Collaborative Innovation between Startups and the Public Sector

Why Collaborate to Innovate?

Today's and tomorrow's problems ranging from improving healthcare to fighting climate change require agile and innovative solutions. Startups can not only offer the Public Sector access to innovative products and services but also, given their character as dynamic and young firm, are more flexible to work with the needs of the Public Sector and adapt their solution to it. While Startups need reliable and financially potent customers, the Public Sector needs access to new ideas and the knowledge on how to digitalize public service delivery, especially by deploying innovative solutions with regards to future technologies. By cooperating, Startups can bring their user-focus, iterative and agile working culture as well as their technical knowledge to a partner, who has a rich set of use cases and can provide the opportunity to scale the Startup’s solution. By joining forces, Startups and the Public Sector can combine their complementary strengths to develop solutions that work at the required pace, scale and depth.

Get a First Impression

Additional information

The heart of the Collaborative Innovators approach is a modular and adaptable innovation toolkit, guiding the cooperation between Startups and the Public Sector. It includes tools on first awareness-raising activities, the definition of a Public Sector innovation need, tools for Startup-friendly procurement and materials to facilitate a cooperation phase between both actors. The toolkit consists of workshop templates and innovation activities that support Startups, the Public Sector and Facilitators of Collaborative Innovation processes from end-to-end. Licensed under a Creative Common License, the toolkit can be localized and adapted to the regional and sector specific needs of future collaboration endeavors.

Explore the Toolkit

GIZ and its partners have piloted several projects using the Collaborative Innovators methodology across the globe. You can find them on the following page. We hope they inspire you and we are always happy to learn from your experiences in Start-up/Public Sector collaborations.

View all use-cases

Let's Collaborate

Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector is still in its infancy, and it requires further exploration. We are always open to feedback and would love to engage in a conversation with you, if you are planning to or have already made progress in some sort of Collaborative Innovation projects. The tools provided on our website are therefore also evolving with time and based on your feedback.

You can contact us via collaborative-innovators@giz.de.