The finale of the Reimagine the UN Together Challenge, the “Dragons’ Den” aired live on 12 November and it was a hit! The UN system-wide ideation and crowdsourcing challenge unleashed the creativity, experience, and skills of colleagues to share, innovate and scale solutions to common business challenges.
The Dragons’ Den event was entirely virtual with teams pitching from multiple locations and participants from every time zone. Full of laughs and enthusiasm, many have commented on how inspirational it was. Even the "glitches" were charming and fun. According to one of the Dragons, Guy Gibbs, Head of Design & Innovation (Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, UK), "it showed the power of a great virtual event to connect innovators across the globe."
After a kick-off including a message from the Secretary-General, the six finalists presented their pitches, senior leaders who served as judges (“Dragons”) went off to deliberate, while the audience enjoyed an inspiring chat with Frederik G. Pferdt, Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google, who talked about his mission to develop the capacity to innovate in everyone.
After deliberating, the Dragons announced their top choices: UN Digital ID and conecta.
But with a surprise caveat! They would like to see conecta team up with Skills4Future, UNicoins, and Mobility Marketplace for greater impact as they see synergies between these amazing ideas.
The Dragons were very impressed and have pledged their support to the teams and solutions. Assistant Secretary-General Mourad Wahba (UNDP) eloquently expressed his optimism and hope for the future:
"All the projects are very exciting, but frankly what impressed me was the spirit of all these young people. When the UN is under pressure, you all bring back our morale. I am truly honoured to have been in your company. The UN is in good hands with you."
The audience also voted for their favourite idea during the event: Mobility Marketplace.
Congratulations to all teams for their ideas and pitches!
This is a journey to build a more resilient, agile UN by finding creative solutions to scale. Teamwork, creativity, collaboration, peer learning, and joint ideation were critical elements for success.
Stay tuned…
- more to come on the Ideas Garden
- the dialogues just kicked off this month
…the journey is far from over!
If you'd like to be involved in reimagining the UN together, contact innovate@un.org.
