Dr. Fred Carden :: Sustainability Science Program :: Center for International Development

Sustainability Science Program

Dr. Fred Carden
Center for International Development
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
313B Rubenstein Building
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
Tel: (1) 617-496-3953
Fax: (1) 617-496-8753
Email: fred_carden "at" ksg.harvard.edu
Group affiliation: Research Fellow

Fred Carden is a Research Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Center for International Development and Director of the Evaluation Unit of The International Development Research Centre in Canada. He has written in the areas of evaluation, international cooperation, and environmental management. Current work includes assessment of the influence of research on public policy, and the development of use-oriented evaluation tools and methods. Recent co-publications include “ Outcome Mapping”, “Organizational Assessment”, and “Evaluating Capacity Development”(see http://www.idrc.ca/evaluation).He has taught and carried out research at York University, the Cooperative College of Tanzania, the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia and the University of Indonesia. Carden holds a PhD in management from the Université de Montréal and a Master’s degree in environmental studies from York University. His work looks at questions related to the application of Outcome Mapping (Earl, Carden and Smutylo, 2001) in knowledge-to-action settings and strengthening the use of outcome mapping as a tool for measuring at the interface, or boundary, between knowledge and action.

Innovation, Change and Metrics: The Challenges of Measurement in a Complex World.

Carden’s work examines the application of Outcome Mapping as a tool to characterize and assess the contributions development programs make to the achievement of outcomes. His work addresses the following questions. What role can Outcome Mapping play in responding to this larger measurement challenge? How could it play that role? What are the gaps in our understanding of both Outcome Mapping and complex systems that could help us adapt the approach and its concepts to “measuring the unmeasurable” in complex and large-scale systems? The research makes explicit the links between complexity theory and outcome mapping and applying outcome mapping to the measurement challenges posed by innovation.