Is the Role of Innovation Teams Redefined by the Pact of the Future?

With the Global Digital Compact and the Pact for the Future adopted at last week’s Summit of the Future, there is a reinforced expectation for a more future-proof United Nations driven by innovation.

This is a major opportunity for organizations and impact-driven entities to align their action plans with the collective power needed to advance the Sustainable Development Goals. But how can this be done in practice?

Key players in this process are the Innovation Teams embedded within organizations. The Pact for the Future is essentially a mainstreaming strategy for innovation, and Innovation Labs are well placed to be the engine to drive this transformation. But despite the optimistic prospect brought by the Pact, innovation teams often find themselves struggling for support and funding.

How do we reconcile this gap and maximize the role of Innovation Labs?

Here are three areas for action:

1. Senior Leadership highlighting the Importance of Labs

To embed innovation within an organization’s DNA, senior leaders need to take Innovation Labs seriously. The Pact provides a framework for leaders to become champions of innovation, driving internal buy-in and support. In turn, innovation teams can provide concrete examples of how the organization is preparing for a future-ready agenda. However, for this relationship to flourish, a first step is needed, and is for the Labs/teams to embed the principles of the Pact.

2. Labs Must Adapt to Organizational Agendas

Innovation teams have evolved over the past decade, going through phases of inception, consolidation, and iteration. The challenge now is to align the goals of the new Pact with their existing organizational realities. For true mainstreaming, Innovation Labs could integrate the Global Digital Compact, the Quintet of Change, and the Pact for the Future into their service offerings.

After all, they are the ideal facilitators for translating these high-level frameworks into actionable steps, working across departments—from HR for skills building to IT for AI adoption and strategic planning for foresight practices.

3. Practicing Knowledge Sharing Between Innovation Teams

Taking inspiration from agile methodologies, innovation teams could embrace rapid experimentation cycles and increase knowledge sharing amongst them. By defining and sharing experiments and results, they create a learning loop that can be replicated across organizations. Successful initiatives should be adapted to fit other organizational contexts, while lessons from failures are captured and stored in accessible knowledge platforms, ensuring every team benefits from collective experience.