ITU Global Innovation Forum: Opening ceremony
Channel: ITU
Date: 2020-12-09

In this video, ITU Secretary General Houlin Zhao and Telecommunication Development Bureau Doreen Bogdan-Martin welcome participants to the 2020 ITU Global Innovation Forum.
ITU’s 2020 Global Innovation Forum was held online from 26 to 30 October, under the theme Mainstreaming competitive digital innovation ecosystems in the age of COVID-19. The five-day immersive programme took participants on global and regional learning journeys to prepare them to accelerate digital transformation in their communities.
·         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 policy monitoring and good practices that can be amplified, with Regional Innovation Forums for the Africa, Americas, Arab States, Asia-Pacific and Europe regions.
·         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.

Context
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.
Entrepreneurs around the world are working to unlock their communities’ economic potential, policy-makers to develop competitive ICT industries and community leaders to create economic growth. However, few communities have access to an enabling environment, as key ecosystem stakeholders often fail to understand, act, develop and renew the competitive practices that fuel digital transformation.
ITU’s Global Innovation Forum empowered participants with new approaches, insights, tools, frameworks, communities and relevant case studies to understand how to create sustainable digital innovation ecosystems.