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EVPA embarked on a collaborative journey to design a Transformative Finance Lab, a space for different organisations to come together, to gain a common understanding of the systemic challenges at hand, and to co-create financing solutions to tackle these challenges
For that purpose, between now and April we have launched a series of conversations with experts and managers of similar innovation and co-creation initiatives to learn from existing their experience. These online interviews are open for everyone interested to learn more about lab mechanism and willing to exploring their applicability to the field of impact finance with us and the interviewee. In cooperation with Impact for Breakfast we will also host two public consultation sessions (dates to be confirmed).
Meet the interviewees and watch the recordings
MIT Solve
Tuesday, 8 February at 4.00-5.00 (CET)
Interview partner: Rachael Drew, Portfolio Lead, Strategic & Partner Programs at Solve
Driven by the objective to tackle systemic challenges and aiming at supporting social impact innovation, MIT Solve connects with tech-based social entrepreneurs around the globe and convenes different actors of the innovation ecosystem to support these entrepreneurs to scale their impact. By launching “Global Challenges”, Solve invites innovators and entrepreneurs to apply on an open platform and selected initiatives receive support for transformational change in society. Since 2016, Solve has facilitated 500+ partnerships and over $ 50 million in commitments.
Practitioner Labs for Climate Finance (and Policy Prototype) by SEED
Tuesday, 15 February at 4.00-5.00 (CET)
Interview partner: Jonas Restle-Steinert, Senior Manager adelphi / Germany
The SEED Practitioner Labs for Climate Finance aims at enabling the design of “innovative climate finance products” to support eco-inclusive SMEs and climate-smart infrastructure investment in developing countries. By convening different actors such as investors, financial institutions, foundations, political decision-makers and innovators, the labs provide a space for participants to engage in peer learning opportunities, strengthen their product implementation capacity and build a community of partners to innovate climate finance products for systemic change. With over 200+ expert practitioner participants, the SEED Practitioner Labs for Climate Finance has already supported the co-creation of 26 climate finance products that innovate the next generation of climate finance products for their target markets.
SEED, hosted by adelphi, was founded at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg by UNEP, UNDP and IUCN as a global partnership for action for targeted enterprise support and eco-system building.
inclusive innovation 2030 by Endeva
Wednesday, 16 February at 12.30-13.30 (CET)
Interview partner: Christina Tewes-Gradl, Co founder and Managing Director, Endeva
With the creation of inclusive innovation 2030 (ii2030), Endeva aims to foster systems change and to develop a more inclusive and future fit society by 2030. This methodology facilitates to catalyse collaboration among partners of different sectors and supports the development of solutions around tech-based opportunities for systems change. One of their great successes is the creation of the Drones Doing Good Alliance – a coalition of partners active in Africa – to deliver medical goods with a drone.
EVPA member Endeva’s mission is to help create economic systems that serve people and planet.
Innovation Labs by ADA
Wednesday, 23 February at 12.30-13.30 (CET)
Interview partner: Axel de Ville, Executive Advisor at ADA
ADA has initially started to use Innovation Labs with the aim to encourage innovation within its own organisation and the willingness to better address the target populations’ needs in its interventions. Innovation Labs resulted in strengthening collaboration and synergies both internally and with and between its partners. By providing a space for collective thinking this practice enabled ADA to clarify its overall strategic positioning and to effectively design and implement interventions with a transformative impact.
EVPA member ADA is an international leader in the inclusive finance sector.
The TransCap Initiative
Tuesday, 1 March at 12.30-13.30 (CET)
Interview partner: Dominic Hofstetter, Space building Lead at TransCap Initiative
The TransCap Initiative is a collaborative space for developing, demonstrating, and scaling systemic investing in the places that matter most for human prosperity—such as cities, landscapes, and coastal zones—as well as in value chains and other real-economy systems. The initiative apply systems thinking, human-centred design, and the principles of mission-driven innovation to explore how financial capital can catalyse the transformation of systems in service of a low-carbon, climate-resilient, just, and inclusive future. Their mission involves developing a knowledge and innovation base, testing novel concepts and approaches, and building a community of practice. In each of the systems TransCap works with challenge owners, communities, innovators, investors, and other stakeholders to design, structure, and finance strategic investment portfolios nested within a broader systems intervention approach. As such, TransCap assembles diverse actors including the private, public, academic and philanthropic sectors to explore how financial capital can foster system transformation.
