Katherine Keddie: So welcome back to the Scaling Green-Tech podcast. We have a very, very exciting guest for you today, who is Katherine Foster. Katherine has had an interdisciplinary career. She has loads that she can share about scaling startups, accelerating innovations, and then all the way up to systems level change. Katherine is currently the Innovative Finance Lead at the European Institute of Technology (EIT) Food Vertical, and also their World Economic Forum Fellow. So thank you so much, Katherine, for joining us today. Our first question, as always, to keep things simple, is how would you describe your work to a five-year-old?
Katherine Foster: Thank you. That's an excellent way to start, because it is the biggest challenge, especially in systems innovation. I work with people and organizations from across Europe and around the world to protect nature, grow healthy, sustainable food, and prepare for a changing climate and planet. I think of myself as a conductor of an orchestra. I'm not an expert musician, but I help bringing those musicians, those experts together. And in my case, they're companies, researchers, financial institutions, farmers, policymakers, and others and we work together to solve complex challenges and to collaborate on innovative finance and to shift systems towards long-term resilience and impact.
Katherine Keddie: Lovely, lovely answer. I think you've got all of the different parties that you're working with and I love the conductor. I think it shows how you can sit back and with your experience, network, expertise, can look at all of the different stakeholders and work out how we can try and create change overall. So for those who are listening who are founders or in the tech space or in the investment space, I think this will be a really useful kind of big picture look at how we create change. and then obviously from Katherine's experience, how she's seen that work. Going all the way back to the beginning of your career, where did you start? And I would love for you to talk us through the journey you've gone through so far.
Katherine Foster's career from Canadian diplomacy to systems innovation
Katherine Foster: Thank you. It may take longer than we expect because it's been over 35 years and the journey has really been one of resilience and I would dare say bold transitions shaped by geopolitical shifts and personal reinvention. I actually have very humble beginnings in Northern Ontario but each step has been an unexpected but incredible opportunity Anytime I was faced with a challenge, I pivoted. So I grew up in a small community, resource intensive, surrounded by nature, with Indigenous communities. And I was a very artistic person, and I wanted to go to art school. But I was steered towards science and geography because it was interdisciplinary. And that is really what captured my interest, the capacity under geographic studies to study the sciences, the economy, development. I actually got to go to India on a work experience and I worked with Canada's Fire Management Centre in Ontario. It brought a wealth of opportunity and I also dabbled in early geographic information systems during my doctoral work. And when my supervisor, one supervisor left and another decided that there was no way to integrate physical data with economic and social data, I basically was told there was no path forward for me in my doctorate. And so I left and that steered me into helping with the stakeholder consultations on the North American Free Trade Agreement. And that then led me into an early career in diplomacy. And in the diplomatic service, it was a golden time initially. It was under Kofi Annan's human security agenda. And that is when we were looking at human rights, women and children in peace building, in war affected situations, landmines, and even the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). It was a really dynamic time in diplomacy, and I also served as our climate attache to Washington, D.C. That was supposed to be the highlight, but of course that was in 2000. And there was a huge political shakeup in the US, a different administration than we thought. And again, I had to pivot. I had to get very creative, which is not something you see in diplomacy. I got very creative. I worked with National Geographic Television, World Resources Institute, and we focused more on the cultural type of diplomacy. The unfortunate part came, of course, after 9-11, where the world changed. The U.S. focused largely on that, and a number of countries, including Canada, started pulling out of the Kyoto Climate Agreement. And that's when I decided to leave the Foreign Service, because I just didn't feel that it fit my values at the time. Perhaps it was a bit young and naive to think that the wave would not shift again, but it brought me to Switzerland. And in Switzerland, I came when I was in my late 30s. I was ready to start my family, and I found myself floating in an incredible country. with great innovation and science. And so I just started working in that field. I even created an internship for myself at a microfinance organization while I was raising my young kids, just so that I could get that experience and pivot. And then I really found my home in a path when the EU created these knowledge innovation