 Welcome everybody to the moment that you have all been waiting for. It is the opening of the second edition of the ITU Global Innovation Forum. Five days of action packed, unmissable and fun-filled days, if anything, if last year's anything to go by, with over 120 speakers of the highest calibre illuminating regional perspectives from Africa, Arab states and the Americas with one goal, building partnerships that mainstream entrepreneurship driven digital innovation. Now the forum aims to support digital change makers in building a bright future to enable tech driven innovative businesses, provide the expertise to boost your local ecosystem competitiveness, offer you the chance to connect with the network of partners and projects to improve your investment portfolio for social and economic impact, give insight on how to raise the entrepreneurship bar in your region by learning the tools you need to build an innovation driven ecosystem and last but not least access the latest resources that will empower you to overcome innovation roadblocks in your country by building future forward tech innovation and entrepreneurship policies. Now the sessions are being brought live to you on Swapcard so do take advantage of this great technological tool and use the chat to comment. The Q&A box is great to ask your questions and of course reach out and connect with each other directly and don't forget to use our hashtag rediscover innovation to join in the conversation. Now if you'd like to listen in on one of the six official UN languages for which we provide an interpretation for you just click on the link below where it says interpretation and and then as I say you will be able to listen in one of the six official UN languages. Otherwise I'd also like to remind you that at this stage you can ask questions on Swapcard but they do need to be in English. So without further ado I would now like to give the floor to the International Telecommunication Union Secretary-General Mr. Hulan Zhao who will deliver his opening remarks. Mr. Zhao the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. You have to unmute myself. It's all right. We can hear you loud and clear. Thank you. I'm very good. So very important director of development sector of ITU. Dear colleagues, dear participants welcome you to this 2021 ITU Global Innovation Forum. I'm very pleased that the theme of this year's forum is building partnerships to mainstream entrepreneurship. This subject is very close to me. By mainstream entrepreneurship does not mean that this is only huge international companies but it also means SMEs. I have long advanced promoting the participation of SMEs in ITU's work and today this community is a growing part of the ITU family. Just two weeks ago I was in Honek of Vietnam for opening ITU digital world 2021. This is special year for ITU telecom event. We started in 1971 and we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this event. As you know that we already tried to move our focus of this event from working with big companies to work with more closely with SMEs. So these events have supported marvelously innovation and given tech entrepreneurs in recent years of voice in the global debate and the platform to showcase their creativity. You might also have noted that just last week we celebrate the world standardization day together with ISYEC where three organizations once more gain highlighted the importance of participation of SMEs. So just a two-week school that we repeated this message from our own event. This is also the case for academia another important part of the ITU family in our fast changing world and confident that academia can help commercialize research by enabling spaces for its community to solve some of today's most pressing challenges. The 2021 ITU global innovation forum puts entrepreneur and academia front and center. It provides different stakeholders with a platform to ignite collaboration put renewed focus on digital inclusion through grassroots platform program solving and broker new partnerships to accelerate achievement of national and regional ambitions. This forum will also help countries gain meaningful insights about ecosystem strategies. This is very important as a few countries have start-up policies or programs in place to support digital innovation and entrepreneurship leaving many without the right enabling environment to support entrepreneurship driven innovation. Ladies and gentlemen innovation is one of the key pillars of ITU's strategy and it is at the heart of our Connect 2030 agenda. I myself have made innovation a central element of my vision for the future. I call it the four eyes infrastructure, investment, innovation and inclusiveness. Of course infrastructure is still quite important for us is our main task to extend our infrastructure to connect those not connected to upgrade our infrastructure with the latest technologies to make our ICT more beneficial to everybody and to reach that we need a huge investment and here innovation is quite important not only innovation in the technology side but also innovation in the policy side and of course inclusiveness means we will not leave anybody behind. I hope you will use the next few days to focus on these areas and help create environment conductive and constructive to more innovation and investment in ICTs. Now more than ever we needed to encourage innovative approaches to incentivizing investment and partnerships across the digital ecosystem. In closing let me just thank ITU telecommunications development sector and director of BDT, my dear colleague, Ms. Doreen Bovdan-Martin for bringing us together all week. Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation will help accelerate the recovery from the pandemic and progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I wish you all a very successful forum and look forward to working with you to accelerate the development of digital ecosystem for innovation as a path to sustainability for all. I thank you very much. Flo is back. Thank you very much indeed Mr. Ja for those insightful and illuminating words. I would now like to give the floor to Ms. Doreen Bovdan-Martin as you know the director of ITU's telecommunication development bureau to deliver her opening remarks. So Doreen the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much Max, Secretary General, good morning, good afternoon and good evening everyone. A warm welcome to the second edition of the ITU Global Innovation Forum. I would say back by popular demand. We are excited to host this forum once again online and of course to see so many of you join us for a second time tuning in of course from all regions of the world. International dialogues such as this one are so vital to finding effective collaborative solutions to the challenges that we face today. And for me two of the biggest takeaways from the past 18 months are one that connectivity is no longer a nice to have but a must have of course not just for the wealthy few but for everyone everywhere. And two that innovation is the critical element that we need to drive adoption and value creation in underserved markets. Those old-fashioned business as usual approaches won't cut it. We urgently need new thinking and innovative solutions to bridge the digital divide so that people everywhere are empowered to participate in this new normal. And of course with the COVID pandemic overturning the best laid plans of governments and businesses all around the world. In 2020 we thought at the right moment to also shine a light on the extraordinary change makers at last year's Global Innovation Forum so that we can highlight the challenges that they faced and also the opportunities that they see ahead. So for GIF 2021 we're going to focus on how in a forever-changed world we can mainstream entrepreneurship through new partnerships and new relationships. It's time to take stock of the lessons learned so that we can start to build back better. So why entrepreneurship? Well quite simply because entrepreneurship is the engine of every thriving economy. Entrepreneurs seize opportunities take risks and creatively scope out resources. They create startups that become small and medium-sized companies and high-growth firms that in turn create jobs and economic growth. They are the lifeblood of innovation. The COVID crisis has turbocharged digital innovation and where connectivity permitted anything that could go digital did go digital and we now have this unique opportunity to make a virtue of that necessity and by of course riding the wave of digital transformation and leveraging innovative solutions developed to maintain services and business continuity during lockdowns countries can use the crisis as an opportunity to build competitive digital economies through entrepreneurship driven innovation. Let's remember that grassroots innovation has played a critical role in advancing societies right throughout history but innovators rarely stand alone. The best brightest and most successful have benefited from enabling environments with supportive frameworks and resources that help them to advance their vision to the benefit of the broader community. As GIF 2021 participants and key members of the global innovation ecosystem your role in accelerating digital transformation is absolutely critical and of course our aim as highlighted by Max and stressed by the secretary general our aim during this event is to help you to help you optimize your impact and identify the resources stakeholders and policies that can support you. Today we're going to kick off the forum with a high-level panel we have a super panel we'll be looking at how countries can leverage digital to leapfrog old barriers and to drive socio-economic inclusion we'll be following that session to highlight the digital innovation divide there's a big divide and look at the impact of that divide during the pandemic and of course the role of entrepreneurship to help us close that digital innovation gap. Tomorrow day two we have invited experts from around the globe that will be shedding light on mechanisms to collaborate in ways excuse me that better support entrepreneurs and innovators. We will hear ideas on mainstreaming tech-driven innovation in academic settings that serve as incubators for budding entrepreneurs and on days three and four we will be doing regional deep dives I'm really looking forward to that where we're going to focus on good practices sharing success stories of digital change makers from around the globe and offering insights on the potential for new partnerships and action at the regional level shortlisted participants from the global south COVID-19 digital innovation community will also be pitching looking forward to that too pitching their ideas in live sessions and we will learn about potential solutions to deal with the cascading effects of the pandemic in the global south. On day five our last day when we're wrapping up the focus will shift to strategies to place digital entrepreneurship and partnership at the center of problem solving with a call of course for collaboration on partnerships that can help to dramatically accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals I to use belief in the untapped catalytic power of digital to re-energize the SDG process and to get us back on track to meet our global goals by 2030 is really the driving force behind our decision to launch our partner to connect digital coalition. This is a bold new global platform that's aiming to mobilize multi-stakeholder partnerships and concrete commitments to bring meaningful connectivity to the hardest to connect communities. Partner to connect is a pledging system it's due for launch in January and it will serve as an important driver of innovation in its own right stimulating commitments to support startups and entrepreneurs in the digital sphere of course everyone is invited to join us. On Friday of course this year's forum will come to a close with the announcements of the winners of the global south COVID-19 digital innovation challenges with up to 10 winning proposals that will get seed funding that will get mentorship and will get training to help to scale their solutions. Ladies and gentlemen at the heart of our efforts to bridge the digital innovation gap is our vision for a better shared digital future for all. Young people with their natural affinity for technology are vital partners in making that a reality and that's why we're also engaging in this year's forum our generation connect community. We'll get the chance to hear their perspectives on this year's event as we wrap up the week as as we wrap up the week. I hope that our sessions throughout the week will will bring you new insights fresh perspectives as well as help you to forge new connections that energize the digital innovation that our world so desperately needs. These new ideas can be channeled into ITU's World Telecommunications Development Conference in June 2022 and I'd like to extend a special thanks to our high level officials that are attaining that are attending this year's forum to our distinguished guests to our event partners our speakers moderators the community members that are enabling this event to take place and of course to thank you to the energetic young members of our generation connect for their involvement of and of course to the UN office of South-South cooperation for their close partnership in this year's forum. Over the next five days I would conclude by encouraging you to be bold to be creative you can even go a little crazy in dreaming up how the next decade of digital development can look. It is those ambitious original dare-to-dream visions that will help us to connect the world. Thank you so much and Max back over to you thank you. Thank you very much indeed Dorian dare-to-dream absolutely this is where you're going to get the opportunity to do so. Excuse me I will also just ask you if you could just get together and smile for a second or two when I get my voice back and take a quick photograph. I'm here in the ITU in the air conditioning here and it's not something I'm used to at the moment okay here we go wonderful so there we are so there you have it old-fashioned business as usual certainly doesn't have any place here and if you haven't been given an excuse now to be gripped to your seats for the next five days I don't know what would I think that you'll have a great deal to get into here and we'll be looking very much forward to hearing from you as well so I know the majority of you are also following on swap cards so don't forget to use that as much as you can. So I will now take another quick drink and I'll now introduce the next session which is leapfrogging the pandemic and future crisis through digital innovation to accelerate economic inclusion. So I'm in a serial panel and thank you very much indeed. Mr. Hulenshaw for your opening remarks. Thank you. We can indeed. Thank you very much Max. Let's give us a second or two I think there's a little bit of work going on behind the scenes here but we will bring you the next session very shortly thank you. So I'd just like to ask all the panelists for this next session to turn on their cameras please. Thank you. Anybody who's just joined us we're just about to start the first session the global innovation of the global innovation forum which is leapfrogging the pandemic and future crisis through digital innovation to accelerate economic inclusion it'll be starting very shortly thank you. So for any of you who've just joined us or been all for you who've been waiting patiently we're now going to be going straight into our session which is leapfrogging the pandemic and future crisis through digital innovation to accelerate economic inclusion. So please take it away thank you very much. Thank you very much Max and good afternoon and everybody and I'm pretty pleased to open this session to start the global innovation forum with this session on digital innovation to accelerate economic inclusion. I will start first welcome first of all distinguished panelists and guests I would like to start first by introducing the house rules so the session is recorded live and streamed and it will be archived and made available also on the ITU website on the SWAP card event space. The session will be brought to you live on SWAP card so you use the chat to comment ask questions in the question and answer box and connect with each other directly. Use our hashtags also so hashtag rediscover innovation, hashtag ecosystem building to join the conversational social media. If you wish to listen only in one of the U.N. languages click on the link below just right now and remember you can only ask questions on SWAP card and in English. So having said that my name is Anne Rochelle Inay and I'm the moderator of this session Your Excellencies Distinguished Guests ladies and gentlemen good morning good afternoon and good evening. It is my true pleasure to moderate the session on behalf of BDT director Miss Dorian Bogdan-Martin. I'd like to welcome our distinguished panel who will take us on an inspiring journey. In this first session we will hear what some countries experience when the pandemic hit and how they're trying to leverage digital innovation to help leapfrog the pandemic and future crisis. Out of this crisis was a notable was notable what was notable in many countries was the entrepreneurial spirit and the