Territorial innovation: unlocking the opportunities for a climate-resilient future

Can the various impacts of climate change - heatwaves, floods and water shortage - become opportunities for innovation, new jobs, and territorial growth?

In short: yes, that is possible. The innovative solutions created to address climate change impacts in one place can also help another and be the source of new business opportunities. How to do this is now explained in a JRC hands-on guidebook for national, regional, urban and local authorities, with examples and a practical tool to get started.

The practitioner’s guide ‘Navigating opportunity spaces’ focuses on transformative innovation approaches, which seek to achieve long-term and systemic changes. It prioritises place-based perspective which puts the focus on the needs and opportunities of a particular territory. In other words, the goal is not only to create short-term adaptations to climate change but also to create a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy.

An opportunity for decision makers to develop place-based transformative innovation approaches

This guidebook has brought together a team of experts, managers and researchers to design a three-phase journey: 

• Understanding opportunity spaces: A presentation of the framework to get a better grasp of the interaction between innovation policy and climate adaptation. This can help practitioners develop the mindset needed to recognise and leverage opportunity spaces in their territories, understanding that policy implementation can become an opportunity to innovate.
• The opportunity spaces mapping tool: This tool allows users to systematically analyse and activate opportunity spaces. Through guided exercises and an ‘action learning’ approach involving foresight frameworks, it gives territories a comprehensive understanding of potential pathways for transformative innovation action.
• Learning through examples: The guide includes a collection of cases with descriptions how different EU territories navigate their challenges and opportunities. These examples can serve as a learning laboratory.

Co-creation as the key for transformative innovation 

The practitioner’s guide lays down a co-creation process consisting of two main sessions: 

• Self-assessment and definition of the challenge: including a system mapping and identification of gaps and risks.
• Transforming the analysis into action: including a ‘stress test’ for transformative change, identification of interventions, and consolidation. 

As part of that process, to help explore the opportunities and challenges at local level the guide puts forward a visual mapping tool. It was designed in a modular approach, which allows supporting different approaches: both workshops as well as lengthier processes which combine, for example, co-creation sessions with desk research.   

Background 

The   guidebook, linking climate adaptation with a local approach to innovation, is a product of collaboration. It was created as part of a joint work with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action, with contributions from the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium, the UN-ECE Transformative Innovation Network and the Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation’s  EU Industry 5.0 Community of Practice, and Climate-KIC. The collaboration also involved the community of practitioners working on the Pathways2Resilience project.   

This activity is part of JRC work to support the development of a climate adaptation economy in the EU and its territories, by reinforcing the role of transformative innovation in adaptation to climate change. This includes a concrete collaboration in support of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. The proposed guidance aligns with the need for seeking new sources of innovation, as identified in the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness.

Related content

Navigating Opportunity Spaces: A Practitioner's Guide to Linking Climate Adaptation and Place-Based Transformative Innovation Policy

JRC work on ‘Transformative innovation for climate resilience’

EU Mission: Adaptation to climate change