The recently published Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum highlighted a number of challenges, from climate change to cyber security, that require collective action to tackle effectively. Unfortunately they believe that the chances of such collective action are receding in the face of growing isolationism that sees trust eroding and countries increasingly working on their own rather than together.
The report highlights how trade disputes worsened during 2018, with more expected in 2019. Indeed, 88% of respondents believed that multilateral trading rules and agreements will suffer tremendously in the coming year. A further 85% believed 2019 would witness a growing number of political confrontations between major powers, with these geopolitical instabilities reflecting not only changing power balances, but also fundamental differences in values.
“With global trade and economic growth at risk in 2019, there is a more urgent need than ever to renew the architecture of international cooperation. We simply do not have the gunpowder to deal with the kind of slowdown that current dynamics might lead us towards. What we need now is coordinated, concerted action to sustain growth and to tackle the grave threats facing our world today,” the WEF say.
A glimmer of hope
There are signs that the kind of cooperative approach required still exists however. For instance, The GovLab, which originated out of New York University, recently teamed up with the Bertelsmann Foundation to launch a program called People Led Innovation.
“In the modern era of governance where municipalities increasingly face incredibly complex challenges, the need for innovation is clear,” the partners say. “Cities need to go beyond providing innovative solutions – they also need to transform and modernize the way those solutions are developed.”
The website was born out of a report that was published last year that outlined the importance of people-led innovation in cities and urban environments. The report highlights both the rapid growth in cities and the inherent complexity that this growth provides in solving pressing social challenges, and also the importance of taking a people-led approach to problem solving that would see cities become policy laboratories whereby approaches are tested and solutions proven.
“The People-Led Innovation initiative is built on the idea that, as governments increasingly experiment with new means for drawing on the public’s knowledge and skills to address common challenges, one-size-fits-all citizen engagement efforts are often too broad and unwieldy to surface useful insights for city governments,” the team explain. “This new initiative provides city officials with a more strategic and actionable consideration of the most effective ways to engage the right people for the right task at the right time.”
Collaborative innovation
The virtue of cooperation was also exemplified by the recent launch of two new innovation communities by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT). The communities will operate in advanced manufacturing and urban mobility, and will join a number of existing EIT communities in areas such as healthcare and raw materials. Both aim to pool the talent and intent of multiple actors, with the urban mobility community consisting of 48 partners from 15 countries, including TomTom, BMW Group, Siemens and the Czech Technical University.
The manufacturing community will consist of 50 partners from 17 countries, including partners such as Volvo, Whirlpool Europe, Technical University of Vienna and Tecnalia. Both groups will be seeded with a 4 million Euro grant to get them started, with funding for each increased as their activity and success scales. They are also hoping to attract considerable investment from external public and private sources to achieve ultimate financial sustainability.
The new communities will adopt a similar approach to that of the existing communities, with each consisting of a number of hubs across the European Union that aims to provide startups with support both in selling in their domestic market but also across Europe. The model, which began in 2008 has thus far worked with over 1,000 startups who have collectively secured over 1 billion euros in investment.
In addition to providing support to startups to help them grow, the communities also aim to provide training to help ensure workers across Europe have the skills required to thrive in the modern economy. The new communities have teamed up with the likes of Siemens and Volkswagen universities as well as nine core academic partners to provide low cost, bite-sized training to people working in manufacturing across the continent. The content, which can be as short as 10 minutes, is designed to be consumed within a factory and can be threaded together to ensure the right skills are developed over a longer timeframe.
Entrepreneurial training
The importance of this kind of entrepreneurial training was highlighted in the recent Global Talent Competitiveness Index conducted by INSEAD, Adecco and Tata Consulting Services. The study, which explores the ability of countries and cities to develop and attract talented people, found that the best performing areas were those that were most open to entrepreneurial talent. What’s more, as digital technologies become more pervasive, this talent premium only becomes greater. The top 10 is dominated by European countries and cities, highlighting the success of programs like EIT in developing the skills people need to thrive in the modern world.
“In the top ten of talent competitiveness ranking, only two non-European countries can be seen: Singapore and the USA. This underlines that Europe remains a talent powerhouse, but also that countries with great universities and a strong education sector are best at attracting talents. Because high-level talents are also more mobile internationally, no comparative advantage can be seen as irreversible, and those countries will need to remain open and innovative to keep their leadership,” the authors say.
This mobile talent is increasingly attracted to the finest cities in the world, which gives urban areas an outsized role in the economic health of their host nation. The authors believe this is because cities can be more flexible in adapting to different trends than countries can. The report regarded Washington DC as the best city for achieving this, closely followed by Copenhagen, Oslo, Vienna and Zurich. It’s an approach that organizations like EIT are making reality.
“The EIT’s unique, education-focused approach to boosting innovation, will now create even more opportunities for talented entrepreneurs and students across the EU. This is essential for us to find innovative solutions to the pressing challenges of added value manufacturing and urban mobility – and help us build a resilient, competitive Europe,” Tibor Navracsics, EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, responsible for the EIT said recently.