innovation power that arose to address the urgent issues that communities were experiencing. During the session we will rethink how to address countries challenges and opportunities to spring the inclusive economic development using entrepreneurship driven innovation. I'd like to recognize today's five person panel in alphabetical order so Dr. Florenza Haxi director general of the development programs and corporations unit prime minister's office of Albania welcome madam. Her Excellency Ms. Valeria Yonan deputy minister for euro integration at the ministry of digital transformation of the Ukraine. Welcome Ms. Nirvana Manik advisor in the office of the prime minister of the Republic of Serbia on the public administration reform team. His Excellency Mr. Sokbutovu secretary of state of the ministry of post and telecommunication of Cambodia welcome sir and his Excellency to adora willing caster vice minister of telecommunications at the ministry of science technology and telecommunications of Costa Rica sir welcome indeed. So we're going to be speaking if you allow me in a different order and I am going to start with Mr willing caster vice minister of telecommunications ministry of science technology and telecommunications of Costa Rica and I would like sir to invite you to give us your introductory remarks. Thank you. The floor is yours. Thank you very much miss and Rochelle and it's a great pleasure to be here and to be able to share with all of these great colleague panelists and also for other great people that are watching us online and of course for Mr. Doreen and Mrs. Doreen and also Mr. Howling who have also given us a great introduction to the whole innovation through entrepreneurship topic is also for me a pleasure to be here on behalf of Mrs. Paula Vega who is the minister of innovation science and technology in Costa Rica. I wanted to just address two points very briefly the first one is that innovation is in some way the means of what we're looking for and not necessarily the goal itself innovation should go and look for universality innovations should try to attend this digital divide innovations should go for efficiency and sustainability to be able to transcend in time in balance with the economy with the environment with the different social challenges that we face and that innovation should come along with for resilience to withstand the different challenges in particular the pandemic that we've been going through and this resilience is fundamental in the view that we must have in the perspective to face and to promote innovation through entrepreneurship. The second point I wanted to address is that we cannot just wait for innovation to come in itself we cannot just put all the load in the entrepreneurs and there are different ways of organization and we have to promote it in different ways and I want to start thinking about innovative people you know the training people in both in companies and also users to be able to exploit this new technologies the sensibility to accept it and to use it we need innovative institutions by the means of laws policies and regulations that are agile and flexible in very quick time changes in technology we need innovative platforms spectrum infrastructure that allow these technologies to grow rapidly in the different countries and finally we need innovative resources not just for startups which are bringing new paradigms but also for companies could which could be small but could grow quickly and for acceleration of adoption of new technologies so I wanted to just put these two points on the table for as my opening remarks thank you very much. Thank you very much your excellency indeed looking at I guess an ecosystem going forward of in a multi-stakeholder ecosystem indeed to get where we want to go. Thank you for those remarks and next to go in to ask Ms. Valeria Yonan for her introductory remarks the floor is yours. Hello dear colleagues it is a big pleasure for me to be here today I just wanted to say a couple of a couple of words about the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine our goal is to build the most convenient and people-centered state as possible which means a country without queues corruption and without bureaucracy in 2020 the Ministry of Digital Transformation managed to lay the foundation for building a digital state we have four main goals for the next three years which is to make 100 percent of services online and 90 I mean 100 percent of public services online 95 percent of transport infrastructure and settlements should be covered with high-speed internet six million of Ukrainian people should be involved into the digital skills development program and 10 percent should be the share of IT in countries GDP so I would be really glad to elaborate more later in our panel discussion about our steps and achievements and challenges that we face in Ukraine and maybe our experience will be useful for other countries thank you. Thank you very much Ms. Yonan this is wonderful I mean really glad to see that some countries are aiming really high to make this happen thank you again next I would like to have Mr. Serpentivou Mr. Serpentivou your excellency if you can give us a few remarks thank you thank you very much Ms. Anne Rachel for moderating the sessions and hello to all our panelists excellency ladies and gentlemen it's my great pleasure today to be with you today and sessions on big frog and pandemic and the future crisis through digital innovation and accelerating economic inclusion of ITU global innovation forum during the pandemic a Cambodia government has taken a number of measures to prevent and fight slow down the spread of COVID-19 now government has introduced a number of new public safety measures such as I think it's the same with every other countries wearing masks social distancing hand washing no public gathering curfew zoning quarantine contact tracing vaccination and and lockdown we experienced one lockdown it's not very pleasant and I hope that many countries go through this and but I think one of the important things you know we have managed to vaccinate 80% of our total population at the moment and to ensure the continuity of public services business activities people communication and and and digital technology has played a key role in in all this and I think it also helped push for more focus on e-education remote working e-transactions and we have started to send students back to school recently as well so and through this I think in the role of technology the government I think in respond to the pandemic we have developed a number of initiatives to help fight the COVID like developing QR code contact tracing vaccination record recording quarantine tele doctor COVID hospital facility and and and a number of other initiatives and some are successful some are not but I think this is important in terms of learning and and and and and driving a new idea and initiative to be more prepared in respond to the pandemic in and preparing for the post COVID-19 I would like to share with you that Cambodia government has recently set up a council of digital economy and society which is chaired by our prime minister we have set up three committee under under this council the committee of digital government committee which is coordinated by our ministry and then digital economy and business committee which is coordinated by minister of finance and then a digital security committee which is hopefully also chaired by our ministry as well so we aim to push many initiatives to support this new council and vision in the next 15 years so so we're aimed to do a number of many things in 2021 to 2035 which will serve as a guideline and how we can create a vibrant economy promoting digital adoption transformations for government business and citizen and to accelerate economic growth promote social welfare education health and the new normal after the pandemic so this new council shows the commitment of the Cambodian government which will be to promote the digital economy and society it's a broad term of working very hard to identify to focus what would be the new digital society look like and I think the I think conference and panels such as this could also be an important I guess a panel way to to understand more about the global trends you know we in terms of how to support this new vision there's a big focus on entrepreneurs you know pushing new initiative new ideas like a circular economy you know helping us develop more sustainable into the future and I guess instilling new philosophy or new ideas in terms of what the business of the future looks like to integrate sustainability and supporting make sure that the next generations have a better future so with that I just leave it at that and hope to share to hear more from the panel and just have more discussion thank you thank you very much your excellency I think one of the things that we're all grappling with definitely is what is you know the the post pandemic going to look like and definitely all of our countries are waiting to I guess learn from each other learn from the experience and let's hope that you know that the next crises see us better prepared especially online so I'm going to next thank you very much for those remarks and I'm going to ask Mr Hachi to give her introductory remarks thank you and thank you for the invitation to be part of this panel I just wanted to say a few words so as opening remarks in the recent years in Albania and especially after the the covid crisis happened innovation has taken like a very important role in policymaking so because I'm representing let's say the policymaking side in this panel the economic growth through increased competitiveness and innovation is one of the priorities of our government and the premise for sustainable and socioeconomic development of the country so the development of this entrepreneurship and innovation responds to our country's needs for economic growth and socioeconomic development so we are now very focused in investing in human capital increasing the number of self-employed people so also startups the promotion of innovations in technology science and how they are coupled with the existing let's say private sector in Albania so startups and innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem we can say that in our country is still at an early stage however there is a great potential for becoming a strong ecosystem because this was also felt let's say during this pandemic crisis where young people which Albania has a very high rate of let's say young population in the region but also a worldwide young people they started to engage in these initiatives in the self-employed initiatives in this developing their own startups so this was very much felt so now we're trying to let's say capitalize on that and come further with more policies from our side that help them that also incentivizes them but I'll talk more a little bit later on what we are doing and what are the challenges of course so thank you thank you very much Dr. Azzi and it's good to know as Durin said you know one of the coalitions that we have is that we're going to have that will be launched next year is partnered to to connect and definitely for younger people to be able to get on the bandwagon of you know economic activities they definitely need an incentivized environment so thank you very much for that so I'm now going to invite Ms. Manik please the floor is yours. Thank you dear Misine it is such a pleasure to be a part of such a distinguished panel thank you very much for having me here so over the past few years Serbia has really been keen on putting digital transformation as one of the key priorities of the government and we really perceive digitalization as a necessity and as a way to provide better public services to increase the competitiveness and to have a better job market and a better business environment and the coronavirus pandemic that we all had in all of our countries really showed that this decision to turn into digital to increase innovation has really been not just a good one but a crucial one and these years of technology driven reforms actually made us resilient in the time that we live in now so in Serbia all currently all the building blocks of e-government are currently in place so we have a state of the art data center that's one of the best in the region all the public registers are digitalized and all the institutions are communicated to an interoperable network so that was really important when the pandemic hit to have all these building blocks already in place when the whole world turned digital when all the forums turned digital and all the meetings turned online and one of the things that we are really proud of when it comes to the way how we dealt with the crisis is the immunization management system so in Serbia we had a buffet and we still have a buffet of vaccines so people can choose which manufacturer they want and they get an SMS saying where they should come and what time is their vaccination appointment and the management system is very complex because as I said there are four different vaccines so you have to match the citizen with their preferred vaccines and the whole logistics is done through this AI powered platform that actually tracks the vaccine as soon as it lands in Serbia it is connected to the person that will receive it so the system went flawlessly and we had a very very large number of vaccinations daily and we were among the countries with the fastest vaccination rollouts in the beginning we also had the innovation fund of Serbia it designed and it immediately launched when the pandemic hit a public call to get innovative IT solutions that can help tackle all the circumstances of the pandemic and finally children that's also one of the things that we're very proud of so in Serbia children didn't lose a single day of school so as soon as yes as soon as the emergency state was declared on Monday all the kids went online to schools so everything was in place and they didn't have any breaks like children usually like but there were no breaks so with the pandemic or without it children didn't lose a single day of school and not just that but people could do their shopping online they can do their public services online go to school so all in all really I think and I'm really proud of how Serbia tackled the crisis they say that you should never waste a good good crisis and I think Serbia really passed that exam with flying colors so actually what is happening now is that demand for public services is so increased that we are so busy here as the Prime Minister's Office and in the whole government to meet that increased demand that even you know in a wildest imagination we couldn't foresee so thank you very much and look forward to the continuous debate on this thank you very much mismanik and this is absolutely impressive really I mean you might be some of the few countries where kids um you know did not miss a day of school that is really very nice to hear and I can only say you know all of us people just uh the board and their chair the ecosystem make it thrive the ecosystem does do the variety of things to happen for an hour they might run an accelerator or provide educational program or teach pro entrepreneurship necessary skills many organized events demo day there we go I'm back sorry about that so let's go now to our uh question round and I would like to start with Mr. Willink Castro your excellency please share with us why is it important to nurture entrepreneurship that drives economic development thank you very much uh miss and rachel um well I we believe here in the ministry of science and technology in Costa Rica that knowledge and technology they must go for public welfare they must go for problem solving and they must go for economic growth in a solidary sense and especially in the in the frame of the pandemic and with this I would like to say that in Costa Rica 60 percent of the different companies are small or micro and 70 percent and they give 70 percent of the formal employment in Costa Rica so we have a huge mass of small companies and you know in order to to promote that we needed to um establish enablers different instruments and I wanted to to recall a couple in the sense of showing how this innovation is important for the economic growth to nurture this entrepreneurship and the first and I would say one of the most impactful measures was the creation of an agency that promotes innovation and research it was it used to be a council to direct research and then it transformed into this agency which has a strong level of autonomy so it could move sometimes without you know this slow procedure some bureaucracy that sometimes in in in our governments are are common and and it integrates academia it integrates industry and it integrates government institutions in a balance of representation that allows to take easy and agile decisions but also ensures representativity it the law that enabled it came with such weight that we had to change the name of the ministry from we had to include technology in the names now it's the ministry of science technology and oh sorry innovation then innovation as well because it put a lot of focus of innovation in in in this particular ministry but it also comes aligned with the in with the ministry of economics and industry and commerce um this is supposed to come along with the