The Western Development Commission has today announced it’s joined forces with the award-winning CivTech Alliance Global Scale-Up Programme.
This is the second year of the hugely exciting and highly innovative programme which draws together leading GovTech and CivTech innovation programmes from around the world to deliver a global platform for fast-growth companies to access policymakers, procurers and investors across regional ecosystems. The WDC now joins the programme representing Ireland alongside Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and others.
Welcoming the announcement Tomás Ó Síocháin, CEO of the Western Development Commission said
The CivTEch Alliance Global Scale-up programme is a chance to highlight ongoing innovation work along the Atlantic coast to a global audience and also the scope to develop further partnerships and opportunities across a number of sectors.
For scale-ups across Ireland, this is an unprecedented access programme: Civtech has 12 innovation teams across 9 countries waiting to help those who apply to gain access to the in-country innovation ecosystems. Last year, during a seven-week ‘Scale-up Safari’ preceding COP26, the programme scheduled 69 engagement sessions with policymakers and procurers, investors and innovators across ten participating countries. Over 200 introductions were made from 102 organisations, including the NASA open innovation team, the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the US Government, top researchers in the field of sustainability, ministers of environment and international trade, and gatekeepers of the €500m German family office funds.
For stakeholders across governments, NGOs, the climate change community, investors and sponsors in Ireland, this is a unique opportunity to engage and collaborate with scale-ups across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australia to deliver real impact on climate change.
The programme is aimed at fast growth scale-ups with mature products which are able to be scaled at pace given the right access to key government stakeholders. The programme enables access to governments, the public sector, procuring agencies and innovation ecosystems in multiple locations. For companies from Ireland who join, it is an opportunity to be in front of some of the leading innovation teams from governments around the world. In summary, it provides access to ecosystems companies would not otherwise have access to.
An open call for the project has just gone live (9th May) and the project is now seeking innovations to address the challenges.
The final challenges that we will be asking companies to respond to are still being developed and finalised. Below is an overview of the two broad areas the project intends to focus on:
Challenge 1: Adaptation and Green Growth – How can communities use data and technology to make ‘nature-smart’ choices and drive scalable green growth?
Challenge 2: Green Public Procurement (GPP) – How can data and technology help the public sector procure greener services and reduce the environmental impact of the supply chain?
From the many applications received last year, the programme invited 18 scale-up companies from 10 countries to join us in the Scale-up Safari™.
The deadline for applications is 6th June 09:00 BST
Evaluation Stage: 7th Jun – 8th Jul 2022
