Good morning, distinguished guests, honorable ministers, and other high-level officials.
I want to welcome you to this very important event.
I my address, I would like to focus on three Whys: why the Area Office, why the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development, and why the Innovation Center.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Why the Area office?
Firstly, India has a leading voice in the work of the ITU.
India has also been a major force in technology research and development across board. It has been a pioneer in 5G and is a leader in 6G development. It is undoubtedly a leader in the development and deployment of digital public infrastructure.
We see India has rising deeptech domain expertise in areas such as AI, machine learning, drones, robotics, quantum computing, spacetech, cleantech, and blockchain.
Critically, India also has rising sectoral strengths where these technologies are being applied for the positive digital transformation of society.
These sectoral strengths include education, agriculture, health, automotive, energy, aerospace, consumer products and services, and retail, to name but a few.
Today, more than ever before, countries need new, more resilient, and forward-thinking approaches to navigate a digital world that has progressed at unprecedented pace and is now evolving extremely rapidly. As we look toward the future, there is no doubt that innovation will play a critical role in shaping our world.
Let's look at the regional perspective.
As a region, South Asia has made great strides in recent years to drive innovation forward.
South Asia is home to more than 1.8 billion people and represents a diverse range of cultures, traditions, and perspectives.
As a region with a rapidly growing population that is skilled and motivated, it has the potential to become a global hub for innovation and creativity.
From Bengaluru to Colombo, we are seeing a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems.
In short, South Asia is home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies that are driving global growth.
This presents a unique opportunity for the region to leverage its economic power, invest in innovation, and build enabling environments to foster the growth of new solutions to address the region's challenges.
We are sure that our newly inaugurated ITU Area Office - New Delhi, will allow us to be closer to national and regional stakeholders.
Our team will work together with different UN Country Teams in the region to achieve the outcomes under their respective Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks. We look forward to being a part of the resident India UN Country team, and to furthering partnerships with our sister UN agencies in facilitating that digital transformation journey.
The proximity to key stakeholders in the region will also enable ITU to strengthen technical cooperation and boost telecommunications development by building truly effective and efficient digital ecosystems that drive value across economic sectors.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Now that we have a bit of background for the need for this Area Office, I want to address my next point.
Why the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance?
On 25 January this year, I launched a big initiative: the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development.
Fostering innovation is not easy. There are many elements involved and the right context for all of them at the starting point is vital. In particular, we believe that there are three engines of economic growth that are required to work together.
These are the Innovation Ecosystem, Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Technology Ecosystem. They are vital for socio-economic development. Their respective maturity and coordination determine the strength of a country's digital innovation.
With the advent of the digital era, these engines are far more interdependent than ever before.
Countries with the capacity to leverage all three engines are set to create a thriving economy where opportunities are available, talent is fulfilled, SMEs create jobs, and the government is successfully meeting its service obligations. In this environment, the private sector is engaged in healthy, productive competition, and has the capability to generate world-class exports.
Sadly, in a time of fast-changing technologies, many countries face a growing digital divide due to the growing digital innovation gap.
We need to bridge this so-called Digital Innovation Divide and empower countries to begin unlocking their digital potential, build local capabilities in innovation and entrepreneurship, and accelerate their ecosystems' impact on cross-cutting sectors for an inclusive and sustainable society.
As Director of BDT, I launched the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development to support countries in building these critical local enablers while benefiting from global linkages.
The Alliance offers a new generation of focused interventions that can create systemic and catalytic impact for developing countries to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It will support the developing and operationalizing transformational projects around five strategic objectives.
The Alliance will provide a platform to pool our resources, expertise, and ideas to accelerate the development of innovative solutions and businesses that address the unique challenges that countries in the region and across the world face.
Some countries in the region may be strong in technology development, while others may have a strong manufacturing sector that requires technological innovation input. By working together, we can combine our strengths and weaknesses to create something truly innovative and impactful.
The Alliance offers a new framework to pull our comparative advantages and resources to tackle the biggest and most relevant challenges at the local level, where it matters.
Ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to the third why.
Why the Innovation Center?
One of the vehicles of the Alliance is to build different types of innovation ecosystem acceleration centers.
India's vibrant digital innovation ecosystem is #3 in producing unicorns (billion-dollar valued companies) globally.
Given that India has a strong digital ecosystem and taking the opportunity of the Area Office with strong support and leadership from the government of India, we are proud to open the Innovation Ecosystem Acceleration Center under this Alliance framework here in India, within the premises of the Area Office.
This Technology Ecosystem Acceleration Center aims to accelerate four strategic objectives with a regional focus and a global scope where relevant.
These objectives are:
- Trend research that will deliver strategic foresight to countries,
- Open technology innovation that will support the development of global goods,
- Entrepreneurship and SME growth to help identify and support the scale-up of innovative business models, and
- Policy experimentation to accelerate the policy development cycle.
The vision of the India Innovation Centre is to drive and mainstream emerging technologies and digital innovation in critical aspects of inclusive and sustainable digital transformation, regionally and globally, to reduce technological inequities in key focus areas such as healthtech, agritech, edtech, and smart-sustainable communities, among others.
The Centre will deliver on this vision through a whole-of-ecosystem approach by partnering with regional and global stakeholders to accelerate the four strategic objectives with projects completed on a time-bound basis.
Through onboarding and offboarding these projects and delivering best practices, foresight research, policy briefs and success stories, the Alliance will share its outcome and experimental learning through the network of stakeholders as well as other innovation centers within the Alliance network.
We are confident that the India Innovation Centre will be unique, embodying a regional network and global reach, and accelerating innovation for a more equitable future for all.
Ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion I would like to make some closing remarks.
If you have not had a chance to see some of the exhibits showcasing some of the cool innovations that can benefit from the Innovation Center's work, I urge you to stroll in the exhibit area and talk to the innovators and the various stakeholders present.
I also invite you to attend one of the co-creation sessions showing how this center can help de-risk innovation and scale it up with a whole-of-ecosystem approach.
Of course, we are not fully operational yet, but we are ramping up both the Area Office staffing and the Innovation Centre to ensure that you can start benefiting from our effort here.
Lastly, we are also happy to host a short Regional Innovation Forum and look forward to hearing your thoughts and good practices on accelerating sustainable digital development.
Thank You!