space agency and also the electronic or digital government agency that had to work in synergy with the leadership of the of the of the ministry to enable and promote this whole innovation through entrepreneurship paradigm we also worked on a second measure which is called innovation laboratories which are aimed to go to different rural areas we try to cover all the different regions in Costa Rica to establish this culture of innovation and I think this term is very important because the culture of innovation since since kids and especially girls embrace this innovation spirit then that drives very strongly the innovation entrepreneurship movement especially in regions which in Costa Rica these regions normally have a larger gap I would say that this innovation laboratories which have been quite a challenge to fund but we finally managed it they democratize innovation in some way um we launched a digital maturity self diagnosis tool online with the International Development Bank so that companies and especially small businesses could evaluate how mature they are in terms of digital um and this all this enables them not only to um involve in innovation innovative processes but also to consume innovative technologies and that is also very important in terms of uh promoting not just the offer of innovation but also the consumption of innovation in in the whole dynamics we launched um bio economics strategy national nationwide which is important for circular economy and to establish this balance between agriculture and technology which in Costa Rica agriculture is a very important factor and also tourism and for this we have been working with the different ministries to promote a national plan of electronic commerce and this aimed not just industry but also tourism to enable many of the different platforms that they require this goes and I would like to just close my intervention with um uh the development of a national um it's called society and economics that are based on uh knowledge and this is uh important for us because this policy which is a nationwide policy um of society and economics based on knowledge yes now when it's the same um is like an umbrella that drives uh a national science and technology innovation plan that drives telecommunications development plan and that drives the digital government plan and also reaches up to commerce tourism and agriculture we are we we've had like a specific and very very convenient frame in which many of these policies were closing their their cycle and they were to be re-thought and re-proposed and then we in in just between 2020 and 2021 so we had this opportunity to um to propose them in not just the frame of attending the economic growth and the pandemic but also to to see towards the future you know because we don't know what's going to come in the future well we know there's 5G and we know there's Wi-Fi 6 and we know there's lots of IoT and industry but we don't know if there is going to be a type of challenges that we need to to face so um I think it's fundamental to attend to nurture this uh entrepreneurship for innovation to different enablers and different promoters that can um uh enable enable them for for this economic growth in which we are facing thank you very much wonderful wonderful wonderful it's uh you're hitting all the right words I mean I I like to hear that you know rural communities uh that girls that uh you know most of the ones that we tend to think or not only tend to think that are actually disadvantaged are really taking care of in Costa Rica so thank you very much and um I'll probably come back to you with a follow-up question but for now what I'm going to do I think Dr uh Hasid has to leave us soon so I would like to go to her and ask her um so what do you think is the role of entrepreneurship driven innovation for future proofing communities against all of the disasters and crises that you know just like COVID-19 we know it won't be probably on our way thank you thank you uh so I think that uh innovation is should be our driver I mean also in the at the government level uh for many reasons uh it should be our our driver also when we talk about services offered to the public but also our should be a driver when we talk about developing SMEs developing the private sector uh because this is like a chain so if we develop right in the right way and we incentivize as I said before the right people and the young population in order to uh to be self-employed to open their startups so to enter into the digital world this will spin off certain effects on the economy so uh we in Albania have invested let's say in both directions we have invested in uh in uh doing all in transforming let's say all the services the e-government services uh transforming all services in Albania and being and transforming many online services so let's say that we have until now in the e- Albania platform 95 percent of the public services so everything let's say almost everything is there so people can take documents businesses can receive download documents from this platform no need to go to the to the offices business offices etc so their life is made more easier so there have been about one these are about 1,206 services which are online for the moment now we are working on improving those services which is also a challenge but let's say that we have done most of the work then when it comes to the ecosystem the startup ecosystem what we have done is that we have started uh developing a program because my program my unit leads the development programs in the country so one of these programs is a program called innovation and startups we have partnered with development institutional organizations in order to draft this this program which is like an operational program with measures that we need to take in order to develop the startup ecosystem in Albania of course there have been many challenges and there are a lot of challenges but we have managed to have the first draft of this program and we have also managed to have a first draft of the law on startups on how to incentivize startups and also to make the difference because in Albania people couldn't make the difference between what is an innovative SME and what is a startup so and then once this is clarified then what are the incentives that the government gives to startups in order to thrive so we have the law that we are working on we have the program that we are working on we are also working now starting working on the development of an ICT hub ICT cluster like a pilot cluster and then move on with other clusters in Albania but we believe that ICT is the right sector to start this another thing that we have been doing is working with the World Bank actually to develop a program that is based on developing the skills for women women mainly that are also because of the pandemic were left at home or they couldn't go to their work or they couldn't find works because they were laid off so these women in order to have access in working online working platforms and also develop the skills they need in order to access these platforms and start making let's say earning from these platforms and this project has just started let's say it has a couple of months that started it's going very well there is a high range of women that want to be part of this project and if it goes well we'll probably continue it also in the years to come another thing is the e-commerce that we are working on it started from the pandemic year and we also we had this big working group with many actors from the government and from other institutions in order to see what were let's say the the blocking stones in in terms of e-commerce in Albania and how to unblock them and how we could all work together comprising the private sector in order in order to develop better let's say the e-commerce another thing and I'll finish with this is the smart socialization strategy which we are working on drafting we are in the phase of involving the private sector in order to get the opinion of the private sector on the sectors of the economy that have an innovative potential for the future so this is let's say the aim of this smart socialization strategy we have already identified the five sectors and we are now engaging with the private sector in a series of interviews then a series of workshops of follow in order to get their real opinion of what they think if they think that actually these sectors identified I are the right sectors of or if we need to include another sector that we haven't caught from the data we analyzed and then to see together what kind of capacities they need to develop in the private sector in order to be able to prevent any setback when let's say crisis happen in the future and in order to be better let's say equipped in order to develop these sectors further so this is where we are in Albania and I'm really sorry that I have to leave but I haven't reported meetings so if you'll excuse me it was a pleasure being part of this panel thank you very much Dr. Hathi and it was a pleasure having you and we hope you'll come back again another time and we're really glad to see that Albania is looking into also the future you know I mean innovation is definitely what we can do now but as you said you're looking at the data what is it that we can do further you know going forward so thank you very much for having been with us and hope to see you on another time on another panel baby or face to face if we care thank you let's hope yes thank you bye yes thank you so my next question is now going to go to her excellent scene is Yonan to share insights on how projects of the ministry of digital transformation helped small and medium-sized businesses grow during a pandemic yes thank you so much for this question well actually our ministry has a lots of different projects which are devoted to the small and medium entrepreneurs one of the most important projects to my mind is a business project it is a project which has two components the first one is a one-stop shop for future and existing entrepreneurs so this one-stop shop has lots of different free services and products starting with 70 different types of free consultations for entrepreneurs in the areas of financial management HR marketing sales and export and ending up with a marketplace of financial products impact investment platform export platform and everything so actually when there is a person who would like to start their business or when there is an entrepreneur who would like to grow his business and to find some very necessary information on let's say export or on the e-services for entrepreneurs they could find everything on this one-stop shop so only in a year the DA business portal has been visited by more than one million of Ukrainian entrepreneurs and more than 10 thousand of consultations were provided more than 20,000 of Ukrainian people of Ukrainian entrepreneurs has started to study in the online school for entrepreneurs at the DA business what is more important also is the second component of the project which is enough the network of offline hubs for support centers for entrepreneurs DA business our facility where you can get free consultations on how to start or grow your business attend educational events for free rent spaces test their product at a special top application before entering the market so now DA business centers are opened in seven cities of Ukraine and till the end of this year we will have already 11 centers in the next three years we plan to cover all the country with such hubs which really help entrepreneurs to grow also we have the DA portal which is the state portal of e-services and this portal makes it possible to quickly get a public service online without the participation of government more than 50 services are available on the portal including fastest business registration in the world it allows you to become an entrepreneur only in 15 minutes for example also we have another project which is called DSCT which is a special legal and tax regime that creates favorable conditions for the development of IT businesses in Ukraine so there are special components of this regime which is a favorable tax system flexible forms of cooperation with IT specialists namely gig contracts combine the benefits of freelance and social guarantees intellectual property protection guarantees elements of English law that facilitate access to investment guarantees of protection of the person and property from illegal intervention intervention thanks to this special regime IT companies will pay lower taxes and they will be able to build a transparent corporate structure through the introduction of gig contracts as an alternative to the practice of attracting sole proprietors also will have better access to investment through enhanced protection of investor interests and intellectual property rights so we also are working now on the project which is called e-residence and especially we are working on the bill which is on the bill on the peculiarities of taxation of e-residence that will provide an opportunity for e-residence of Ukraine to conduct businesses and we have done some first steps in this direction so 4200 potential e-residents have already registered on the portal one of the goals of our ministry is to create favorable conditions for business development in Ukraine and to turn our country into a country of interpreters we simplify all the bureaucratic processes and introduce modern online services to make business communication with the state as convenient and transparent as possible thank you impressive again really really impressive and i'm pretty sure i'm not going to be the only one relation the word words like one-stop shop you know support center law taxation entrepreneurs will definitely love those and i'm pretty sure some people are thinking and you know keeping that in mind so thank you very much museum now and now i'm going to go to mr. circuit to view to share insights into the challenges and opportunities of the digital in the digital transformation key sectors such as agriculture and in the context of the pandemic thank you sir thank you thank you miss and Rachel um thank you for the questions i think the pandemic you know for better or worse to have definitely speed up you know the the the rate of of innovation rate of accepting to new ideas and i think Cambodia is no different than other countries also quickly i like to congratulate Serbia you know for helping the student to not miss a day of school i think most of the world i think parents has to become teacher again for almost a year to try to keep the kids keep up with school so this is an amazing achievement i think uh uh Cambodia side is always maybe was not prepared but i think we're pushing at the moment we're pushing on a new platform for digital education that platform that hopefully will help a student to prepare for this kind of situation in the future but um you know and in Cambodia we have a natural endowment in terms of agriculture there are flat land a lot of water so agriculture has always been part of Cambodia for many generations and and we're seeing it evolving i think even with the pandemic you know the more technology coming into the sector the farmers need to learn and then scale and not necessarily good but i think that you know i think to consider sustainability into the factors because i think sometime i mean there's new entrepreneurs in a lot of more new entrepreneurs in the agriculture sector especially with the uh technology that we have but uh agriculture has not gained a lot of that attention uh with the new technology uh that we have uh so most youth uh are moving into other sectors rather than agriculture um but i think in the next coming years we can see that as the changes as a shift in uh in interest because you know with anticipations of global population reaching 10 billion in 2050 i think there's going to be a big pressure on food security and i think Cambodia still have a lot of potential uh to expand on that front we still have land and compared to the region i think Cambodia still have a big land that allow farming to be i guess more innovative in terms of using technology i think right now we can see you know there move to a development of agriculture like a big-scale agriculture it's a it's a challenge to balance that between you know small-scale and large-scale farming so that you know we're piloting the model like the nucleus model where big farms support smaller farms but are still in progress and no and but we can see big farms that are moving rapidly in terms of using technology and and hopefully i mean there are new ideas in terms of pushing sustainability for this kind of big farm you know i think farming is this is you can improve the soil every time you use it i think there are ideas in terms of using technology to help us do that even at the at the larger scale so we as i think at the government level you're trying to find ways or support the business who are thinking in that direction but at the end i think the economic incentive is very strong so the competition for global competition is this is yeah it's still a major force to deal with i think government need to think about you know pushing entrepreneurs a new business is entrepreneurs with a purpose i guess not just entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs i think entrepreneurs to solve a problem and entrepreneurs