We need to rethink how tech hubs  tackle new problems - here’s why

COVID-19’s disruptions helped the world see systems change in a new light. Industries once thought slow to change have rapidly applied new solutions. Change-makers in the digital arena are forging new collaborations with new partners. We have been forced to adopt an innovation mindset and with it, found a range of special opportunities for tackling tough challenges such as reducing the strain on natural resources and keeping more goods in use through circular economy thinking.

Rethinking the tech hub

Collaboration is innovation’s invisible ingredient. After all, many of the innovations that have reshaped our lives over the past 50 years come from a short list of tech hubs in places such as Silicon Valley, Tokyo and Tel Aviv with unique combinations of change-makers partnering with with technical expertise, entrepreneurial thinking and investment capital.

However, these areas are more than just spots on a map. They are living, breathing communities composed of collaborators across disciplines who share ideas and criticism as they tackle some of the biggest problems of our time.

Tech hubs connect business leaders, policy makers, researchers and more - and can be built anywhere. But, in recent years, a small number of hubs in a few locations have dominated capital and innovation. As a result, tech can miss an opportunity to be truly inclusive and tackle a range of issues. As COVID-19 has shown, current tech solutions don’t always solve for the long-term and don’t always maximize on all the technologies at their disposal.

As a result, if we want an equitable and distributed recovery post-COVID, we’ll need to ensure more hubs in more places are thriving and poised to take on big challenges - such as sustainability.

To create and grow more tech hubs, we need to deliberately support the strengthening of local innovation systems. These systems depend on a special combination of policies, capital and openness to global talent. They also require a certain type of culture - one that supports failure with an ability to rebuild.

Building in circularity from the start

Tackling dispersed problems such as sustainability will take dispersed solutions. Centralizing solution making in only a few cities limits our capabilities. More locations around the world need to do more to foster innovation. Still, to spark circular innovation, more hubs will need to bake circularity into the fiber of new companies, eliminating waste from the way products are delivered into markets and finding new applications for 4IR technologies. As Alan García, Executive Director, SOFOFA Hub, a group connecting half of the top companies in Chile: "Transitioning to a circular economy requires determination, technology, and mostly collaboration between firms, innovators and authorities.”

To close the circularity gap, we’ll need new ways to build for the long term. Buzzy hackathons and one-size-fits-all innovation challenges won’t go far enough help us scale the solutions that will move us away from our current take-make-dispose model. For this, we need policies that foster markets for circular solutions, supportive financial institutions and access to major buyers and market players. In other words, we need create thriving circular economy innovation ecosystems. Circular economy innovators are otherwise stuck breaking down regulatory barriers and drumming up market demand to inch forward.

With this in mind, the World Economic Forum has created the Scale360° Playbook, an initiative developed to build lasting ecosystems for the circular economy and help solutions scale. Its unique ecosystem-based approach - launched this September - is designed to prioritize the circular economy. Additionally, emerging innovators from around the world can connect and work together in sharing ideas and solutions through UpLink, the Forum's open innovation platform.

A look at Scale360°’s core qualities reveals what’s needed to build hubs focused on thriving, sustainably-minded businesses.

Looking ahead

The global economy was only 8.6% circular in 2019, according to the annual Circularity Gap report. As 2020 has made clear, change could come more quickly than we could ever imagine. Let’s bring change for the better. We know that it’s possible to build new collaborations and mobilize quickly to address tough, large-scale challenges. Solutions such as the Scale360° Playbook provide a route for communities to connect with each other and tap the willingness for change and the ingenuity that exists around the globe. Change can happen - if we find ways to work together.