BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin addressed the opening of ITU's 2020 Global Innovation Forum, which focused on mainstreaming competitive digital innovation ecosystems in the age of COVID-19. The pandemic has reminded us how critical entrepreneurship-driven innovation is for economic growth and digital inclusion. It 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.
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 participants on global and regional learning journeys to prepare them to accelerate digital transformation in their communities.
Ms Bogdan-Martin mentioned that innovation has been an important thematic priority for ITU membership since 2014, since the theme was first introduced at the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Dubai. She noted that its importance has risen over the years; however, we have often seen more excitement created than action. For this reason, ''we are holding this Global Innovation Forum to share insights, discover new practices, and enable participants to connect with change-makers for more action-oriented outcomes.''
Pointing to multiple ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted people's lifestyles, she noted that it has accelerated the need for new solutions from digital innovation ecosystems around the world. She mentioned innovators have been working on ways to change the “new normal" in COVID-times into something better for their communities. Those that support innovators — including policymakers, academics, corporates and financiers, have also sprung into action.
She urged the need to develop an innovation culture, so that creative new mindsets and frameworks can tackle the disruptions we witness today. Innovative thinking needs to fuel digital transformation so that communities can address their problems, and support their small and medium businesses, and startups, to scale-up and become resilient in the face of a changing world.
Welcoming the powerful line of speakers who would share their insights to the Forum, Ms Bogdan-Martin said, ''Technology can either be an accelerator for achieving national ambitions or an inhibitor for social inequality. But technology is just an enabler, it is not the root cause of change. You need changemakers for change.''