as ambassador maybe to champion a certain things i think that's something that the government should support although it's difficult i think every country should think because i think we're facing a lot of global problems that you know as a result of strong competition economically and creating a lot of externality yeah and that's what i mentioned or it's circular economy could be is that the future that we all should aim for you know maybe the other ideas like shared economy or you know fourth industrial revolution that using all these tools can all this tool help us reach something like that in the future would be very interesting to see i hope that every country can support each other because i think nobody is small i don't think we have again afford to experiment with a lot of ideas but we'd like to see you know countries who are innovative by taking initiatives on this and then and then share experience to the rest thank you thank you very much mr. particularly indeed i mean the circular economy is as much about making sure that we work holistically in our own countries but also globally you know helping each other and you know we can definitely talk into what is a comparative advantage to a country like Cambodia that has land and as you said plenty water you know with others that maybe you know are not in such advantages so thank you very much all right my last question is going to go to miss manik and i'd like you to give us your views on how to use digital transformation of government services to prepare for future crises like the pandemic thank you thank you miss and in it so as i shared in my introductory remarks the whole country of Serbia is mobilized under the digital agenda but now we have another challenge ahead and that is to ensure because that is our responsibility to ensure that the all citizens can actually benefit from these efforts and the way how we do it is to really increase digital literacy and digital connectivity for all citizens so when it comes to digital literacy first thing is of course education so we are really working on reforming our educational system introducing digital classrooms and digital schools so digital textbooks and internet access in all schools this is a landmark project that has been replicated in several other european countries and it really allows students the opportunity to access information online and to really become digital creators we have also introduced coding and programming from in elementary schools and now we have a first year we have the first cohort of graduated programmers that are only 14 years old who already know how to use python and scratch and even kids from seven years old are learning algorithm thinking and about the digital world and we are also working on informal education which is also really important so we have a lot of retraining programs in it and we currently have over 2000 people who have retrained and were either employed or they changed their career path as a result of these retraining programs of course public servants and policy makers really need to be aware of the innovation and the way where the world is heading and that is why we have created state of the art programs on design thinking on data sciences and emerging technologies for public servants and i'm really proud to say that even the prime minister who always leads by example signed up for one of these programs to really because it's really important for everyone in the decision making to understand the processes to understand machine learning and internet of things and robotics and so on the public servants will also have a sophisticated data platform that will be available for them for complex data analytics predictive analysis and so on and in addition to this literacy and education and knowledge it is really important for everyone to be connected as miss bogdan martin said in the previous session and this is our overarching goal is to provide broadband to 99 percent of households in Serbia by 2025 and the way how we will do it is by incentivizes incentivizing rural broadband in Serbia so that is how a household in sparsely located areas will get high-speed broadband internet access so really to conclude digital transformation is really the greatest driver for change in any society and i think that the Serbian government is an example that investing in technology is really a game changer and another great piece of news and info that we always like to share with our colleagues from around the world is that through going digital through introducing e-services we have managed to reduce our carbon footprint by saving huge amounts of paper actually 23,000 trees were saved and 97 million liters of water and 8,000 megawatt hours of electricity were saved because we switched to digital because there are no printing of paper there are no forms there are no decisions everything is done digitally so i think that is another added value of digitalization not just convenience but also it's great for the environment which is a such an important thing in the world we live in thank you i love it i love it living a world for all of the children so yes the data is there to show us that it is true technology i read somewhere in one of the united nations economic mission for africa latest papers they said that technology contributes to about two percent of the carbon footprint globally but it can actually really bring back 15 percent of you know economic benefit so the data is there to show it you have definitely worked with it and thanks for sharing this with us and i think people will really definitely keep that in mind another thing is yes retraining for skills it is very important that you know all of the people who may for one reason or another have lost you know any of the jobs that are traditional are now re-skilled in terms of being part of the this new economy that we're trying to foster so thank you very very much long i mean this has been really incredible and i've learned a lot and you know if you don't mind i will come back to you you know as we go because i think my region will definitely benefit in some of the projects that we're having with it anywhere from you know coding uh girls for you know coding and reforms of education sector uh agriculture uh you know the one stock shops name it it is really really important that we share those good practices so given that we're practically out of time i am going to give each one of you 30 seconds to give us a takeaway and on how do we achieve an inclusive economy by leapfrogging the pandemic and future crisis through digital innovation so 30 seconds for each one of you and i will start with miss you know always a pleasure to be the first one well thank you so much well i would probably summarize that the our main goal of the ministry of digital transformation of ukraine is to provide people with the technical access and necessary skills to really use digital tools so the development of their businesses and doing daily activities remotely will be easy easily and accessible for everyone despite restrictions caused by a pandemic or any other crisis so um it is very important for everyone to digitalize and to remember that there is no more economy there is only digital economy and digital transformation is a red line which is everywhere in every industry in in medicine and healthcare and education and infrastructure so it is very important to understand that we are entering the new era i would say of digital transformation and you want it or you don't want it but you're already a part of it thank you so much thank you very much miss you and i will go now to his excellency mr willy castro please thank you um i actually was going to talk about synergy between academia government private sector and society but i i just recalled something that miss darin bogdan said in the in the opening uh her speech and i would like to just uh go for maybe go crazy and uh she uh she talked about um that this might be one of the of the opportunities and i wanted to go for the governments and say well let's enable and promote crazy and to the entrepreneurs and business people to embrace crazy and um into the whole environment to take advantage of crazy to not just overcome this pandemic but understand that it's not about only economic growth but welfare of people and leaving nobody behind so that would be my my final 30 seconds thank you very much thank you so much absolutely let's be inclusive let's make it happen and the same mindset is not going to get us there so thanks so much mr willy castro um mr putty dick thank you um yeah i think uh this is a very important i think history and time of the of the world um that i think all leaders of every country should take this opportunity to you know to see what can happen globally and one issue could create so much issue a problem but it's also an opportunity to you know bring on new ideas uh and uh you know bringing people together i think is easier a bit more easier to bring people on the same table in response to crisis that we face um and yeah i think this is uh opportunity uh that uh you know although it's tragic but i think uh we have to be prepared i think digital transformation uh that are happening around the world uh with this push from COVID-19 this is this is uh this is something that uh we have to deal with but i think there's no excuse to be to not to do things i think with digital technology you can be very inclusive uh you can use very little resources which is ideas and and and and i think uh there's no excuse that we uh you know don't provide more inclusive platform for all citizens uh i think uh technology today is is is is so powerful that i think all leaders should consider using it but at the same time be more cautious as well in terms of uh you know the data security data privacy i think this is something that in another discussion where how we want to govern a new society in a digital society uh but i think technology could help us achieve many things speed up many things but at the same time we need to design our own uh society uh in the technology space that all the countries and has to be involved in terms of uh dictating that society for each country and also for the world thank you thank you very much indeed we cannot be complacent especially in the face of security online and i think we owe it to our people to make sure that uh you know when they come online everything is you know perfect for them also miss manik you have the last word so thank you very much you have the floor uh thank you well i would just like to summarize and it's kind of i think for me the key takeaway is that really the pandemic proved that all the investments that were made in digital transformation proved to be crucial and i just think that it is up to us up to the government but also up to all the other stakeholders to to educate to enable and to support a digital innovation ecosystem for the future to be more resilient and to be more innovative thank you thank you very much miss manik and one of the things that i will retain from this panel that is all government is that you are all open to multi-stakeholder going forward and making sure that we are all inclusive in the way we want to build this and accelerate this economic inclusion so thank you very much for being part of this panel thanks for having been with us for the global innovation forum 2021 and really looking forward to um uh staying in touch with you and uh thanks again for being part of it you bye thank you very much yeah hope to invite you to Cambodia one day and thank you thank you thank you thank you all thank you bye bye max i think you have the floor now again good afternoon dear participants and welcome to the next conversation on the whole of ecosystem approach to mainstreaming entrepreneurship driven innovation as part of the global innovation forum 2021 welcome and we're back this time for good welcome again to the next conversation on the topic of the whole of ecosystem approach to mainstreaming entrepreneurship driven innovation and that's part of the 2021 global innovation forum it is a mouthful but i can promise that it will be a fascinating session and hopefully there will be important takeaways for all of you too my name is Yulia Lozanova and i'm senior analyst for the policy and regulatory team of the development bureau of ITU and it's a very great pleasure for me to moderate today's discussion before we begin a couple of things to keep in mind this session will be brought live to you on thought cards participants can use the chat to comment and the q&a box to ask questions participants are also invited to connect directly please use our hashtags rediscover innovation and ecosystem building to join the conversation on social media if you wish to listen in you can do so in any of the urn languages on zoom and remember you can only ask questions on thought cards and English please in addition to being live streamed this session is recorded and it will be archives and published on ITU's website and the swap card blank space so we are now ready to start we have 90 minutes and a very ambitious task ahead of us so we'll dive into straight away a whole of ecosystem approach to mainstreaming entrepreneurship driven innovation many countries haven't enjoyed massive investment in iCT ecosystems in recent years and yet in many cases the impact is slow to be felt on the ground in some countries there are very few investment channels available and the global economic slowdown has resulted in fewer opportunities of financing for greenfield ventures greenfield ventures the roles of stakeholders in the ecosystem are changing and governments entrepreneurs the role of the private sector entrepreneurial support networks and financiers as well as academia are all looking for new balance of power and collaboration which needs to match the new realities and generate new opportunities the enabling environment needed to create competitive and innovation driven ecosystem which boosts economic wealth and jobs are lacking in many places often those that need the most and this session will bring together the voices of all stakeholder groups to pinpoint the needs and expectations of the ecosystem builders and explore some of the challenges through the views and experiences of the stakeholders we have here on the panel this is going to be a multi-dimensional panel and our excellent speakers will be co-creating the outcome of this session together with the audience so I would now like to invite the ITU's innovation ecosystem builder-in-chief and coordinator of the global innovation forum MOBA to briefly introduce how the audience can co-create with the panel thank you Julia I don't know if you can see me but thank you again everybody and welcome to hopefully what will be a very wonderful panel we will be co-creating with you or at least with the audience using Mural and we will be putting the link of Mural in the swap card chat app so please go ahead and you can follow the flow and put your ideas and we'll try to organize them and share at the end of this session with that Julia I'll turn the floor back to you but I'll come back at the end to a bit share what the conversation was about and what the audience is telling us thank you thank you very much Mo this is very clear I hope it's also clear for the audience and there we go I will now give the floor to our panelists to introduce themselves so they can correct me if I happen to inadvertently contort their names I'll call on each of you to say a few words about yourselves and your role in the ecosystem your organization and which stakeholder group you would present here on the panel in one minute please I'll start with Mr. Andrasj Shombati yeah thank you so much so my name is Andrasj to make it simple and I'm actually have an experience in the adventure capital fund management for the last 20 years in Hungary especially focusing on early-stage startups and companies high-growth companies who develop innovative technology and willing to expand outside the country borders so that's one of my qualities being here the other is that I'm a VC in residence in input program which is a government funded program aiming to help these startups to in their business develop and challenges and also in in the fundraising arena so that's it from my side thank you very much and we can now move to the next panelist I shall say that I'm introducing the panelists and offer that vertical order of their first names so Daniel and Daniel Obam you're next please thank you Julia it's a pleasure to be here it's unknown as well Daniel Obam from Kenya I work at an organization called the national communication secretary that organization I lead a team of cross-functional experts lawyers economies and engineers and we help develop policies and strategies related to the ICT sector which then inform developments that take place in the sector and of course digital transformation being the discussion now with the process of developing a national digital digital economy strategy I'll be looking at the lens of the role of government in supporting the innovative entrepreneurship for ecosystem thank you thank you very much Daniel and indeed the role of governments and your role in Kenya have been very important so we look forward to hearing from you I'm inviting now Mr. Jess to introduce himself please thank you so much and thanks also for having me on the panel