The Global Innovation Forum held by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has identified key ways to help close the “digital innovation gap”.
The suggested approaches, focusing on critical factors from expanding collaboration to attracting investment, are meant to spur sustainable economic growth and find solutions to pressing societal challenges through accelerated, and localized, technology innovation.
“No one can be left lagging behind due to a lack of access to digital tools and resources,” says Myriam Spiteri Debono, president of Malta, who opened the forum. “It is pertinent that access to information technology and digital tools should be made available to everyone, everywhere.”
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, progress is unevenly distributed, leading to a pronounced gap in digital innovation capacity among different countries and regions around the world.
The three-day Global Innovation Forum, held in Valletta, Malta, emphasised the importance of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and capacity building to bridge the innovation gap and advance socio-economic development.
“Digital innovation is a driving force behind economic progress, sustainable development and solving societal challenges,” says ITU secretary-general Doreen Bogdan-Martin. “The Global Innovation Forum has helped identify how we can close the digital innovation gap to ensure that people and planet benefit from the transformative power of technology.”
The event brought together nearly 500 participants, including 27 ministers and deputy ministers, along with other high-level officials from government, the private sector and the United Nations system. Participants came from 64 countries.
Forum participants identified several key drivers that can help countries champion digital innovation:
- Projects that attract investment and leverage cross-sector collaboration.
- South-South and triangular cooperation in the area of open technology innovation.
- Building innovation capabilities within communities to envision and shape people’s future.
- Fostering youth resilience and ecosystems supportive to local entrepreneurship.
- Agile, anticipatory and cross-sectoral polices aligned with the evolving digital landscape.
- Availability of entrepreneurship networking opportunities and readiness for growth funding that enable startups and small-medium enterprises (SMEs).
- Establishment of an Expert Network by the Digital Innovation Board of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development.
Organised by ITU, the UN agency for digital technologies, the Global Innovation Forum strengthened global and regional partnerships for inclusive and sustainable digital development.
The second meeting of the Digital Innovation Board of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development, held during the Forum, endorsed the establishment of an Expert Network.
This collaborative community will conduct foresight studies around trends, research readiness, open technology innovation, entrepreneurship and SME growth, policy experimentation, and ecosystem initiatives acceleration.
The foresight study series will be part of the inputs to the next ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 17 to 28 November 2025.