communities. And I initially worked for the Climate KIC And that was a fantastic opportunity to see how multi stakeholders can come together, partnerships, entrepreneurship, education, that was all part of the programming. And I really enjoyed my time there. I then had another four year posting back to Washington DC with the family this time and this was during the first Trump administration and that again meant a real pivot in my own career path and I had to look to the opportunities I could find in Washington but internationally and it was really a question about where could I add value. So I worked with the World Bank and I became very heavily involved in digital innovation, early blockchain, helped with the carbon markets pilot at the World Bank and really started diving into some startups, doing fuel traceability and other coalitions. I helped with the co-founding of the Climate Chain Coalition. which is an observer at the UNFCCC, and then started working with a new task force and a new organization called Green Digital Finance Alliance. And this is where Simon Zadig is very central to a lot of what was happening at that time. And I served as the Sherpa to the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on financing the SDGs. in that role as the Chief Intelligence Officer for Green Digital Finance Alliance. That was a new world to me, the financial institutions, and it was an incredible time to take the thought leadership and then transition into actual experimentation and piloting. How can we bring these things more to scale? And again, I pivoted back. I became the executive director for about a year and a half. And at that time, I started serving at the board of the EU's EIT food. And that was really interesting to be, again, part of another kick, another EU knowledge innovation community. And I was really interested in seeing them dive deeper into the financial innovation. That was sort of a missing piece for me across the kicks. And so when they created this role, I applied for it and left the board to serve actively. And that brings me here today.
Geopolitical shifts and career pivots across climate policy cycle
Katherine Keddie: It's been a while since I've heard you give the full story from start to finish and I think it's such a fascinating journey. So yeah, thank you for walking us through that. I'm really excited to get into it. I think my first question for you is, You mentioned 2000, there's a big shift in climate and the way that people are acting in international spaces. And you could say that there are similarities happening at the moment. Do you see, for you, is it a similar experience going through the same change? Or can you draw together these patterns that happen in international politics?
Katherine Foster: I think that it goes to the systems, the theory of change that I have, because having experienced all of that, you realize that change is the constant and nothing is static, but resilience is key. And I think what I've experienced now, what I'm seeing now, is some of the dismantling or dismissing of many of the hard-won frameworks and policies, regulations, and even the trade agreements that we put in place. And seeing those dismantled, not through our organizational structures that we've established internationally, but through political dynamics, is a new element to that constant change. And I think I see people and organizations and actors struggle a bit with navigating that, but I also see the opportunity again in that shift. So we've become very embedded in our trade systems, in our negotiation systems, in our commercial systems, in our food systems. And it's the opportunity to say, what does resilient really look like? What does the future look like for us? And to take that bigger stock saying, all right, the foundations of our current structures and systems are being shaken. What can we do to reinforce those or to create new pathways?
Katherine Keddie: You said a key phrase that I'd love to pick up on, which is the theory of change. How would you describe your theory of change looking back at your career?
Theory of change for systems innovation
Katherine Foster: I'm glad you've come back to that, to the theory of change. It is something that I've given some thought to recently because it is true that change is the constant. Nothing is static. And my theory is grounded on the belief that systems are dynamic and interdependent and that innovation is not linear. and sustainability is not linear. All of this requires adaptive frameworks, diverse perspectives and collaborative action across sectors and actors and at different scales. And we need to design for complexity, not control it.
Katherine Keddie: I love that, design for complexity, not control it. I think the way that you think is really fascinating to me because you're able to take a big step back and look at all of the parts that make something happen. So you mentioned that you've got kind of different levels. So obviously that goes all the way down to the like solutions on the ground and like the new tech innovations. all the way up to how policy helps to shape the markets that will help them grow. In your experience, in your career, are there any innovations or solutions or ideas that you've seen really go through that process and make an impact?