it's a great pleasure my name is Jess Khaliba Peterson I am I'm from Denmark but I've spent most of my career working in technology and in emerging and frontier markets I founded and co-founded a few tech startups myself and over the last five years I've served as the CEO of Pandia which is a Myanmar based innovation hub. Pandia has invested in tech startups worked with stakeholders both from the private sector and from government to promote entrepreneurship and train entrepreneurs and to advocate for more inclusive and responsible tech ecosystem and landscape in Myanmar now of course because of recent events in Myanmar we've had to reduce the size of the organization organization significantly and I step back from my role earlier this year and I'm now based in Bangkok with my family but it's it's fair to say that I'm very passionate about startup ecosystem building and I'm really looking forward to discuss more today about how we can all do a bit even better job of that in the future that sounds fascinating I look forward to hearing more about that and now we move on to Mr. Jonathan I do Jonathan thank you program director and greetings to my esteemed panelists and our viewers I'm Jonathan I do from Durban South Africa I'm the CEO of a business incubator called the Durban technology hub trading a smart exchange we focus on the mick tea sector media information communications technology electronics and arts the arts came in because of this first change from education stem to steam and so that's how we're trying to be relevant we've been in existence since 2004 makes us 17 years old we've got 72 startups at any given time on average in our ecosystem to date we've graduated 220 companies we've created 3000 jobs cumulative turnover of two billion ran and we've excited to announce that we've had one unicorn company listed on the join us book stock exchange called adept it and I'm also a recipient of the itu 2019 global challenge winner under the category ecosystem best practice thank you thank you very much Jonathan I'm sure you have a great contribution to put forward on the panel and looking forward to to Muskan Fatima our youngest and a very dynamic panelist the floor is yours Muskan hello everyone I'm Muskan Fatima and I'll be speaking at the winner of the generation connect challenge I currently work with an AI based startup and I also volunteer and serve as a student ambassador of an organization that focuses on carrier development and personal growth of female entrepreneurs specifically in Pakistan I really look forward to today's discussion and I'm happy to be here thank you for having me thank you very much for being with us this is definitely very a fresh look at the panel and the issues we will be looking at next on my list I have Shailene Jotishi Shailene please introduce yourself thanks so very much Julia it's a honor to be with you all today hello from Washington DC my name is Shailene Jotishi I'm a senior analyst at a think tank called New America based here in Washington and a fellow in our artificial intelligence at the World Economic Forum the perspective I'd like to bring to today's session is the role of colleges and universities in fostering innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems over the past 10 years or so I've served in various research advisory and policy capacities to university presidents and chancellors vice chancellors for research as well as research park directors incubators and accelerators across the US and beyond so I would really like to bring that sort of academic perspective to the to the conversation today as well as a little bit of a perspective around science and innovation policy that's an area that I also study as a researcher and think it's pertinent to this discussion so looking forward to our conversation thanks so much Julia thank you Shailene indeed a very complimentary perspective and we all look forward to hearing from you too and last but not least we have with us Ms Victoria Moran and Victoria the floor is yours thank you Julia for having me my name is Victoria Moran and I am a venture partner at the accelerator based in southern California we are the biggest international accelerator fund based in southern California I'm originally Iranian so born and raised Iran so building ecosystem and helping developing countries like Africa and the Middle East is on my agenda and I'm very very happy that I can be a part of this group to share and add value I'm sure you will thank you very much Victoria for joining us too thank you once again to all the panelists as the audience can appreciate we have voices representing all groups of economic ecosystem builders loud and clear voices that will take us through our explorative journey today to keep up the conversation we will start with a discovery segment around the needs of stakeholders and the essential ingredients of the ecosystem what does each group of stakeholders need from the others this first exploration will form the inner layer of the ecosystem basics canvas and we will keep building on it through the following segments so please keep your interventions brief so we can all have a quote speaking opportunity and we enjoy a fluid and diverse discussion thank you very much in advance and to explore that question of the needs of every stakeholder group I think it's perfectly appropriate to start with this this discussion with an entrepreneurial perspective so Jess would you give us your first words I will do my best thanks so you know one thing that came up for me when I was looking when I was thinking through the the panel today and looking at the brief is that one premise of this discussion is that a lot of ecosystems where stakeholders have invested in ecosystem development are not doing that well or results have been slow to materialize but I think in thinking about that it's really important that we all ask ourselves both as entrepreneurs and as ecosystem builders compared to what right because a lot of us here have spent a lot of time working in emerging markets or in countries that are not sort of at the forefront of technological development but on the other hand often when you talk to ecosystem builders and that could be by the way both governments or private sector or independent organizations you get a sense that they're trying to create interventions through a certain lens that lends very often being well the Silicon Valley model of innovation right and obviously that's a huge inspiration but I think what's missing often is really when you look at how can we grow ecosystems is the local cultural component right and really at a very deep level right understanding well what do folks need in order to grow people like me who have spent a lot of time thinking about those questions typically do one of two things either identifying and supporting the individuals who will one day contribute to this to these tech ecosystems by building skills and community and providing resources to individuals who are not yet entrepreneurs but who might one day be that's one thing or as identifying and supporting the businesses created by those people right through investment through mentorship through one-stop shops that we heard about earlier today other types of government support and so on and so forth and those things can be very powerful or then they can be not so relevant and when they're not so relevant at least in my experience it's often when the stakeholders the folks designing these interventions forget or leave out really understanding at a deep level well what is it entrepreneurs need where are the gaps it may be skills it may not be skills it may be investment or it may not be investment but and often it's not very complicated right often it doesn't even require tons of investment sometimes it can be really simple things sometimes it takes a bit more effort but but but asking ourselves a question is really key and then the second thing is having patience right because there's not going to be any short-term short-term large-scale results are rare right so having the patience to see through these processes and see through an inclusive ecosystem building with long-term powerful results rather than short-term managed metrics or otherwise that may not really move the needle though those are some of the key points I want to raise here thank you very much those are indeed very important key points I think the relevance of the local context that comes up in all discussions and that's that's really important to keep in mind muscar from your perspective and from your work for a startup you see the struggles of startups every day what does your startup and startups and startups in general need from the other stakeholder groups in the ecosystem so that is a great question so you know well everyone is aware of the main issues of entrepreneurship such as thriving on limited resources and battling competition and surviving in a constantly changing climate with high risk you know entrepreneurship is really different in developing countries than it is in developed countries so today I'll be like shedding light on two main issues which are not that often bought up so one of this basically the gap between the entrepreneurs and the general population so the story which I work with they're known as slash AI is basically focused on machine learning solutions to a doctors in early diagnosis of different cancers and tumors so as we all know that artificial intelligence is all about data you need massive data sets to you know train the algorithm so they can see the pattern what we discovered was that you know people had this fear of you know AI technology and automation like it was lurking underneath so well a normal level of fear is perfectly fine I mean I know I love sci-fi movies but it was still a rude awakening to find this deep ingrained fear within the general population you know I would see my colleagues struggle with obtaining data from medical institutions and from health professionals so you know not every country is equally welcoming to innovation many people fear that AI will also you know replace them or you know start making poor decisions and it's very broad from a technical perspective but you know it always boils down to people thinking that the decision is just not right and you know due to this tech startup space a lot of difficulty in such a climate and you know the second biggest issue that I you know saw my startup base was that you know the success of a female-led startup is always contributed to the fact that they're female um you know our startup won you know numerous awards hackathon grand funds you name it Harvard the achievements are always downplayed because people think that you're just because your startup is you know female you want you have had those accomplishments whereas you know all of the other factors that have teamwork and the innovative solutions the problem that is you know you know that you're looking forward to solve it just you know overlooked so you know in some way despite already the other present challenges you know such as you know gender discrimination from you know venture capitalists to investor experience funding if you are a female entrepreneur you know even winning it's hard for you however I would like to add that the situation is not that grim the newer generations are constantly questioning things and they're all about challenging the status quo so we still have a long way to you know go to foster the gender you know equality in the start of world and other than that I believe that there should be you know collaboration with the government to create more awareness among the general population because no matter how revolutionary your idea is if the people aren't ready then your efforts will be in vain thank you thank you very much Fatima um I guess if if I were to summarize your two points into one probably there is more work to be done on mindsets and really changing mindsets and that reminds me of what the the Deputy Minister of Serbia brought in during the first panel she said supporting innovation is everyone's job so it's it's it's also about that being sure that everyone understands that innovation can bring solutions and can be good for everyone even if we don't necessarily understand or appreciate everything it brings um in its first 12 thank you very much indeed Shailene we will move to you and and get a little bit of a more academic perspective on the topic um you you led a research program um at the association of public and land-ground universities and um that was around research and development and um innovation ecosystems so from your lens what did you find governments need from the other stakeholders in the ecosystem to nurture entrepreneurship driven innovation and more thank you Yulia great comments from Muskan and and Jess to kick us off um you know I I think my perspective will of course be from the United States lens that's where I've worked with universities most frequently um I think there are a couple of things that governments can do to enable their universities to be incubators of innovation and entrepreneurship um I also wanted to share a program that everyone in the audience can make use of it's the university innovation fellowship at the hustle partner institute of design at stanford university this is actually a program that equips students on university and college campuses to be the builders of their own entrepreneurial ecosystems I was actually a fellow myself about 10 years ago but this is a free program that's international in scope so I I always like to give specifics when I give these types of talks so that's one specifics university innovation fellowship um there are a couple of levels here I think when it comes to fostering a university environment for students to to be more entrepreneurially innovative it's it's all the things that we've talked about it's access to capital it's sort of awareness it's the creative space to think out of the box and have that count towards your academic progression but a couple of things in particular came out as first and foremost oftentimes entrepreneurship is seen as very high stakes right you have to like really hustle and make it or you fail and you fail fast and it's sort of that whole mindset I think that latter mindset is not very well supported among colleges and universities I would love for more federal programs to support university students graduate and undergraduate with entrepreneurship projects as part of their typical course of work this has been a specific example at a couple of campuses you have MIT and Stanford but even public institutions like the University of Washington and Georgia Tech whereby to graduate you either complete your senior thesis or a capstone project or you participate in an entrepreneurial venture and this is built into the program of study both of those all four institutions I mentioned top the list of patents awarded for academics as well as markers for student entrepreneurship so fostering a university and call it collegiate environment for students I think is really valuable here now when it comes to the academics that's where most university born innovation entrepreneurship comes from I mean it was universities to help sort of create Silicon Valley in many ways I'll get to that in my next response to the following question but when it comes to faculty strong intellectual property protections I think are actually a really important piece here there've been lots of examples where academic researchers might have come up with an interesting idea but because of the tech transfer process and patenting process being sort of a little bit loose in their countries their ideas have escaped and they haven't really been able to do the lab to market functions that they initially intended there are some examples of nations putting in place policies to to to circumvent this the famous one in the US is the by Dole Act which sort of moved patents awarded from federally funded research to the university and campus level but I think that's something that governments ought to think about if you want your faculty and your professors and your academics that you do universities whether or not you have the infrastructure of the US or you're still a developing emerging ecosystem if you want them to be entrepreneurs and create innovation born ventures what does the intellectual property environment look like and how are you going to really educate those faculty around those uses this has been a big pain point in the US although there are two organizations I'd like to flag as resources for those of you in the audience who are thinking yes I want my university to be more entrepreneurial I want my faculty to do this work but I don't really know how to get them the resources they need the association of university technology managers autumn is a great group of tech transfer professionals worldwide it's not just us base but us centric that has lots of very useful resources to help universities all across the world do this well so I wanted to give a plug for autumn and then the second is actually the UIDP the university industry demonstration partnership it's another organization that's actually focused on a little bit of a different lens university industry research partnerships for innovation but I think there are a number of again sponsored programs and intellectual property contracting resources that have been really