Why we need agile policymaking to solve global crises.

At the The Morph Company we believe that crises serve as catalysts for transformation processes, providing opportunities for necessary innovation. While policymaking at the EU level seems to be becoming increasingly agile, individual nation states continue to lag behind, in our observation.

The past year have taught us that we can only solve global crises together. It sounds simple, but it's damn complicated. If we want to successfully contain the Corona pandemic and ensure that future generations can live on a healthy planet, society, research, business and governments must work together more agilely. This cannot be done without technological innovations that provoke social upheaval. We are convinced that it is precisely this change that offers the opportunity to develop innovative solutions and make politics more agile in the long term, both at national and international level.

In our view, the EU is already presenting ambitious and innovative plans with the European Green Deal and the associated Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy However, at national and especially municipal level, the potential and willingness for more agility and innovation seem to be clearly diminishing when it comes to technological developments. This was described to us by over 400 European tech startups from the mobility sector, with whom we developed the European Startup Mobility Manifesto in 2020 on behalf of the European Startup Prize (EUSP) and with the participation of various experts. European Startup Mobility Manifesto erarbeiteten.

In our surveys and interviews, many tech startups said they often encounter skepticism, ignorance, and defensiveness when dealing with cities and municipalities rather than open dialogue and support. We therefore ask ourselves: does politics really not recognize enough the potential of technological innovations for climate protection or for combating pandemics? Is it simply not keeping up with developments in business and technology? Or are tech startups and politics talking past each other?

Maite Zubeldia, who was The Morph Company involved in the EUSP project for The Morph Company, analyzes her research findings as follows: "Tech startups are demanding more freedom to experiment, and in doing so are often operating on legal boundaries for which the legal framework has been lacking to date, especially in Germany. Until now, it has not been the responsibility of cities to be familiar with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). They fear transgressions of data protection regulation, which is understandable to a point. It then becomes problematic when these fears have an inhibiting effect on the work of tech startups, where closer collaborations for joint solution development would be profitable for both sides."

The issue of data sharing is particularly sensitive when it comes to AI: Tech startups such as the London-based company Humanising Autonomy, which relies on predictive AI to design safe urban mobility and spaces, therefore complain that their trustworthiness is repeatedly called into question because they are dependent on the sharing of large, anonymized amounts of data to optimize their innovations. Yet recent examples from the handling of the Covid 19 pandemic, such as apps for checking infection chains, show that data release can be realized anonymously and in compliance with data protection laws. Many European governments, including Germany, support these developments.

Patricia La Torre of Humanising Autonomy pointed out in an interview with The Morph Company"AI is controversial, but there are a lot of examples that show how it can be used in a privacy-compliant way, especially during the current pandemic. There is no need to collect and share personal data." For example, the London-based startup draws on data related to urban spaces for its autonomous driving developments: how many parking spaces, lanterns, trees are there and where are they located? How can an autonomous car tell when there is a dog, a lamppost, a tree or a pedestrian in front of it? How do cyclists behave in traffic? To answer these questions, Humanising Autonomy needs anonymized data from cities, which often get in the way. There is a lack of platforms for open dialogues with politicians and project-based collaborations.

The manifesto also shows that for more than three quarters of the startups surveyed, funding is one of the biggest challenges: They complain about the confusion of funding opportunities and call for tailored financing programs and public tenders for startups. Startups also want a more agile regulatory system so they can act faster and more experimentally. This cannot be done without more direct communication and better collaboration between startups and policymakers - ideally through startup representation at the European level.

Although climate change issues such as sustainable mobility took a back seat for a while in light of the social and economic strains of the Covid 19 pandemic, a majority of German companies still support the European Union's targeted climate change measures, according to the 2020 study by consulting firm EY, the German Council on Foreign Relations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik e.V.) (DGAP) and the Wuppertal Institute think tank on Wuppertal Institut zur Zukunft Europas aus Sicht großer deutscher Unternehmen All these companies recognize that they need to be proactive, innovative and sustainable in shaping the change that has been accelerated by the pandemic if they want to remain fit for the future and emerge stronger from the crisis.

Ursula von der Leyen seemed to be thinking along similar lines when, in her role as President of the European Commission, she also called for stricter climate protection targets in her traditional Rede zur Lage der Union which she hopes to achieve with the help of the Corona recovery program, among other things. The EU Commission President said she wanted to emerge stronger from this pandemic, in which she seemed to see a unique opportunity to bring about self-determined change: "This is our opportunity to make change happen by design - not by disaster or by diktat from others in the world. To emerge stronger by creating opportunities for the world of tomorrow and not just building contingencies for the world of yesterday. " To emerge stronger by creating opportunities for the world of tomorrow and not just building contingencies for the world of yesterday. “

Greener, more digital, more resilient is von der Leyen's slogan for the NextGenerationEU. With her demands, the EU Commission President is following European Green Deal the EU Commission President is following up on the European Green Deal, which stipulates that no more net greenhouse gas emissions should be released in Europe by 2050.

But first and foremost, the promotion of innovation requires greater freedom of movement and mobility for people, goods and services within the EU member states and in partner countries, and simplified access to international competition. These goals can only be achieved if politics, administration, science and business learn to act more agilely - i.e. more flexibly, proactively, anticipatorily and proactively - and involve citizens and experts in the policy-making process from the very beginning.