Methane reduction in cattle farming as a systems change case study
Katherine Foster: I like this question because we can speak very theoretically, but having concrete examples really does highlight how that can happen. One that really comes to mind is methane, methane emissions from herds, from cattle in particular. When I was at ClimateKIC in 2016-17, we saw a lot of innovation and a lot of formulas for reduction of methane that could be added to feedstock for cattle. I was working with a group with the collaborative innovation project at ClimateKick that was trying to bring one of these formulas to market. And there were a number of system questions that I asked in order to understand how could that happen. One of the biggest questions was, what is the value to the farmer who has to pay for that? So how do we bring that price point down to get that into market? But again, we were talking about one formula. our organization was able to support that collaboration because what was missing at the time was a methane category for carbon credits. So by working together, we were able, one, to prove the impact through very rigorous testing at Reading University and other universities and with other organizations to prove that specific additive was producing methane 10 to 30%. That was the first step. We had to do it again for longer term in order to help create the methane category and get that in place so that projects could be certified. But we could only do that because of the collaboration and because of the support of the network around us. We managed to get that onto the market. We managed to get this into feedstock and get the price point down. And that was also, that whole process also helped all of those other formulas around the world to link into carbon credits. I'm being very simple about this, but it's just to show that the progress wasn't linear. It wasn't, we've invented something, we're going to get investors and put it into the market. It was really about what is the value to everyone and what is the broader value to society. Now let's fast forward a few years later and realize that Not every farmer, especially small farmers, were able to use that formula. The larger corporates with large cattle farms are looking for solutions. They could do this at scale. So how do we amplify that? How do we get the capacity up, recognizing there are a number of formulas that would allow methane reduction? And then that's where AI comes in. And I was working as part of an MIT Solve fellow, I got to know quite a few of the researchers at MIT. And I got to know one in particular who was an expert in AI biometrics. And he had this idea of using AI biometrics to determine which formula for which type of cattle would work to reduce at maximum capacity. And in the interim, the technology for measuring the methane emission had advanced from hoods for the cattle right down to handheld mechanisms that could evaluate in seconds or minutes. All of that together meant that systems change wasn't able to happen. And so you have Metha AI now on the market just as one example that's enabling that to scale. So now we have this type of capacity to bring those formulas to scale. And then underpinning that, of course, there's all sorts of, you know, alternative proteins or device diversified proteins coming up and a focus on policies around institutional farming and methane reduction generally, because there are many, many ways to tackle that problem.
Katherine Keddie: So it sort of started with the scientific innovation, and then you have like the funding journey, but you also have these kind of supportive technologies that help to scale the kind of original solution, the policy environment, and then the funding, I would imagine comes from different stakeholders at different points in the journey. Obviously, you are the innovative finance lead at EIT Food. So I'm especially curious about the funding journey for a kind of solution like that. Who are the different parties that get involved in the financial support? Could be a bad example or another. And at what stages do they transition between each other or kind of overlap and build in to help scale something up?
How innovation funding works across value chains
Katherine Foster: In fact, I think That is part of the way that you phrased that question really highlights the issue in finance innovation because The way that innovation is funded is very linear and very point. Front-end technology, startups, it's all about the investors. It's all about the return on investment. And that's not sustainable. That's not something that has any patience. There's no patient capital in that. On top of that, then, it's the how do you get the various actors to adopt that? What is their investment? It's financial investment for sure, but there's also time and different timeframes. And that is part of the challenge as well. How do you make the actors in a value chain, which again, it provides a linear perspective of the different actors. How do you get these technologies or these innovations to scale. It's seen as very linear, but it's really about helping all those actors to align on what they need and what their values and what they're willing to invest both financially and temporally and in terms of resources into adopting.
Katherine Keddie: I think that's a very useful point that I think we can expand on. Venture capital in particular has a very specific mandate, a very specific way of considering value, and obviously a focus on short-term return on investment. There are many new kind of blended models and patient capital and impact investors that have come into the space they think we can discuss later in the episode. But to start us off on a broad question, who decides what counts as value in these new innovations that could have benefits for people, planet, and as a successful business or technology?
Defining value beyond financial return - the Capitals Coalition
Katherine Foster: It is such an important question and I think it's at the heart of systems innovation and of course we do need venture capitals and we do need that influx of financial value but we also need to consider other values and that is the question, that is the issue. Each actor defines value differently. Investors, policymakers and communities often work from different logistics, timelines and priorities and values not necessarily always monetary. And I think what gets left out are the lived realities of those actors and even the intergenerational impacts. and also the non-financial forms of value as we're talking about. So I'm working with the Capitals Coalition as one of the commissioners and what I like about that is they are looking at all capitals and I'm putting that in quotations because it's natural capital, it's social capital, it's human capital. all of these elements are really important to determining what is value. The accounting and the formulas that we have right now are short-term and they're very specific to very regulatory processes or financial questions and frameworks. We need to sort of shift embrace those, help them shift, but also work around other questions of value. And there are mechanisms, there's actual financial mechanisms that are emerging to be able to address those as well.