valuable to countries across the world so I wanted to flag those two specific organizations from the US that might be useful for others thank you thank you shading those are indeed specific examples of initiatives that have been helpful and I think that they're very very important point stuff we can also take away from from your first intervention innovation is not a business on its own it should be integrated in all the other sectors and initiatives that might be taking place and challenging different industries especially now and that idea around academia being more connected to the private sector maybe also to governments is also a helpful one in our discussion thank you very much indeed Victoria we're moving now to a completely different lens which is the one of a venture partner your company expert dojo is an accelerator and seeking to create unicorns in your role are you are you called to evaluate companies and support them and what are the the needs that they're articulating how are they seeing the needs of a new startup starting the adventure you just need to unmute yourself please so in regards to what we are seeing that it's the most mostly needed is that the mentality of how we grow a company and how the infrastructure of the ecosystem is enabling us to grow the company for us we don't see that the company definitely needs to have very large amount of investment from the beginning however needs to have a right mentor and projections of revenue to have and how they're going to get to that roadmap of 10 million per month revenue between five to 10 years looking at what's going on and what we are believing that the majority of accelerators are kind of failing is that they are they became a broker of entrepreneurs and investors and what is missing in between that we think that it's a huge gap is the mentality and education around the strategy of growing a company in a more sustainable and also fast because it's a big differentiator of European you know for instance uh entrepreneurs and startups and American startups and the only thing that we see as a impediment is that the mentality of entrepreneur that they don't see the roadmap that quick with the right strategy to grow very fast and that mentality is coming from the government and coming from infrastructure that has been provided to entrepreneur in the ecosystem that they are operating and that's a huge kind of a help in terms of the infrastructure and the education and the right resources that is available to entrepreneur to think bigger to achieve what they need to be achieved to create a unicorn between the five to seven years. Thank you very much indeed those are all important elements that we will also be been pointing to our canvas thank you very much and we will continue with that venture capital perspective with Andras you're a venture capital expert in a government program and you help start that scale up really what are the needs and expectations of your venture capitalists from the ecosystem they're active in and why yeah Julia thank you thank you for the question I think I can sum it up in in three main points I think quality startup or quality deal pipeline is one thing that that we see is looking for in environment the second is an environment which supports the developing of the companies and an environment the third one is whereby exits can be made successfully and let's start with the with the quality pipeline building I think all we know that that this venture capital companies are looking for companies with good innovation and and tech basis and with good teams and in input what we really do is to help these these startups you know educate them to make them ready for the investment the second thing I would say that hungry we have a quite established regular team environment with many tax benefits for for vcs and for local companies that should absolutely go on and also to help vcs in their activities in the portfolio management to help the companies grow internationally that's very important as well and the third one which I would say really the exiting environment that's the biggest challenge in a small company was more country like Hungary and I would say that the root that the companies or the companies could make the exits in you know on the capital market would be a great help so if a government or if an institution can help you know this route of exit for the vcs that would be I think a great help for the whole ecosystem and for the vcs as well and let's not forget about the the feeders that are helping the vcs and in Hungary just like in many other countries it's coming from business accelerators who represent the first year of this ecosystem also universities who generate a lot of we know so feeding actually the venture capital who can then accelerate these companies and you know put them on an international level and finally get a successful exit which is not only a good exit for the venture capital as well but it's also helped to promote the competitiveness of the given country so I think that was the main idea when in 2010 this whole venture capital scheme was put in place in Hungary and I think it's now started working I think it was not a long time so we have 10 years past in this and we already have some some great statistics in that which I will share you later on as a response to your questions. Thank you very much indeed those are some complementary ideas that we would make sure we integrate in our in our final outcome and you also made a great lead to the next intervention because you referred to government interventions to regulatory intervention and those are very key indeed in the ecosystem so Daniel we're looking at you you occupy such a key position at the Kenyan government through the CEO of the national communications secret area and that's an organization that is that has a critical advisory role in the development of ices and strategies and policies you mentioned that in the beginning in your day to day role you're involved in the development of a competitive national ecosystem and you're also working on integrating that vision into a regional context into a regional ecosystem can you tell us what governments in general need from the other stakeholders in the ecosystem to succeed in their mission of leading and enabling entrepreneurial innovation. Thank you thank you Yulia. What we are seeing from our perspective is that the transformation of the economy is offering opportunities in three main fronts especially related to the subject matter that is the skills of entrepreneurship and innovation and what we've seen as we try to develop this framework the role of government this can is provide a framework policies regulations that encourage entrepreneurship the last 15 years we've gone through several policies what we find lacking normally is the input from the other players in the ecosystem when we do public engagements we are required to consult with people who are expected to be impacted by the policies we we develop for the government as part of our advisory role you'll find that the big companies will respond the tech companies who are not Kenyans will respond but you find that the other stakeholders in the ecosystem look and do not give you any views so you find that as we conclude these documents then that aspect that is required to make government support the ecosystem is missing we get this from a stakeholder that is not really the people should be giving feedback so we think that that getting active participation from the other players in the ecosystem especially the innovators is important we found out that we have a program probably post their website on the URL on the on the chat agiradigital.co.ke what it does is that we are training youth for the gig economy we have gone into the universities and the technical institutions and other colleges and we formed clubs and we are training them on how to get jobs online but this was an initiative from the government and this we are doing together with the Kenya private sector alliance and they'll recognize the master card foundation and we found that by collaborating with the with the private sector and with the with the benefactor like the master card foundation the impact has been tremendous in the last two or three years we are told that about one million youth have been trained and they're actually actively involved in them and looking for jobs online related to that also our effort to to create this to to this abuse people this mindset that a job is an office job eight to five when a parent finds their child in their room working the whole day on a computer they don't consider that to be a job but they're probably earning more than a CEO like myself by the jobs they are getting so these mindsets that the traditional mindset that a job means you dress up you leave the house in the morning at six and you come back in the evening looking completely tired we need to change this and let the general population know that there's work that can be done within within the household but this narrative needs to be supported by people talking proudly about what the digital economy offers them innovators need to talk proudly about the innovations that you have come up with and have changed their lives thank you thank you very much indeed Daniel this is a very important point for active and meaningful engagement most stakeholder groups is important for those design policy design processes and indeed maybe we will touch upon that in the following discussions but the mechanisms and the channels for enabling that interactions are important to Jonathan we need your input and contribution to this discussion so we can wrap up the first segment of our discussion are there any thoughts that you would like to bring in please thank you program director i'd like to respond under the theme of accelerating economic inclusivity and and i'd like to further underpin my response from a macro perspective and a micro perspective as well now the stakeholder partnership i think we need to look at a global collaboration strategy the global one is important to access markets to access best practices and to co-create innovative solutions to address the united nations training that is sustainable development goals so i think stakeholder collaboration at that level is a very powerful viewpoint from a local perspective i think we can collaborate i think the key team out here is collaboration on common challenges which is the issue of low economic growth it's a bit of a contradiction in terms though low economic growth we need much more jobs and then the collaboration could further assist us with strategically aligning all of our objectives to address these issues of low growth and lower job numbers at the same time and of course we can assist in the hackathon situations out here because we saw we see it as a great enabler for innovation but this again must be done in partnership with government with private sector with civil society as well and i'd like to conclude with this proverb in terms of illustrating the power of collaboration it's an african proverb that says if you want to run fast you run alone but if you want to run far run together thank you thank you very much jonathan this is indeed the whole concept of today's panel two and hopefully we can have a good representation of that togetherness and really what's needed to bring all the stakeholders together with this we can wrap up the first round of the discussion and we were able to explore the needs and the expectation of certain stakeholder groups and now we can move to the second segment so now we're going to flip the discussion and explore what your stakeholder group is ready to offer to the ecosystem and i would ask you to support your views with specific examples each of you will have again two minutes please two minutes each and we'll take it from there and this time around i would like to start with a policy perspective and i'll invite our policy advisor to kick us off this time so daniel we're back to you what should governments do to support the development of competitive digital ecosystem and the regional one thank you i think that as i mentioned the role of government is basically to develop frameworks so i think we as government need to develop policy legal regulatory frameworks that are fair encourage investment in alignment with global standards so that we ensure that we protect our innovators and also create awareness about the potential that the innovations can can bring and talk about the secretary general talked about msn is in his opening address and in kenya we're told that sms sms accounts about 81 percent of the employment opportunities in the country and they employ about 40 percent of the jobs of the and therefore we believe they're a key driver the digital transformation of economy and we need to bring them into the discussion on the on the entrepreneurship and you know innovation so we need to develop policies that will bring this into into into focus and giving examples of what we've done in kenya in 2019 we developed on behalf of a group of african countries what is known as the digital economic blueprint for ken for africa and that blueprint after a lot of discussions with the with all the stakeholders in the ecosystem we identified five pillars which we recommended to african countries that they should adopt either all of them or some of them or even just one of them the first one is digital government which is improving public service delivery and that can actually create an opportunity for invest innovators to create innovations to improve government service delivery the next one is digital business where we are talking about financial inclusion developing platforms that facilitate digital transactions at that time we didn't know that covid-19 will come but i think that that that idea of digital platforms has come to you know to bear on witness on you know so digital business very important and within that we have digital trade digital financial services and digital content with the covid-19 we see in content moving online the third pillar is the infrastructure and this both digital infrastructure and physical energy roads addressing systems and and such the fourth one is an innovation driven entrepreneurship so that in innovation in it's not just entrepreneurship but innovation driven using new and emerging technologies so that we can offer solutions that will help solve the problems that we are facing as a country and the fifth pillar was skills what we call digital skills and trust so that we develop the right skills for the 21st century perhaps some of us very soon the skills we have will not be required in the new economy so we need develop skills that will help admit the transformation so these these these pillars we've shared them with the african countries and we think that if we can adopt this we can be able to meet the ultimate objective of the african continental free trade area which is a single digital market so maybe because of time I can leave it at that one example thank you that was already a lot thank you very much Daniel frameworks platforms safeguards and definitely a space for innovation thank you very much we can now move again to jonathan because you're part of a critical entrepreneurial support organization in your community and I'm sure you can tell us about your contribution what is that you offer to your community to the ecosystem and how do you see that fit with the needs of other stakeholder groups oh thank you program director at all times we'd like to see our incubation ecosystem be relevant and hence in my introductory remark I mentioned we now represent the MICTEA sector initially we started as the media information technology sector and communications right and then we evolved because we saw more and more electronic gadgets coming into our ecosystem for being requesting programming and so we then evolved to become the MICTE sector incubator and then of course I did allude to the fact that art was not becoming a prominent item under the new wave of education from stem to steam and then we too embraced art from the different perspective of art whether it's performing art or the art in the manner in which you program or design so that's a key component within the smart exchange ecosystem so the issue of relevance is key in terms of understanding what the market needs the other issue in terms of where we add value is that we try to effectively participate on all government initiatives not necessarily supporting all of the initiatives but also being highly critical if the initiatives will not give us the right outcome and the right impact so it's important to also play that role within the communities in which you serve the similar role we play in terms of the academia where we always try to make a contribution to align the academia in terms of what are the private sector within the four IR spaces looking for rather than the academia just continuing producing the traditional graduates that they used to we then spun the issue of short courses being relevant for industry thereby guaranteeing a kind of job uptake equally we challenge the private sector within the ecosystem the issue of the big gap between the rural versus the urban in terms of infrastructure is a very real issue and so we appeal to the captains of industry to have a deep social responsibility in terms of not necessarily only chasing the high