I-CoDI Global Workshop: Catalyzing Processes for the ITU Acceleration Centres and First Meeting of the Centres

4 – 8 March 2024 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Event Concept

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development was launched by the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the ITU to offer a new framework to help countries build critical local enablers to bridge the digital innovation gap and accelerate the impact of their digital innovation ecosystems on cross-cutting sectors for an inclusive and sustainable future.

The Telecommunication and Digital Regulatory Authority of the UAE (TDRA), as the capacity-building partner of the Alliance, hosted a five-day workshop to support the capacity development of the Alliance’s network of Acceleration Centres. This hosting was in implementation of TDRA’s Partner2Connect pledge to invest AED 5 million to support the ITU-TDRA joint initiative, the International Center of Digital Innovation (I-CoDI), aiming to empower Member States in digital innovation in information and communication technologies (ICTs). 

This workshop marked the first meeting of the Alliance’s Acceleration Centres. Participants in the workshop were key stakeholders from the centres who benefitted from intensive hands-on training on the Alliance approach. The workshop utilized specific playbooks to accelerate digital innovation, thereby bridging the gap in digital innovation among countries.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

1. Kick off the activities of the Acceleration Centres
2. Build a common understanding of new institutional and human capacity-building frameworks to accelerate digital innovation
3. Build capacity catalyzing the ITU Acceleration Centres for two of its strategic objectives to operationalize services of the Acceleration Centres (Trend Research readiness and Ecosystem Initiative Development) using two playbooks the strategic foresight playbook and the ecosystem initiative development playbook.

The Ecosystem Initiatives Development playbook aimed to equip stakeholders with tools and frameworks to develop efficient initiatives within the ecosystem. This was achieved through a robust process that guides stakeholders through opportunity discovery, roadmap design, prototyping and validation, followed by the development of the initiatives that can be supported by system for its sustainability and scalability.

This strategic foresight playbook equipped users with a comprehensive methodology and tools to adopt a futures thinking approach and build capabilities in carrying out strategic foresight as a practice. It empowered stakeholders to scan signals in the environment, map trends and anticipate disruptions to explore the possibilities of multiple futures, and created robust systems to guide stakeholders in their roadmap towards the desired outcomes.

Participation in this meeting is by invitation only.

Supporting Documents