LAUNCH Nordic

3GF Africa Regional Conference 2015
Partnership Market Place
LAUNCH Nordic
When:
Where:
Speaker(s):
Wednesday, 13 May, 17:00-18:30
Tent in the fountain area
Toke Falk Sabroe, Partner, LAUNCH Nordic/Leaderlab, toke@launch.org, M: +45 22131293
What is the green growth challenge you are trying to overcome? What are the key barriers to change?
The materials we use in our furniture, clothes and durable household goods have a significant impact on the planet.
We globally produce more than 8 tons of plastic per. second. Only 1% of this is bio-based plastic.
Nearly 50% of IKEAs total CO2 emissions are originating from the raw materials they use.
Cultivation, dyeing and manufacturing of materials are all water intensive processes, while nearly 750 million people still live without adequate drinking water.
Many materials still require hazardous or non-recyclable chemicals in production, e.g. as binders or in material refinement
To significantly improve the sustainability of materials and manufacturing we need to collaborate to overcome systemic
roadblocks and ensure scaling of new sustainable innovations. E.g. on securing long-term access to sustainable raw materials, on ensuring manufacturing does not have a negative impact on communities and the environment, and on ensuring we
use materials as long and smartly as possible through closed-loop systems.
What is your partnership approach / hypothesis?
LAUNCH Nordic works from the recognition that addressing these global challenges call for systems collaboration between
industry pioneers, public and government organisations, and other critical actors in society - all brought together to help
discover how to pave the way and remove the barriers for the solutions and innovations to go to scale. LAUNCH Nordic is
based on a yearly cycle, set up to accelerate existing sustainable solutions and scale new sustainable innovations. Throughout the cycle stakeholders are involved in a structured process around identification of the primary barriers and levers to
change, definition of collaborative innovation challenges, engagement and mobilization of critical actors, and help in making the identified solutions go to scale.
Who are the partners involved and how? Who are the other stakeholders?
LAUNCH Nordic is a partnership led by IKEA Group, Novozymes, Kvadrat, Vinnova, The Capital Region of Denmark, Region
Skåne, The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Danish Ministry of the Environment, and Malmö Stad. What unites the
partners in LAUNCH Nordic is a commitment to help create a more sustainable value chain of materials, initiate precompetitive industry collaborations, and scale sustainability innovations in materials. LAUNCH Nordic is a part of LAUNCH –
a global innovation platform founded by Nike Inc., NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and The
U.S. Department of State. In all LAUNCH Nordic activities we engage international stakeholders from the system of materials and manufacturing, both from within and outside the core partner group.
What are your partnership objectives and what achievements have there been to date?
LAUNCH Nordic has two primary missions. Our first mission is to identify and scale new and transformative innovations.
Our second mission is to accelerate adoption of disruptive solutions we already know today. LAUNCH Nordic each year
announces an Innovation challenge, and conducts a search for disruptive innovations to join the LAUNCH Nordic accelerator
where they will receive support, network, and mentoring from influential business and government leaders.
In addition LAUNCH Nordic facilitates a number of impact groups focused on driving pre-competitive collaboration within a
set of more narrow thematic areas within materials and manufacturing. Last year LAUNCH Nordic received 65 applications
from 18 countries, across 5 continents. Out of these we selected 9 sustainable innovations, which are now being supported
by LAUNCH Nordic partners in their efforts to go to scale.
What is the potential of this partnership to achieve impact and scale?
There is a rising recognition that truly transformative change requires collaboration and strategic alliances between unconventional partners. By combining the forces of powerful international brands and government organisations in scaling and
accelerating real, transformative solutions the partnership has actual potential of providing part of the answer to a more
sustainable value chain of materials and manufacturing. However continued success and impact from the partnership requires a continued outreach to and involvement from core stakeholders, as well as collaboration with overlapping and
complementary initiatives within sustainable innovation.
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