profit margins that one would achieve in the urban areas but take cognizance of its dire need and impact in rural communities as well equally now collaboration we engage with civil society both in terms of what are the challenges and how we could assist them via the acotones but the bigger push in the South African context is for civil society to take care of the infrastructure that's around them you would have seen in the media with the civil unrest that we've had it wasn't a good story to tell so as an incubator in this entire collaboration strategy we try to play that role to connect the dots so that we could get the right kind of impact that we want within this digital divide challenge that we have thank you thank you very much Jonathan and I would ask Jess to maybe tell us if you relate to what you just said and give us your perspective Jess on how private sector can support the ecosystem and what is the relationship between the established private sector maybe and startups and why they should collaborate sure thanks so I when you say private sector I assume you refer to sort of the biggest established companies the corporates whether they're local or regional or global perhaps and what role they have in local startup ecosystems and when I look at I mostly look at Southeast Asia but I do think it's representative for many other parts of the world as well when we look at the corporates here we often see three different ways in which they engage with the startup ecosystems the first one is and perhaps the simplest one and perhaps the one we see the most is big companies that recognize the digital opportunity that recognize the opportunities that some of these emerging startups have and then try to work with them either by investing in them or ultimately by acquiring them and absorbing them into their own businesses right and they do that by creating corporate venture capital arms or corporate entrepreneurship or corporate accelerator programs or similar activities like that in order to sort of get some exposure to the startup ecosystem and establish networks with the entrepreneurs that are building new businesses and then ultimately finding someone that they can invest in or or acquire that's one way the second way we see companies big companies engage with startups and entrepreneurs here is by supporting and investing into the startup ecosystems through through providing their own products through organizing activities through providing mentorship other types of resources sometimes by doing investment into startups with an aim of having those startups becoming their customers or partners later on and we see that a lot with the big tech companies right the amazons and googles and of the world that are providing providing products and services to lots of digital businesses around the world and that recognize that some of these startups that are starting out now well they're going to become big and successful businesses one day so by spending some time and money on keeping them close to us now and building network with them well we can we can we can gain from that down the line that's the second one the third one is is still relatively new and we've seen that more in other parts of the of the world for example the US compared to here but but it's happening more and more where you see big companies or bigger companies that are designing products and service lines specifically targeting startups and emerging entrepreneurs and one example of this is in the financial sector where we see more and more products and financial services specifically targeting for a good example of this is e-commerce businesses right where we see more seeing more financial services companies providing financing products for e-commerce businesses to provide working capital or whatnot to provide liquidity for their operations which historically has been something that's been very difficult to come by for for early stage startups right they can't go to the bank and get a loan they can take on VC funding but they don't have access to a lot of the debt products and whatnot that bigger companies do and we're seeing more and more companies specifically providing products and services to startups right so among these three different ways of collaborating with startups there there's some really interesting stuff going on and one of the part of your question here was well why wouldn't these big companies see startups as competitors and I think the answer to that is I actually think they do right but but I also think that if you're a big corporate and and you're smart well then you think well better to keep my competitors close than to try and operate in a vacuum right and I don't think I don't think we should necessarily see all of this through an adversarial lens right a lot of this is not a zero sum game and I do think that there's lots of good examples of when when you can when you can collaborate well you can actually make two and two become five and when you sort of take an ecosystem approach to working with startups and you are genuinely trying to help well you as a big business can benefit and of course the startups and entrepreneurs can benefit as well and all that is not to say that you know of course there are examples of predatory behavior and corporates that have acted irresponsibly and so on that goes on all over the world and that's going on right now and I think as as as ecosystem builders we have a responsibility to educate all stakeholders and help them figure out how they can make the most of all of this without engaging in a predatory activity without leaving people sort of offering people some optimal opportunities and whatnot so that's something everybody needs to think about but I actually think we're seeing more and more good examples of how the corporate sector can engage with startups and if I can just add a last final thing Daniel you mentioned before in your comments I think it was really really relevant how what's going on in the tech communities and the startup communities in the innovation communities right now around the world it's not an incremental change right it's a paradigm shift right it's a totally different way of thinking about how we work and how we do things and I think the best corporates anywhere in the world are the ones who get that that are not trying to to to build startups or engage with entrepreneurs in the mold of how things used to be done but who are trying to take the best learnings from how these startups operate and incorporate and integrate that into their own sort of big established businesses thank you very much for that perspective Jess that was indeed fascinating so it's important really to find that common ground between corporation and competition and see how that balance evolves with time thank you very much um I'll turn now the floor to Muskan to tell us her perspective of a startup uh and and and what is that startups actually contribute to that ecosystem yeah thank you very much for that question um so basically the startups um like like I said before in developing countries their whole you know perspective is different like they cannot operate the way that it would in a developed country they have to focus more on educating people first and creating awareness first because that is you know essentially what's needed and you know initiatives small initiatives like you know the one which was by the i2 like the generation connect challenge is um you know what is needed to again actually serve as a you know springboard for you know the youth to come forward and to put forward their ideas um so yes I believe that you know startups need you know some sort of you know more input from from the youth and those that can only be done if you know there's you know small initiatives like you know the generation connect challenge and you know stuff like this which can really you know benefit other youth entrepreneurs you know to to just you know come into that market and to come into that um environment and you know to to think like that regardless of their gender they raise their age they can have you know the platform to you know to you know any solution that they believe can really change the world yeah thank you very much indeed um those platforms for giving more visibility and connecting young entrepreneurs are important indeed and hopefully will have impact in the long but also in the short term I'll now turn to Victoria can you tell us about what your organization can offer towards creating the next unicorn in the communities you're operating and please give specific examples if you can really we started in 2016 by bringing the community of startups and giving them the free space starting to create a network for them and events and just observe them for a couple of years until 2018 actually 16 to 18 we were kind of operating in a way that incubating a startup linking them uh and providing certain infrastructure to them to see how they're going to survive and what we came up uh at the end um we noticed that it's not only the investment that um their startup needs and uh connecting to the venture capitalist is the way that you know how we strategize then as I mentioned in previous conversations as well that's something is the roadmap of creating a unicorn is very very potent and we noticed that any other you know accelerators they became a broker and what we did is that we believe that we need to create a persona the success one of the success rate of American startups is that the personal branding the the brand of the tech itself no matter whether in deep tech or fintech the the branding is a very very important element uh in uh the roadmap that you are going through and then having a bigger vision of how I'm going to achieve that vision and how I'm going to take the revenue from one million uh one uh thousand dollar per month to 10 to 100 to one million and to 10 million roadmap that's the roadmap that uh we are looking for so we became like a program that not only provides investment but also education and infrastructure to shape the companies that uh they become the runner and investors are going to be after them and in this you know kind of a roadmap we created a program that it's designed in uh how uh we help a company from a personal branding to the brand of a tech itself and the company itself about their strategy about their bigger vision of building a multinational you know conglomerate companies and how we can you know take that model of a big companies and implemented for a new startup with five to ten you know employees and that was kind of um what we shaped in terms of our communities and every communities that we talked to from European to Middle Eastern to Africa we tried to look into that model and adopt that model based on the laws and regulations and infrastructure of that region so we tried to adopt that and how we can uh you know help the companies in that ecosystem to become like an American startup and become a unicorn to be and that's unicorn to be should have some sort of a roadmap to have and we try to provide that Thank you very much Victoria so it's also going beyond financials and really developing a full system of support through those new companies thank you very much for bringing that point in and I would now move on to Andres since you're also part of that stakeholder group to give us your perspective and to tell us more about how do you see the contribution of financiers and how is that also evolving we heard that there is a lot of change happening please okay thanks for the question again I think the main function of a VC is really to facilitate the whole ecosystem with providing the necessary funding and obviously includes giving the opportunity to to select teams entrepreneurs who can live up to that opportunity and then obviously to facilitate the truth and I don't only mean the financial side but also the education the business development side you know to teach them how to build up a team actually to teach them how to lend their business on a foreign market and so on and at the end of the day this is how you can make a startup into a later stage high growth company and a sustainable company at the end of the day and to illustrate this what happened in Hungary and I was referring to this in my earlier answer is that like in 2010 there was a huge huge new VC ecosystem put in place which was an EU co-funded scheme which means that 30% of the funds were subscribed by private individuals or private investors 70% was subscribed by the EU fund of funds and based on that the whole industry was set up actually and there has been you know since the beginning I think 1.5 billion euros of funds has been deployed on the market so that has been financing over 1000 startups and currently I think in for instance in the last year only 200 startups just received fundings and more than 35 VCs are present and you know funding from the very early stage from the very stage till the growth stage up until 5 to 10 million is also available so that actually shows that you know in 10 years you know with this funding scheme we're able to establish a whole ecosystem which is based around this VC funding and I think besides you know the financial logic I think it also greatly contributes to the competitiveness and the innovation or the growth of innovation or the facilitating with innovation in Hungary as well so that's a good example and I think that you're quite sure that this type of program happened in many central European companies and this is one main mean or method to you know that how we see can actually you know contribute to developing the innovation and the local ecosystem in these countries. Thank you very much indeed and swiftly moving to Shailene who has the special role to wrap up this this round of comments with your academic perspective on how academia in general can support the innovation ecosystem and facilitate some of the dynamics Shailene. Thank you Julia I'll be brief in the interest of time you know in short I think academics have the R&D based innovations to offer innovations that can address market demands. In the US universities and governments have actually long been hand-in-hand partners of entrepreneurship. People think Silicon Valley was built on the backs of these brilliant entrepreneurs in private sector ingenuity alone. No not at all high value entrepreneurship the kind that can be built that built the US economy and economic sort of prowess came most often from innovation and R&D born startups. Many big tech companies began this way and excuse me it was actually Stanford UC Berkeley and top tier universities coupled with as Daniel mentioned a strong federal investments in university R&D and infrastructure that made Silicon Valley such a hotbed for innovation entrepreneurship. You asked for specifics so I encourage the audience to check out a book called The Code by Professor Margaret O'Mara which explains this full history of Silicon Valley and also this will probably be well known by this audience the entrepreneurial state by Professor Mariana Masucado. Both texts get to the very heart of your question around the value proposition that academia has in the innovation ecosystems but also their strengths and limitations and how they play with other stakeholders. I will share some articles in the chat as well that shows specifically how academic research served as the building blocks of say the iPhone for example the exact federal research grants the exact researchers in the exact universities the dot connecting a flat to market is so crucial for innovation ecosystem building not just in countries like the US with massive R&D funding at the federal level but for developing countries as well so I'll share a couple of those chats and in the a couple of those links in the chat because I think they'll be helpful for the audience as specific concrete roadmaps to building university infrastructure supporting entrepreneurship. The final resource I'd want to share is this group called the National Academy of Inventors. I alluded to this in my prior intervention but this organization actually convenes academics who are entrepreneurs and patent holders themselves and I think speaking with the academics who themselves have done this work will be very helpful for countries looking to replicate the special ingredients that foster innovation ecosystems on university campuses. Earlier to Muskan's great comments I shared the University Innovation Fellowship in the chat as well to have this level of resource for the student level but for the professors and the faculty and the academics the National Academy of Inventors gets another concrete community of practice centered in the US but global in scope and mindset that may be useful for follow-up from the session. