The issues raised by climate change and various environmental disturbances call on us to take strong and swift action.
We are coming to the end of a system and we have just been brutally confronted with our vulnerability, our interdependence and our excesses with COVID-19. If we continue with this model without correcting it profoundly, at one point or another we will be faced with a combination of crises.
So, whether it's a question ofmitigating our impact, reducing our dependence or adapting to the upheavals to come, our societies have an immediate need for collective intelligence and impact innovation.
The changes that lie ahead in connection with climate change and environmental disruption are acting like a dormant fire, with predicted and already palpable consequences that will be far more serious than COVID-19: an increase in natural disasters, major climatic migrations, depletion or disappearance of certain resources, water-related conflicts, and so on. There are many causes for concern, and the scepticism that long prevailed on these issues is now in the minority. The COVID-19 crisis is a call to confidence and action, rather than the awe and fear that could legitimately seize us in the face of these gloomy prospects.
It has revealed a range of unsuspected resources that our societies can draw on to meet the major challenge of severely disrupted planetary limits.
In this context, the ESTIA engineering school, with all its partners, will be organising the 24h of Innovation® "FOR THE PLANET" in order to bring together the concerns of companies and organisations that want to change the world by drawing on the creativity of this young generation of students from various disciplines, territories and cultures. Bringing together a large number of companies (large groups and start-ups), students from different schools, associations, NGOs, thinkers and innovators, the 24h of Innovation® "FOR THE PLANET" will be a high point for creativity and innovation.
Through active learning ("learning by doing"), the discovery of high-impact innovations and encounters with inspiring "doers", this event will enable us to think about the world of tomorrow, which must necessarily break with current thinking because of the absolute seriousness of the situation in which our world finds itself. Faced with this extraordinary situation, our collective intelligence must work on extraordinary solutions.
From innovation to
impact innovation
The 24hour of Innovation community is hoping to bring about a paradigm shift that will affect the very definition of innovation and therefore the processes that lead to it.
Innovation can no longer be defined solely in reference to the economist J.A. Schumpeter as "a new service, product or process that finds its market and offers a competitive advantage to the company or organisation that implements it". Returning to the very essence of innovation - which must constantly seek to improve on what already exists - with the 24 Hours of Innovation® FOR THE PLANET we want to explore a new approach to innovation that aims to provide positive value for the planet, its current occupants and future generations.
The aim here is to promote, support and disseminate ideas that are resolutely creative and break new ground, so that exceptional innovations emerge that can now be described as "neutral or positive impact", i.e. capable of reducing or even reversing environmental and social impacts.
These "impact innovations" will henceforth be defined as " new services, products or processes that will find economically viable markets to ensure the sustainability of their uses, while neutralising and even making positive their social and environmental impacts". To achieve this, we need to mobilise and combine all the creative minds in the world, especially those who aspire to bring about this new paradigm. As always, the new generations will be at the heart of our attentions and concerns during the 24 Hours of Innovation® FOR THE PLANET, because we are convinced that we must help them in their mission to invent and overturn today's models.
Tomorrow, the current and future generations must, more than ever, become experts in collective intelligence, which meanslearning to work in the unknown, the undefined, to detect weak signals, to take an interest in singularities, to work outside their comfort zone by exploring areas of "non-art" and their uncertainties.... What if "Innovation became the art of making solutions accessible to all"?