Katherine Keddie: So I think the Capitalist Coalition in particular frame the range of value really well. And when we think about new financial innovations that are able to I guess showcase or value this value. What do they look like? Give us some examples.
Katherine Foster: When I think about the example of resilient or regenerative agriculture, which is porous in its definition to begin with and very contextual. So regenerative agriculture in Europe versus Africa, large scale commodities versus small scale farming. What I see there is different ecosystem values being integrated into overall financing. That's one element. The second element is being able to take a blended, but transitional approach to financing. So I want to come back to the question about value and finance innovation, because a lot of the time we're focusing on finance innovation as replicating existing mechanisms. It's about leveraging those and working with those to expand the notion of value, to expand the KPIs, to expand the reporting, but also creating capacities to blend and mix the mechanisms for that transitional phase because, for example, regenerative agriculture has different timeframes than the insurance, than the grants, than the banks are able to offer. So what we need is the patient capital at the front to look at the feasibility and to help promote that transition at the outset. And then the other mechanisms can come into play, whether it's loans for specific equipment or resources. The other part of that is the type of value in recreating those chains, those agri-food systems, because regenerative agriculture will also need different market infrastructure. And by market infrastructure, I mean physical infrastructure. Right now, we need much more localized facilities, storage, transport, logistics and even contractual innovation are necessary to incorporate that more long-term vision but shorter value chains.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I mean that also relates to a wider point about sustainability as well like having more localized production. And I mean, I think one thing that has been really interesting in terms of the framing of these solutions in my work in the last year has been the shift towards a focus on some of these like climate related solutions also being linked to security or kind of national ownership of key industries, key value chains, et cetera. So, I mean, I think there's, there's a wider benefit there for sure. But when we're thinking specifically about regenerative farming, which as you say has a very broad definition, but in my experience as coming from a family of farmers, I know it would take 20 to 30 years to transition my uncle and my cousin's farm, for example, into what would be considered in that context a regenerative farm. So it's a huge investment. It takes a lot of time. It would span a generation in my family, and I think the capital structures for that really don't exist. And I wanted to come back to blended finance as a solution for that kind of patient capital and investment and also to ask you to explain for listeners who don't know what is blended finance, what does that mean?
Blended finance for regenerative agriculture transitions
Katherine Foster: Honestly, defining blended finance to me is very fluid because I think I'm trying to push the boundaries there and many of us are trying to push the definition of what blended finance means. For me, what I envision is going back to your question about value. Can we, first of all, integrate any ecosystem value in that transition? Are there water? Are there biodiversity? Are there carbon elements? That's always a very hot debate at these conferences. Well, we should be doing carbon credits. No, we can't. There's a real debate about that that's been going on for 30 years about the efficiency, the double counting, all of this. I'm going a bit off topic here, but I wanted to loop back into how all of that relates to blended finance. Blended finance is largely talked about in sort of north-south, a global north and global south. I'd like to see the definition be much more contextualized. In the European context, what I really am working with a number of actors on is envisioning a blended finance approach or framing that's not static. For me, blended finance is really about bringing different actors together, all the stakeholders in a value chain as investors, as financial actors, so that the burden isn't on the farmer, so that everyone partakes in the financing, and that it transitions over time. For me also, I think it's about how bringing those actors together, we can explore new types, new mechanisms of financing. So one where we have a landscape of the potential financial mechanisms that we can use, whether the nature-based biodiversity carbon as an underpinning within that, but also the more conservative or the traditional ones of bank loans and farming subsidies, etc. And then all of the ecosystem services have to be in that. But on top of that, all of the actors in the value chain, the corporates, the farmers, the retailers, insurance companies, and I see in the European context a capacity to actually create that landscaping type of facility where we have those mapped out, but then they fit the specific context. So as a concrete example, the EIT Food is working, is actually funding regenerative landscapes in Spain and one new one in Poland, and there'll be three others. And through this, we are bringing those actors together to amplify regenerative or resilient agriculture. And that enables us to bring those different actors together to examine what is there in terms of the financing, but what else is still needed.