Back in 2017, the World Economic Forum (WEF) presented a White Paper on agile governance as a reorientation of policymaking in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This briefing paper defines agile governance as "adaptive, people-centered, inclusive, and sustainable policymaking" that recognizes that policy development is no longer limited to governments alone, but rather increasingly springs from the efforts of multiple stakeholders. This requires not only the willingness and ability to learn from and proactively respond to change, but also to anticipate and help shape it.

Christian Bason, executive director of the government-funded Dansk Design Centerhelped formulate the WEF white paper on agile policymaking. He recounts how the term emerged in the working process when there was discussion about how governments could support innovation in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Fourth Industrial Revolution with flexible legislation. "Governments tend to be reactive: they don't see technological innovations coming and often react very restrictively when they do come to market," Bason reports.

As an example, the Dane cites the sudden flooding of European inner-city spaces by e-scooters. Instead of immediately banning them from the city, he believes governments should bring the various stakeholders to the table to work out the respective needs together with lenders, administrations and citizens and discuss how urban space can remain livable or be made even more livable. Christian Bason says: "Governments should see themselves not just as regulators, but rather as mediators: As a platform where different stakeholders can meet and exchange ideas."

For example, he says, the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova is working directly with e-scooter operators and car manufacturers such as Volvo to plan with them how to share urban space in a livable and profitable way for everyone. In Denmark, Torsten Anderson, WEF member and director of the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs' Business Authority, pushed through a law for agile government design that requires all government departments to network with each other and encourage innovation in the private sector. Bason believes, "This law is the first in the world to regulate agility in government."

Denmark and many other European countries such as the Netherlands, the UK, Poland and Lithuania seem to be much further ahead than Germany when it comes to creating a regulatory framework for young, innovative startups that enables them to experiment with ideas and, in this way, to go through the development of a company that can participate in the market in a fully regulated manner. This is because the concept of a Regulatory Sandbox - a cooperative startup and licensing model - as has long been implemented in a similar form in the countries mentioned above as well as in Lichtenstein, Switzerland and France, was rejected by the German Finance Committee as recently as June 2020. Therefore, we need international associations such as the EU and the WEF, which explicitly recommends approaches such as regulatory sandboxes, in order to show individual states as pioneers:inside how agile policy-making can work.

The development process European Startup Mobility Manifesto can be seen as a prime example of agile policymaking: Through an ongoing, co-creative, participatory, and iterative process, the needs and recommendations of over 400 startups, mobility experts, and key stakeholders in the European mobility sector were gathered through surveys and qualitative interviews over the course of summer 2020, and derived into 22 actionable strategies and recommendations for policymakers through design thinking workshops. Implementation could not be more apt to the WEF's recommendations - Christian Bason even goes so far as to equate agile policy making with design thinking in governance.

Using community-driven design (Yellow Design Foundation) and human-centered, solution-oriented innovation methods such as Design Thinking (The Morph Company), together with our collaborative partner:s and the various stakeholders involved, we managed to create an inclusive, organic manifesto that can be considered representative of the current ecosystem of European mobility startups.

The design thinking process is always about forming a sound understanding of the problem situation in a first analytical and observational phase, in order to develop ideas and test them with the help of prototypes in the second creative phase. In this process, divergent (open, combine, discover, experiment) and convergent (condense, categorize, synthesize, decide) thinking alternate.

The process went through several analytical and creative phases: "First, we interviewed experts to develop a deeper understanding of the mobility scene, so that in the second step we could conduct targeted quantitative, open online surveys, in which we successively included larger, more heterogeneous groups. In this way, we gained an overview of the various problem situations, which we were able to verify and deepen with the help of another series of qualitative expert interviews, and finally iterate the condensed results in workshops with different stakeholders and experts," reports our corporate partner Maite Zubeldia.

The live presentation of the Manifesto during Mobility Week 2020 fell on receptive ears. Karima Delli, Chair of the European Committee for Transport and Tourism and co-founder of EUSP, and Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commission, followed the concerns of all ten 2020 EUSP laureates with great interest and jumped right into feasibility discussions. Delli also impressed upon Šefčovič several times how serious she was about pushing through the demands of the startups, developing the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy accordingly, and doing everything she could to ensure that the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was respected. With a raised forefinger and a winking smile, the EU politician said, "I hope, please, please, Mr. Šefčovič, I hope that the Commission will keep this in mind, because I'm sure we will be very vigilant." And Šefčovič? The ended the conversation by saying, "Thank you very much, this is exactly what we needed!"

On Dec. 9, 2020, the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy was published by the European Commission, and only time will tell to what extent the needs and proposals of European mobility startups will actually be taken into account and the adopted measures and goals can be implemented. However, it is not only politics and business that are called upon. Crises such as the Covid 19 pandemic or the climate crisis show us very clearly that we will not get anywhere without real cooperation, courage, direct communication and down-to-earth innovative spirit. Solving current and future crises and global challenges, is not just about agile policymaking on a macro level, it is about the everyday actions and attitudes of each and every individual: How do we want to spend our money, work and live? Our choices determine the future of this planet and generations to come. We should not make them too lightly.