Business relationships for innovation a shared topic at UN-Habitat forum

Lina Svensberg, Innovation Manager at DigitalWell Arena, today participated in a roundtable at UN-Habitat. A recurring theme was how public actors and innovative companies can engage commercially around sustainability issues.

UN-Habitat is the UN’s agency for sustainable urban development and better living conditions in the world’s cities. A starting point for the discussions was, among others, the Climate Smart Cities Challenge – an innovation competition launched by the UN and Sweden to accelerate the transition to climate-neutral cities, where innovators and communities are given the opportunity to collaborate to design new solutions.

May need to let go of control

The discussions brought together representatives from a large number of countries and organisations. A recurring theme was the challenge of how cities and other public actors can engage with innovative companies on commercial terms.

– It is interesting that we see similar challenges in other parts of the world as well. For example, when it comes to getting actors who are used to planning and being in control to dare to act in uncertainty in order to find new solutions, says Lina Svensberg.

Directed towards sustainability issues

In this context, she spoke about Demand Acceleration – the methodology for driving innovation with the support of public procurement that has been developed within DigitalWell Arena. The methodology is also to be tested in a project with WWF Sweden and Ignite Sweden, to explore how it can help reduce the public sector’s climate footprint. (Read more here).

• Here you can find more information about Demand Acceleration

Developed within DigitalWell Arena.