Katherine Keddie: That brings me in very nicely to a question that I had wanted to ask you when I was thinking about what we could discuss in this episode, which was, what do you think are the most exciting new financial innovations that could help support this food transition. So we've mentioned blended finance as an opportunity to bring together stakeholders. Are there any other examples that you think are, I guess, ones to watch in the financial innovation space? For me, it's
Katherine Foster: It is the diversity that we have at our hands, both existing and emerging. And also the willingness of the financial actors, the ones that are already in place, their willingness to consider new approaches, new timeframes, new data. The most exciting opportunities, I think, are emerging. But again, I'm always a little bit wary about talking about revolution. I talk about evolution of financial mechanisms. And here I see real capacity with our digital and data innovations, being able to link directly into different mechanisms, so that the cumbersome process of identifying whether you can use nature-based solutions and financial mechanisms or loans or subsidies, the old and the new together, so that the burden of identifying those and being able to apply for those, I think that is where I'm most excited about the type of innovation that I'm seeing evolve.
KPI-linked insurance and financial innovation for food systems
Katherine Keddie: You know, one thing that I think is really exciting is the evolution of KPI linked instruments in different formats. So, I mean, we're filming this episode in Geneva during the Building Bridges conference, which is focused on aligning finance with sustainability outcomes. And one of the key topics and examples that I came across was an experiment in KPI linked insurance products, which is kind of being piloted at the moment, which I thought was fascinating. So in a regenerative agriculture context, there's obviously a sense that, I mean, you called it resilient agriculture at the start, which I actually think is a much better, from a marketing perspective, a much better framing for it. But if I'm farming in a way that maintains soil integrity, protects the natural ecosystem, looks at what is the water, for example, that I have on my land, what is the ecosystem services that are provided by my land, the land and the profits for the farmer should be better and higher. the resilience for the local area is also improved. And hopefully resilience in the context of climate change and natural events resulted from climate change. So the idea of having a kind of insurance instrument or another kind of funding source that is related to an incentive to focus on this, I think is interesting. But you could also, I guess, link that to any kind of subsidy or loan, or some of the other examples that you gave. Absolutely.
Katherine Foster: And I want to actually pick up on this, because to me, it is the cross-sectoral learnings that we're seeing, especially something like Building Bridges, where we have different stakeholders. You have the financial institutions here. Getting those together is awesome. You have UN, but then you have diverse sectors coming in. And I want to come back to the water and the oceans and the KPIs question, because what I'm seeing is the capacity to learn from previous pilots and frameworks and innovations that are happening across different sectors and regions. And one example is the Green Digital Finance Alliance. We worked on oceans and we worked specifically on insurance, on proving that biodiversity and other elements could be measured for their insurance frameworks. And to me, that has cross sectoral capacity, because the process of proving it by showing the data is readily available for certain elements that match the existing KPIs, and then working with them, with the insurance and financial organizations to expand that and to layer up.
Katherine Keddie: I think that's a really interesting point and something that you've mentioned a few times just now and then throughout is the foundation of data to these new financial innovations and pathways. And the elephant in the room when it comes to data is obviously that AI is completely transforming the types of data we can access, the way that we can analyze it, it gives us insight that we've never been able to look at before. So in your opinion, and as someone who's worked on the kind of digital finance and like AI really early on, how do you think it's changing the financial innovation side, particularly when it comes to funding and informing solutions and scale up for the nature and climate crisis?
