and increase productivity and wages. By investing in ecosystem entrepreneurs and their innovations, philanthropic partners can accelerate localized impact while also helping build the infrastructure required to scale.
The report’s emphasis on primary healthcare, targeted delivery, and doing more with existing tools reflects this same insight: without strong local ecosystems, even proven interventions might fail to scale or endure under stress.
Finally, social innovation focuses on more fairly distributing value to workers and the community. Social innovation ensures that the value created by new markets is more equitably shared by embedding that value into the market itself. So, as companies and organizations grow, the workers who own pieces of those organizations benefit alongside them.
The need for this innovation may be less obvious in the report but where I see it is the SDG backsliding. The highlight underscores that progress is fragile not only when value isn’t shared, but when people have little stake in the systems driving that progress. Social innovation helps ensure gains endure by aligning growth with ownership and participation.
Together, these three innovations can increase investment, productivity, and inclusivity. They form a flywheel that leads to increased prosperity and amplified impact.
One example of how these three innovations can work together to benefit the poor comes from India’s dairy sector in Amul, a farmer-owned dairy cooperative. Financially, the cooperative model and programs like Operation Flood helped crowd in financing and investment into rural dairying while ensuring farmers received fair, reliable payments. Ecosystem-wise, Amul built the infrastructure required to scale – milk collection, cold storage, processing, distribution, and quality control, which dramatically lowered costs and raised productivity across the value chain. And socially, Amul embedded ownership directly into the system: farmers are not just suppliers, but shareholders who share in profits and decision-making.
While Amul is not a healthcare example, it still speaks directly to the SDGs by showing how initiatives that combine capital, systems, and stake can improve livelihoods, resilience, and long-term well-being for millions of low-income households. This is the kind of innovation necessary to protect progress when resources are tight.
A call to action
Before closing with an opportunity to explore the data, the 2025 report issues a clear call to action for policymakers and engaged citizens.
It urges policymakers to better target health financing, fund proven successes, protect and expand investments in primary healthcare and vaccines, and support the development of health innovations that accelerate impact. It also calls on engaged citizens to use their voices to remind leaders that saving children’s lives matters, regardless of their geographic location.
Answering those calls will require more than preserving funding levels. It will require investing in the kinds of innovations that matter when the clock is ticking.