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Aileen. Those are very concrete examples and hopefully very helpful for all the participants here. Thank you very much indeed and that takes us to our next round and final round of this discussion that was already such a great conversation and we have now a few more minutes to reflect the main findings that we've heard about and reflect on the gaps where the struggles where the gaps and is there a prospective gap that needs to be bridged and how to foster that whole of ecosystem approach to nurturing entrepreneurship driven innovation and since we're slowly but surely getting out of time I would ask you to please keep your intervention to one minute try to please give us the essence of what you see the biggest gaps until now are and please also try to focus on things that we haven't yet addressed in this conversation and I would like to start with Jonathan where are the gaps? Thank you program director it's a tough question to critically look at your gaps but I would think the first gap in our context in the South African context we have a developmental agenda as one of our key responsibilities and now when you squeeze in a developmental agenda you have to have government funding to assist you with the development agenda and so that's a serious gap and government is not coming strongly to the party to bridge that gap secondly in terms of a government gap and the incubation ecosystem government does not procure directly with the innovators from the incubation ecosystem so that's a serious gap they're trying to put in legislation but is still far away in terms of supply chain challenges etc the other serious gap we've got out here is especially currently South Africa has been in the election mode so everything is focused towards winning the next election rather than looking at how to really grow the economy and hence the sustainability of the development ecosystem further comes at risk and lastly because of the one-minute curfew time the South African context as a very poor or weak angel or investor community and so therefore this collaboration with our international partners could be a great opportunity I thank you thank you very much Jonathan you did very well you could forward very important points in that one minute um Jess would you like to build a little bit on that and tell us um can you relate to what Jonathan just said or do you have any other thoughts please sure I'll highlight some gaps that I've thought about and I I have to say I'm not sure I have solutions for those gaps but nonetheless we can discuss so uh so I think I mean look in in in I'm looking at at at Myanmar with what I'm about to say now because that's where I've spent most of my time in the last several years but I do think it's relevant to other countries at similar stages of development as well um I think a challenge we always find ourselves in as ecosystem builders is we have to build a really big tent to make sure everybody gets involved in a in a in a in a in a developing environment right we have to cater to folks who have very little experience and exposure with what it means to build a digital business with what it means to build a startup we have to cater to folks who are very educated and have lots of exposure and have access to lots of resources but who also needs to be part of the local ecosystem and have access to the same local networks and connectivity and community importantly and we have to cater to all sorts of stakeholders who are just now starting to figure out well what is digital innovation and what is digital leapfrogging um and all that stuff what does that mean to the work that we are doing right so you have to build a really big tent often with limited resources in an environment where lots of things haven't been done yet um that's really hard so you know that's a challenge right and that's a gap in in environments like this because you're often trying to do many things at the same time um so I think I mean to to make it a bit more concrete and to perhaps try and get closer to what we need to bridge that challenge I think um starting to look at niches right maybe starting to think maybe we can't do everything at once but we can identify specific opportunities in specific communities and help those communities succeed by connecting them to resources in country regionally globally whatever um to best practices to people individuals uh corporates and government agencies you know other stakeholders um to get to where they need to be right so perhaps not trying to do everything at once but trying to find real opportunities for real progress because when you then help um those niche communities succeed well you also create beacons for others to be inspired by and hopefully make the journey easier later on so that uh there's sort of a momentum that you can start building so I that would be my two cents on on that topic creating sites um start small but start and start smart as well choose your battles thank you very much yes um Shailene I would love to have your academic perspective on that for the gaps I'm sure you have plenty in your pocket thank you very much Julia um I'd like to touch on a piece that has surfaced a couple of times during the conversation but you know from the lens of academia in particular is inclusiveness um I'm honored to serve as a member of ITU's Generation Connect visionaries board and digital inclusion especially for youth is key if we're serious about uh innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems being drivers for economic mobility instability and growth you know we know from user-centered design and public problem solving that especially in the digital ecosystem context we can't really have user-centered design happen if the public is not represented among the innovators and we desperately need to make entrepreneurship ecosystems for inclusive um this is certainly true in the U.S. um but but no doubt in many many other countries for example last year women led startups received just 2.3 percent of venture capital funding 2.3 percent it's it's unacceptable uh racial minorities received disproportionately lower investments um from bc's and university is that enroll racial minorities also have far less entrepreneurial ecosystem building resources uh so if there's one thing that I'd love to elevate like Jess I actually don't have a solution for this challenge but I just like to elevate it nonetheless is let's make sure we take the time even if it means going slower to build inclusive innovation on entrepreneurial ecosystems um there is one resource I can share along these lines uh in my prior role which you alluded to Yulia we did try to convene universities around inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem building and I just dropped a link in the chat to a recording from prior session in the U.S. the Lemelson Foundation in Oregon is a good resource for inclusive innovation ecosystem building and they're also a funder so that may be useful for some of you out there um so I will leave it at that thank you very much thank you very much Aileen and and thank you everyone for keeping as short as possible and on that note I would like to request our very committed interpreters to give us five more minutes after 430 Geneva time can we please have five more minutes so we conclude the session I'm not hearing the answer but I don't have the interpreters um channel yes the interpreters agreed thank you very much indeed this is very much appreciated and we we definitely got drawn in a very interesting discussion that that will try to wrap up uh really quickly Muskan um then you gave us your takeaway where are the gaps where are the struggles yes of course so to you know to to sum up everything and I you know really appreciate all of the point which everyone has added I would specifically focus the same um point on more inclusion and more involvement of the youth I was just reading the other day this article that my generation the new generation z is basically one of the most entrepreneurial generation and we love to have a quick start we don't like waiting we don't like going to that that you know the same whole process of you know first of all getting a college degree and then going to that we have all of these ideas and we are the generation that you know grew up seeing all of these struggles so for us you know we love to have you know resources and things which kind of you know prompt us to do more so you know my key takeaway was that um that I believe it is essential for you know there to be more initiatives to there to be more you know um even you know small you know stuff like competition and sector to you know make us more involved in you know bring us more into the entrepreneurship world world because there's you know a lot of you know ideas and um innovative solutions that need that can be harnessed from my generation thank you thank you very much muskan and indeed again very important ideas that um we don't have immediate solution for but we need to continue reflecting upon victoria your minutes to wrap up this discussion please you would need to unmute yourself please it's in in regards to infrastructure and infrastructure means like access to human capital access to financial capital and uh and uh getting a motivation to become an entrepreneur as well and and these are all linked uh with the government policies in terms of universities in terms of motivating the wealthy um you know people to invest in the risky business of uh you know venture in general uh in terms of uh facility of access of uh public and private sector both to uh implement the new technologies and at these pilots uh the new technologies to commercialize the ideas of the universities so these are all linked together that I think if we build a very strong infrastructure uh in any regards it's going to help and uh I hope that you know at least you know from today's that we are seeing a lot of changes in um agriculture and uh in education and in in very much sectors that bringing lots of value to the society we see that these gaps are going to be uh tightened and it's going to be lower and lower thank you very much victoria we need to work on bridging those gaps indeed and res from your perspective where the I have I have a lot of a lot of things on my on my paper but you know to cut it short I would only emphasize one thing is that uh no the main challenge is that uh would be to link the ecosystem that we're going to find regionally or even in one country uh and you know from a visis perspective this would absolutely mean that making more cross-border transactions so I mean central europe is a very that's a compilation of small countries so we have to we have to have uh you know big companies who are on present on the global market to be successful and sustainable so I think uh general that's my my takeaways that it's not enough to have one uh you know individual uh ecosystem to be set up and be successful but we have to link those ecosystems together a great a great insight indeed and I'm moving to Daniel who has the honor and the most difficult task to speak last on this session Daniel thank you thank you thank you uh I think one thing that's missing is the political infrastructure the ministry I advise is called the ministry of ICT youth ICT innovation and youth affairs so we have the technology we have the youth and we have the innovation mandate that has made it very easy for us to we're not easy but has actually facilitated engagement with the youth and the innovation ecosystem so the political infrastructure is important uh secondly I do agree with Jonathan uh on the that to govern as government we need to do more in terms of having funding and to for innovation and I'm talking specifically about digital innovation or ICT centric innovation and also we need to find a mechanism for promoting the adoption and use of local innovations within our own countries next uh we need a platform a public platform for engaging the innovators for I'm talking about things like sandboxes where does an innovator go other than maybe the privately set hubs innovation hubs perhaps as government need to set up engagement platforms where innovators can come and that way we can they can be the hands can be held in terms of IP in terms of formalizing their business and last but not least I think we can refer to absence of good data sets so as as governments I think we need to revise our existing policies frameworks which were developed with innovation when innovation was not in mind we need to revise them to capture the requirements of the 21st century and have policies for example on open data so that you can have clean data sets that can then be used by things like AI and machine learning to be able to you know to you know to help us with the decision making so with that thank you thank you very much thank you very much indeed Daniel for bringing those very valuable points and I guess both you and me we will have to carry over those important thoughts to the stakeholders from governments and regulatory communities our communities most definitely thank you very much to all the panelists for those great insights and I would now give the floor to Moe and he has already brought up on the screen that absolutely awesome framework that he has put together with the contributions from everyone Moe would you like to say a few words on that yes thank you sorry I'm not going to turn on the camera but I think there was a quite active discussion and I try to capture every point and for methodology the yellow is what the current state is the red are some of the gaps and the blue are examples like you know Sheldon was giving several time and other people as well and the green is at the takeaways right and and I think Victoria mentioned everything is interconnected so the framework we're using for this is against an innovation framework where you see policy and regulation that underpins everything you have access to capital and the resources the talents the infrastructure the culture and the market and the vision and strategy so when we categorize them we can see for example there was a lot of discussion about academia the role of academia building bridges there was a lot about supporting the talents you know first the individual and then the companies themselves the readiness for for the startup of programs like the input programs or different type of programs right and then there was a lot about market and also using the networks in the market to connect them and a lot about the corporate role and their changing role in fact you know the venture capital of corporates and and all of those things and then policy which was discussion that underpins everything that I put at the outer side and of course the mindset and the inclusion which came up several times the real urban divide the gender divide and the mindset in terms of inspiring people inspiring entrepreneurs and starting small for example like the Generation Connect program that we or challenge that we run and of course the big elephant in the room the vision and strategy where we try to get everybody to have a common vision Silicon Valley is an inspiration great but everything is different so and collaboration between the stakeholders which came out several times the government role as an enabler the strategy and then the programs that are not basically aligned and to take all that away this is what we got we basically say to take a ways out to achieving the SDGs it will require new free think of everything entrepreneurs as captain of industries I use Jonathan's role from STEM to STEAM the vision has to be aligned there's a lot of good practices that exist how can we inspire the ecosystem who needs it from it ITU actually does a lot of these good practices research to offer this there is a ecosystem collaboration mechanism which came a lot and I think tomorrow's discussion will get into this the whole of ecosystem collaboration mechanism and as well as the academia type of collaboration that Sheldon brought up several times vision and strategies have to be aligned and if a stakeholder is actually not does not have the right program in their environment they have to go build them right like the input program for example with one mandate you know having these feeder networks trying to create a bigger pipeline going into other ecosystem connecting and linking them right which also comes up and basically the idea that Jess brought which is to think big but start small to create the big ones and linking ecosystem which is important if you're in a resource deprived environment and by the way invite you to Friday's discussion where we'll launch three great ideas which will change the world hopefully and we'll call for partnership for that that will cover this and of course the orchestration which will cover tomorrow and last but not least holistic thinking and assessment is needed to be able to revive these ICT policies and this is where ITU has been intervening as well in several areas over from my side thank you very much and Claude is back to you Julia thank you very much Mo that was incredibly rich that's such a great way to frame the debate I think we have a very good snapshot of the efforts that are being underway by all stakeholder groups and we also realize that the board need to continue and probably the communities need to get closer together we need to also keep reframing that debate many of you said that everything is evolving and evolving fast so there are ways and then we need to change and things that we need to do that we didn't have to do before so definitely that creative thinking needs to continue thank you very much indeed to all the excellent panelist that we had today our hour is up even 10 minutes over time but that's a much longer conversation that we will try to continue over the coming days so stay tuned for the next session of the global innovation forum tomorrow and for the next days and thank you very much indeed for joining us thank you thank you so much thank you bye