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Better Together Award 2019

How might we encourage innovative cooperations between public sector institutions and starts ups and/or civil society organization to support local and global climate action?

Partners#Berlin #BMW #ecosystem #ImpactSafari #Innovation #Leadership #Impact #Purpose #SDG17 #SDG8 #SDG9

Countries

Global

Project

The project aim is to highlight the relevance and value for innovative cooperations between public sector institutions and start ups and/or civil society initiatives for local & global climate protection and climate change mitigation & adaptation. The Award and its featured ventures will be part of the ICCA 2019 conference for Vertical Integration for Climate Action in Heidelberg, May 2019.

 

In collaboration with GIZ and BMU, Impact Hub Berlin focuses on four main action points:

1. Raise awareness for innovation cooperation on a global level by writing a state-of-the-art trend report and facilitating a global call-for-application to find the five best-practices in public / start-up cooperation in the field of climate action
2. Support the winning teams to generate impact at scale
3. Honor and present the five best-practices at the ICCA 2019 conference
4. Initiate and replicate innovative solution of public / start-up cooperations

 

SDG

• 6 Clean Water and Sanitation
• 7 Affordable and Clean Energy
• 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
• 12 Responsible Consumption and Production
• 13 Climate Action
• 17 Partnerships for the Goals

>> As part of the program we also did a corresponding research on “Collaborative Innovation for Urban Climate Futures – Trends for the 21st Century” – you can read about all our findings in the Trendreport. <<

Visit the website to the Awards here!

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!

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Fishbowl Discussion: Fostering the growth of impact entrepreneurs

How can cities and politics support Entrepreneurs? How can we build, support and connect local ecosystems that allow startups to scale?

 

#current #EcosystemBuilding #Impact #InnovationCommunities #SDG11 #SDG17 #SDG9 #SupportInfrastructure Partners

Countries:
Netherlands, Germany

Project

• Open Fishbowl discussion with our special guests from Den Haag and stakeholders in Berlin on how cities and governments can support impact entrepreneurs and which infrastructure cities need to grow a social innovation ecosystem
• Building a bridge between the Berlin and The Hague social innovation ecosystem to make scaling to Germany or the Netherlands easier

 

Project:

Accelerate MENA was a bilingual program (English – French) developed to inspire, build and connect social innovation ecosystems in the MENA region. Kicking off the program in Jordan and Tunisia, the project consisted of:

• Identifying key stakeholders and building an outreach network in Jordan and Tunisia including universities, existing projects, support institutions and innovation formats.
• 2.5-day ideation bootcamps in Amman and Tunis in English and French, in which solutions addressing SDG 12 and 7 were developed using Design Thinking.
• Impact Week in Berlin with the winning teams of each bootcamp to refine their solution developed and to connect them with each other as well as to the German social innovation ecosystem.
• Online mentoring for the winning teams.

Impact:

We believe that the best approach to address today’s challenges is to build and support local and global ecosystems of motivated people who want drive change. Innovation is not always Silicon Valley – Anyone can come up with new ideas that solve problems we face. Topped with inspiration, guidance, the right tools and skill set, these ideas can quickly turn into real projects with real impact.

Accelerate MENA equipped our participants with the tools to develop responsible and inclusive business models around challenges that matter – be it Sustainable Consumption and Production (SDG 12) in Jordan or Renewable Energy (SDG 7) in Tunisia – and connected them to the right stakeholders. By running two-day Design Thinking innovation bootcamps in Amman and Tunis as well as an acceleration training in Berlin, Accelerate MENA aimed to strengthen the MENA social entrepreneurship scene through three core elements:

• Inspire – Inspire individuals to get active and create solutions that have a positive impact
• Enable – Enable an entrepreneurial mindset to create sustainable business solutions using Design Thinking
• Connect – Connect the local ecosystems within and between Jordan, Tunisia, and Germany to scale

The participants developed several ideas ranging from using biomass to empower small towns in Tunisia by producing and selling their own energy, to building a co-creation space for artists upcycling plastic, or designing energy-efficient housing in the dead sea regions.

Insights:

>> Jordan

Design Thinking can unleash creativity in Jordan

There are a lot of highly motivated people in Jordan, especially young students, who are eager and motivated to get involved in starting an impact project. However, there are not enough creative offers that encourage ideation yet, and Design Thinking is still a new concept. Closely connected to that, Design Thinking experts and trainers are quite rare. During the workshop we were amazed to see how open the bootcamp participants were to the process and how much energy they put into the team and project work. The final pitches at the end of the workshop in front of a jury pushed the participants to develop their idea further – they were on fire!

