Innovation diplomacy – building cross-border relations through climate tech solutions

Aron helps people with imagination and initiative to bring their ideas to life and build impactful businesses.
He works at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship and technology and currently coordinates South Australia’s entrepreneurship strategy (FIXE Strategy) within the Office of the SA Chief Entrepreneur.

Prior to that he led the digital strategy and policy functions for the Government of South Australia. In the distant past he co-founded several startups working at the cutting edge of web technology.

Alexander Holt established the Scottish Government’s CivTechⓇ Programme in 2015, comprising the world’s first digital public services accelerator and Europe’s first GovTech programme. In 2017 he won the Leadership Award at the Scottish Public Service Awards in 2017. In 2020 he was named as one of the Top 20 global leaders in GovTech after setting up the CivTech Alliance – a global network of similar government teams.

His primary role now is focused on creating international partnerships and innovation diplomacy through the CivTech Alliance. Its main programme of delivery is the Global Scale-Up Programme the mission of which is to source, surface and scale tech solutions for global public service applications. The first iteration brought together 10 countries and 18 companies for COP26, for which his team won the Apolitical Global Public Service Team of the Year 2021 (Climate category).

He is a massive champion of the mindset of public entrepreneurship – the persistence to move forward, the resilience to take the flak and the urgency to get results. Using an agile approach, I seek to shift public service mindset from a place of risk aversion, to risk receptiveness. This has enabled public sector organisations to redefine their procurement methodologies, develop pathways to harness the power of digital innovation and create new products for the public sector that improve services, cut costs, free up resources, and improve the user experience.

Sylvia Romanelli works as Innovation Advisor for the state of São Paulo, Brazil, working for InvestSP (Investment and Competitiveness Promotion Agency). She currently leads projects in the front of attracting investments in RD&I and supporting the internationalization of startups by implementing innovation policies. She supports the Department for Economic Development of the State of São Paulo in mapping opportunities for international collaboration in Science, Technology and Innovation.

Passionate about Innovation Diplomacy, she has worked for the Swissnex network connecting the dots between the Brazilian and Swiss innovation ecosystems by leading bilateral cooperation in the field of scientific entrepreneurship. In social entrepreneurship, she led the operations of the Brazilian startup Beliive, a marketplace for exchanging experiences with users in more than 100 countries. She also contributed to projects at the United Nations Development Program and the UN Refugee Agency. She voluntarily organizes the chapter of House of Genius in São Paulo, a global initiative combining open innovation and collaboration.

Eva Sonnenmoser is an associate at the Innovation Lab of the state government of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany. The “InnoLab_bw” supports the state ministries in helping innovations in important future topics to achieve a breakthrough quickly and effectively. One emphasis is on innovation within the public sector. Thereby, the InnoLab deals with the question of how the state can make administration more innovative with the help of GovTechs, but also new digital tools and new working methods.
The InnoLab is part of the CivTech Alliance and was a partner of last year’s CivTech Alliance COP26 Global Scale-Up Programme.