World Majlis | Innovation Nation: Session 2

World Majlis

Innovation Nation: Creating Innovative Societies to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenges

With the ever-increasing complexity of our world, fostering innovative societies can be part of the solution to addressing global challenges. Governments have an important role to play in widening the lens around innovation and implementing systems that generate robust and creative communities. As innovation ecosystems mature, there are exciting opportunities to create truly innovative societies where all sectors—governments, corporations, NGOs, academia, entrepreneurs and individuals—collaborate to solve complex societal challenges. Governments have an important role to play in fostering creative and collaborative communities. They can move beyond a narrow sector perspective and "innovation for innovation’s sake", towards enabling environments—systems and culture—where cross-sectoral innovation is applied to major challenges and produce "innovation for greater good". Mission-driven approaches can provide us with valuable models through focused, time-bound, and cross-sectoral approaches to innovation. These models help us harness our collective knowledge to address complex challenges such as climate change, pollution, well-being, digital ethics, and clean energy for all, and could light the way forward.