2023 Agenda

December 7th, 15:00 18:30 CET
ICC Headquarters, 33-43 avenue du Président Wilson

Startup Ecosystem Stars 2023 Awards Ceremony

Startup Ecosystem Stars is the annual gathering to award the best practices among organizations responsible for the promotion of Ecosystems of Innovation.

Invited organizations have a strong association with a local ecosystem and can represent cities, regions, or countries. The objective is to recognize the best practices from the world’s best Innovation Regions and Cities. 

  • Opening Address: Iliana Ivanova, EU Commissioner for Innovation and Research, Culture, Education and Youth 
  • Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria Mariya Gabriel to receive the 2023 Startup Ecosystem Star Award 
  • Keynote Speech: Carlos Santiso, Head of Division – Digital, Innovative, Open Government from OECD 
  • Highlights and Best Practices from the World’s Top Innovation Regions. Presentation of Mind the Bridge 2023 CSS Report “Connecting Innovation Ecosystems” 
  • Awards for Startup Ecosystem Stars 2023 
  • Presentation: EU strategy to support  the Regional Innovation Valleys: András G. Inotai,  Head of Unit, Innovation Policy and Access to Finance, DG Research & Innovation, European Commission 
  • Closing Remarks and Networking Cocktail

Startup Ecosystem Star of 2023

Mariya Gabriel

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
of the Republic of Bulgaria and former EU Commissioner
in charge of Innovation

2023 Startup Ecosystem Stars

Pictures

Startup Ecosystem Stars | Paris 2023

Building Startup Ecosystem Stars
The World’s Life Cycle of Innovation
Report 2023

The world of innovation is not “flat”.

The attention of global “innovation hunters” (VC funds, large corporates, etc.) today tends 
to gravitate toward a selected few global hotspots distinguished by a high density of scaleups, capital, and talent: Silicon Valley, Israel, and probably less than another dozen of hubs across the globe.
Most of the other local ecosystems (countries, regions, and cities) are still largely off the map. 
For them scaling and building global connections fast is not an option. 
Yet, most local governments are prioritizing policies (and dedicating public funding) to grow the local economy through the attraction and promotion of technological innovation.

That said, transitioning across stages of the innovation life cycle requires years.
Based on our data, it takes on average almost 10 years to create a national hub, while another 7-8 years are needed to become a continental hotspot. Some regions and ecosystems are progressing more rapidly than others by adopting policies and implementing measures that effectively attract capital, talent, and innovative companies. These initiatives also assist leading local startups in accessing funding, as well as business and strategic opportunities beyond their immediate ecosystems. Furthermore, they help local companies in developing open innovation strategies and in addressing their innovation challenges by connecting them with international startups and research hubs.

This suggests that there are best practices employed by entities linked to local innovation ecosystems (like cities, regions, or countries) that could be examined and potentially emulated. Initiatives like Startup Ecosystem Stars that we launched together with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) are meant to identify and share benchmarks to allow more local ecosystems to secure a place on the global innovation map.

This Report is aimed at all policy makers who believe innovation is a key driver to grow the GDP of their own region. Their policies empower government related organizations (at city, region, country, or continent level) that implement programs and actions to nurture talent and innovation locally.

In this report, we introduce the concept of the Innovation Life Cycle to enable:

– international comparisons among innovation ecosystems globally – unhampered by limitations related to their current stage and size;

– the estimation of future growth trajectories, allowing for the evaluation of gaps with comparable ecosystems.

While many variables could be considered, we focus this report primarily on the measurement of the number of scaleups (more mature startups) in a region as a key proxy to calculate the future ability of a region to impact their local economy through technology innovation. 
We then analyze the specific causes (i.e. policies) behind an acceleration of the economy of innovation of a specific region. A similar methodology can be applied using different units of geographical aggregation (city, country, continent).

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