The largest corporate innovation event in Brazil, the Corporate Venture Summit, was held last week and featured a panel dedicated to the impact of startups on sustainability, where the ICLEI Innovation. The meeting was organised by FCJ Venture Builder, who joined the Houer Group to establish the joint venture Public, which is ICLEI South America's partner in the project. 

“ICLEI Innovation is a catalyst for convergence between sustainability and innovation agendas, which often run on parallel tracks,“ assesses Rodrigo Perpétuo, executive secretary of ICLEI South America. “The initiative seeks out those at the forefront of the sustainability innovation ecosystem in Brazil and aims to solve real urban environment problems, such as green area management and tree-planting policies.”.

More than fifty startups applied to take part in the ICLEI Innovation Accelerator Programme, launched in July and commenced in September 2020. Currently, eight startups are in the final stages of acceleration. An initiative Demo Day will be held on 15th December, presenting the solutions created by the startups and selecting those that will be implemented in the cities of the ICLEI South America network.

“The strategy of converging technological solutions to solve urban sustainability problems generates economies of scale, attracts investment, creates jobs and income, and therefore revitalises the economic environment of cities,” observes Perpétuo.

For Thiago Grego, founding partner of Grupo Houer and vice-president of the board of directors of ICLEI South America, ICLEI Innovation prioritises the application of sustainable and innovative solutions to urban problems. “Nowadays we are seeing a wave of impact businesses that are created to solve social and environmental problems.”

The panel featured representatives from partners supporting ICLEI Innovation, such as Daniel Contrucci, director of Climate Ventures. In his view, in the global context, Brazil is not in a position to compete to be a leader in industry, nor in technology. “An area where we have great potential is the bioeconomy, based on natural assets and nature-based solutions,” he believes. 

Contrucci highlights the existence of a chasm between the reality of conventional investors and those who bring business models that might be revolutionary but are not yet equipped to attract market capital. “We'll need thousands of entrepreneurs in the next decade to use technology and help solve Brazil's social and environmental challenges.”

The ICLEI Innovation acceleration phase includes a mentoring process, which assists in the construction of the business's strategic and tactical-operational plan. Two mentors from the project were present on the panel: Thais Zschieschang, from Ade Sampa, and Rafael Ponzi, from Fomenta Rio. 

For Zschieschang, ICLEI Innovation highlights the role of sustainability and innovation as structural pillars, which must permeate all spheres of planning and development. Ponzi, meanwhile, sees the interaction between the public and private sectors and startups as essential.

In his closing remarks, Rodrigo Perpétuo states that innovation must permeate the entire structure of organisations. “ICLEI Innovation is one of several initiatives that position us as an entity that definitively brings innovation into the public perspective. The local governments that make up our network will become increasingly stronger with these principles,” the executive secretary concludes.

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