2020 ITU Global Innovation Forum

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2020 ITU Global Innovation Forum Banner The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us how critical entrepreneurship-driven innovation is for economic growth and digital inclusion. The crisis has resulted in stress on value chains and countries’ readiness for a digital economy, significantly affecting social conditions worldwide. Communities worldwide can feel the impact of a growing digital innovation divide: rising digital inclusions issues, impact on jobs and loss of competitiveness in key sectors. This is why ITU hosted the 2020 edition of ITU Global Innovation Forum, from 26 to 30 October, focusing on mainstreaming competitive digital innovation ecosystems in the age of COVID-19.

The Global Innovation Forum empowered participants with new approaches, insights, tools, frameworks, communities and relevant case studies to understand how to mainstream sustainable ecosystems that accelerate digital transformation. The event was a five-day immersive programme that took the participants on global and regional learning journeys to prepare them to accelerate digital transformation in their communities.

Targeted Audience

The event was targeted at digital change-makers, policy-makers, the private sector, academics, entrepreneurial support organizations, entrepreneurs, financiers, community development managers, international organizations and media. All core sessions were available in the six languages of the United Nations.

Topics Covered

Day 1 highlighted the challenges to meeting digital transformation ambitions and the roles and challenges of an ecosystem.
Day 2 provided new insights about mainstreaming entrepreneurship and demystifying resource requirements for your ecosystem.
Day 3 focused on the power of success stories and building communities that fuel innovation and start-up cultures.
Day 4 brought a regional dimension with insights about how digital innovation policies monitoring and good practices that can be amplified.
Day 5 brought everything through the lenses of change-makers to explore how to bring resources owners, problem owners and solutions owner together for greater digital inclusion.

Core Sessions

Each day was structured into three key tracks for maximum learning by participants:

A high-level dialogue track provided key insights through dialogues and keynote presentation about nurturing digital transformation, innovation and entrepreneurship;
An ecosystem track delivered practical power sessions to equip participants with skills, tools and knowhow in nurturing an environment conducive to digital transformation; and
A networking and digital experience track provided attendees with opportunities to experience our digital communities and network with change-makers.