TIPC board member Göran Marklund, Deputy Director General and Head of Operational Development at VINNOVA, called for innovation thinking directed toward sustainability and resilience – and based on a true systemic perspective – as he opened the Consortium’s annual Learning Event in November.
Dr Marklund highlighted that traditional ways of thinking about innovation have left us ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of the world we live in now and in the future.
The pandemic has ‘brought into focus this perfect storm of systemic challenges’, he said, calling for directionality, reflexivity, demand articulation, and new indicators that reflect the systemic nature of the problems being tackled.
The opening remarks set the scene for a day of shared enquiry, thinking and networking for members, associates and partners from 18 countries.
The programme aggregated learning that had taken place throughout 2020 at events in the Latin America, Africa y Nordic contexts, building on the contributions of over 300 participants at the regional level.
Across several core sessions, participants reflected on:
- TIPC research on Metrics for Transformation and Second Order Learning
- User needs for the emerging Mobile Transformative Innovation Policy Lab (MoTIL)
- Examples of live transformative policy initiatives and experiments
- Insights from regional learning and engagement events across TIPC hubs
The day ended with a panel on investment for transformative change. Caetano Penna, co-editor of Mission-Oriented Finance for Innovation, was joined by Felicity Spors, Head of International Affairs at EIT Climate-KIC, and Kate Fox, Investment Manager of Baillie Gifford’s Positive Change Fund to reflect on how finance can be mobilised towards societal and environmental transformation.
‘The need for transformative change has become widely accepted, with missions and grand plans to tackle societal and environmental challenges being placed at the heart of recovery packages around the world,’ said Victoria Shaw, TIPC Programme Co-Director.
‘TIPC is building a global learning community to address how such policies can be implemented.’