Creative Workshops are nice; but follow-ups make the difference

Apart from the high energy of the participants, we were overwhelmed to see that many existing projects had an implicit impact focus already, especially in Amman and the surrounding areas. While there are existing support opportunities for young entrepreneurs in Amman, such as the Zain campus where our bootcamp took place, enpact or Oasis 500, follow-up support opportunities for early stage ideas are still rare. Although the level of motivation was high, participants who came to our bootcamp with an idea often struggled to create a business model making their project or startup financially sustainable. There is a big demand for developing a skill set to push ideas further.

Need for more business modelling to make ideas come alive

Concluding, especially in the early project stages ranging from ideation to follow-up support for projects that have not turned into a business yet, support and funding is lacking. We had the feeling that many good ideas were not followed up upon, as incubation or mentoring opportunities to work on the business side were missing. Design Thinking and co-working are slowly arriving in Jordan, but were not common buzzwords yet.

>> Tunisia

Female power!

Similar to Jordan, we loved how many female participants came to our workshop. The teams were very gender-inclusive and collaboration was highly encouraged. Although gender inclusivity and rights is of course still a big topic in the region, within the small context of our workshop and probably also within the younger age group it felt very natural to have diverse teams.

Strengthening Tunisia’s early-stage entrepreneurship ecosystem

Feedback we received from several ends indicated that the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tunisia is still very early-stage with few players, support institutions and co-working spaces in the field. Especially amongst the older generation, becoming a founder is not yet as accepted as working for bigger corporates. Consequently, funding and investment is still a big topic and so is bureaucracy.

 

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!

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Global Sustainability Trend Report

How can we access grass-route innovators to understand emerging trends and innovation that will affect business strategies in the future?

#current #Impact #Innovation #SDG11 #SDG12 #SDG13 #SDG14 #SDG15 #SDG3 #SDG8 #SDG9 #Transformation #Trends Partners

Countries
Europe, Middle East & Africa, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific

 

Project

• Scouted +150 sustainable experts & pioneers via our global Impact Hub network to gain insights into industries such as: Agriculture, Automotive, Transportation, Electronics, Energy, Consumer, Goods, Food, Health and Construction
• Identified stakeholders and insights from different fields such as industry, regulations, NGO, investors, start-up / Entrepreneurs, Academia, science, digital experts, multipliers, opinion leaders, pioneers to conduct one-on-one interviews as well as a global survey

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!

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Africa FinTech Challenge

How might we support local entrepreneurs in Africa to ensure economic growth and financial security?

#DesignSprint #designthinking #DigitalPrototype #Hackathon #SDG1 #SDG10 #SDG8 #SDG9 Partners

Countries:
Ghana, Kamerun, Germany

Project

• Run a design thinking workshop with 40 participants (representatives of fin tech scene berlin, giz/bmz, african diaspora) to gain understanding of method & provide perspective on platform needs
• Develop a digital prototype for an online platform enabling the transfer of remittances from Germany to Ghana & Kamerun, and leverage payments through German development aid 
• Skype interviews with IH Khartoum and Kigali for provide local entrepreneurial perspective
  

 

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!

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GIZ Lab of Tomorrow – Human-centered research to access emerging markets

How can you create new business ventures in emerging markets and establish strong local partnerships?

#designthinking #Digitalization #Ideation #LabOfTomorrow #Piloting #Prototyping #Research #SDG1 #SDG10 #SDG11 #SDG12 #SDG13 #SDG14 #SDG15 #SDG16 #SDG17 #SDG2 #SDG3 #SDG4 #SDG5 #SDG6 #SDG7 #SDG8 #SDG9 Partners

Countries
Zambia, Kenya, Uganda

 

Project

• Define the challenge and select cross-sector partners
• Human-centered Research & Stakeholder Mapping to identify core needs, challenges and potentials
• Ideation & Prototyping Workshop to design new solutions and strengthen partnerships
• Test and Pilot new solutions in the field

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch! 

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BMW Impact Safari for Purpose – Driven Leadership

How can we inspire and empower top-level management to create a purpose-driven environment for their employees?

#Berlin #BMW #ecosystem #ImpactSafari #Innovation #Leadership #Impact #Purpose #SDG17 #SDG8 #SDG9 Partners

Countries

Germany

Project

1. We plug corporates into our local impact ecosystem to make them experience a new world
2. 2-3 full day workshop with excursions across Berlin
3. Tailored topics designed to inspire and leverage purpose-driven leadership

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!

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GIZ Global Innovation

How-to-guide to Build Innovation Communities

#BestPractice #EcosystemBuilding #Innovation #InnovationCommunities #SDG4 #SDG5 #SDG9

Countries:

Germany, global

Partners

Project:

• Identify need, ambition and outcome
• Global analysis of best practices formats for community-building and acceleration
• Screening of Impact Hub Berlin + global Impact Hub network for best case practices
• Synthesis, visualisation and creation of a hands-on guide with case studies

Challenge

How can we share our global expertise and empower others to build strong innovation communities and empower local entrepreneurial ecosystems?

>> Want to know more or host your own program with us?  Get in touch!