Lab of Tomorrow by GIZ
Wednesday, 2 March at 12.30-13.30 (CET)
Interview partner: Eric Schuetz, Head of “Lab of Tomorrow” at GIZ/Germany
The Lab of Tomorrow of GIZ, the German Development Agency, offers a unique process and method that enables a divers group of stakeholders from the public, private and social sector co-create business solutions to address societal and environmental challenges in developing countries. The 3 stage process of lab of tomorrow offers its partners: the identification of business opportunities with development impact; a multi-stakeholder ideation workshop for the formation of international venture teams and the creation of sustainable business ideas and; a 3-month incubation programme to test the solution.
GLAC
Thursday, 10 March at 12.30-13.30 (CET)
Interview partner: Wiebke Koenig, Head Global Leadership Academy
In a world where social, environmental and economic challenges are interconnected, the Global Leadership Academy (GLAC) aims to foster sustainable transformation at three levels: systemic, organisational and personal. With a collective approach, GLAC provides dialogue spaces for different stakeholders to collectively look at societal challenges from a different perspective, to share their expertise and explore new approaches and solutions in order to respond to today's complex societal challenges and "bring change to a higher level".
GLAC has been implemented by EVPA member GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit).
Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance
Wednesday, 16 March at 17.00-18.00 (CET)
Interview partner: Ben Broché, Associate Director Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance
The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance network accelerates well-designed financial instruments that can unlock billions for energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, climate-smart agriculture, and curbing deforestation, while also reducing private investors’ risks and improving their financial returns. A public-private partnership, the Lab brings together and catalyzes broader government and private sector efforts to scale up climate finance. Since 2014, the Lab has launched 55 innovative solutions to drive investment to action on climate change and sustainable development that have mobilized USD 3.2 billion in sustainable investment to date. They represent a range of financial innovations that are led by enterprises, fund managers and market experts. The Global Lab has served as the incubator and model for regional programs in India and Brazil.
Open Social Innovation & ProjectTogether
Tuesday, 22 March at 9.00-10.00 (CET)
Interview partner: Philipp von der Wippel, Managing Director at ProjectTogether
Open Social Innovation stands for “a broad participation process (Open) to address social challenges (Social) with new solutions (Innovation)”. This approach to tackle societal challenges engages a range of different actors collaborating together to test solution approaches and to bring them to life or to scale them. In the pandemic context, OSI was successfully implemented in Germany and ProjectTogether has co-founded UpdateDeutschland with a participatory approach of OSI to tackle most important challenges in Germany.
Futures thinking – and what it means for the design of the Transformative Finance Lab
Tuesday, 5 April at 13.00-14.00 (CET)
Interview partner: Erik Øverland, PhD, President World Future Studies Federation, Expert on research- and innovation policy issues, Ministry of Education and Research, Norway & Co-Chief-Editor European Journal of Futures Research, Germany
Futures thinking is a creative process, method and mindset of exploring, identifying and shaping possible, probable and preferable futures. The field has moved from predicting or forecasting the future to identifying alternative futures, to shaping desired futures and anticipating for emergence, i.e. embracing novelty, uncertainty, complexity and emergence, both at external collective levels and inner individual levels. In this session we will learn what futures thinking is, which tools and methods are commonly used and what can be achieved as a result of futures-oriented innovation processes using the field of education and/ or impact finance as an example (TBC). We will then discuss with the speaker and participants how futures thinking might be embedded into the design of the Transformative Finance Lab.