AI, data governance, and the "four Gs" framework
Katherine Foster: For me, the question of data and AI is two pronged. There are a lot of assumptions. There always have been about data, about data capacity, ownership, privacy, governance and accessibility. The technologies that enable us to capture that data and the process thereafter and the interoperability with those other frameworks and systems. And so that is of course where AI has one key role. But again, that AI is trained on by humans and by existing systems. So yes, it's got a real capacity for enabling and for allowing better interoperability to allow us to integrate data and actually fill data gaps as well. whether it's through MRV on forest coverage, where existing data is lacking and we're able to train the AI to cover that. But there is also the element of what is not being captured. And here I think specifically, I always go back home to Canada to think about the indigenous knowledge, the expertise. People often say, talk about voices. I talk about expertise. And are we capturing the other parts of expertise? How can we capture that in a data form that could also be incorporated? I go back to a very specific example when I was working on my doctoral studies and looking at community resilience and wanting to integrate that type of of knowledge, but it wasn't acceptable to the system, both the educational system as well as the data system. Ironically, that project was actually adopted by MAP Canada, which was a bolster for the path forward. But I see those same barriers, those same questions coming back time and again. We had it with blockchain as well, the whole governance, the ethics, the embedded elements that we may not be able to even measure. And I'm seeing it again now with the AI question. So I work with AI. I've actually created quite a few agents myself, but I really use it very specifically. And I also ask very hard questions of any startups or any other organization that is working with AI. It has great potential to help us fill those gaps, but I always come back to my four Gs. gender, geography, groups of stakeholders, and generations are data available around those that can be captured as well. Otherwise, AI is just going to help perpetuate existing barriers and gaps.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, so exciting innovation. take with a pinch of salt. It's interesting because in the kind of climate tech investment scale up world in which I do a lot of work, obviously there's a huge hype I mean, any startup or VC community I think is currently going, oh my God, what an opportunity, this is amazing. So in some ways it must be interesting looking back at a 35 year career. and seeing different technologies come through, always working at the forefront of those technologies, seeing the hype, and then I guess seeing the reality, and then improvement, and then the flow that happens with new technology adoption. Do you see similar patterns happening with AI, or is it that amazing silver bullet solution that we all I'm hoping that it is.
Katherine Foster: I definitely see the same pattern. You know, when we were having these dialogues even, you know, less than 10 years ago on blockchain, it was and the word revolution was pandered about quite liberally. I like to think of evolution instead and very, very specifically orientated evolution. to ensure that we are being not only ethical, but that we're governing our use of this technology well, and that we're not embedding existing parameters and limitations. So yes, I see real opportunity, but I also see the challenges. It's that balanced approach that we need and that we've had with past technologies. and to really frame it in a way that is specific but also sustainable. And we won't get into the footprint of AI and the water issue, but that is also a part of the question that we have to address as well.
Katherine Keddie: It is. And I think water is an increasingly prevalent topic going forward over the next, let's say, five years, five to ten years in Europe. How do you see that conversation evolving?
Water as the next major systems innovation topic in Europe
Katherine Foster: In terms of water, it really is gonna be the essential topic going forward. We have already seen incredible convergence around addressing water resilience and sustainability. It underpins our entire society, our global society, and all of our human activities and our natural systems. I'm stating the obvious here, but I think it is very much like any other type of resource when we frame it in human value that has been sort of undervalued and has been addressed in very fragmented ways. And water flows. And that means it transverses barriers, physical, political, social, cultural barriers. and it means we need that systems approach to addressing water. Specifically in Europe, I think what's interesting to me is that the last EIT, the final EIT, knowledge innovation community, is going to be on water. And water was framed very generally or very broadly, depending on how you're looking at it. And that is an excellent, because it means that we're looking at water from sectoral perspective, freshwater, groundwater, natural water systems, as well as oceans, ocean resources and communities, and all of the infrastructure around that. So to me, this is really, it's going to be, I think, one of the biggest topics going forward. And I think it is really an exciting time to take not only the innovation approach and technologies that we've helped create and collaborate on across Europe and globally, but also the lessons learned on how we do innovation.
Katherine Keddie: So, as you said, water flows and I think it's a very good example of an ecosystem service, a foundation on which we all rely. So every business, every person, every community obviously relies on water and it's a kind of thing that will bring us all together. The wider context is that there is a very fragmented political situation. And I think, especially if you work in the climate or the nature space, it's a very tricky moment. And from a systems change perspective, do you feel that there is still a place for this kind of supranational or multilateral innovation or a focus on how to solve big challenges? Or are we in a new phase where innovation is best done by non-state actors, non-political actors, or at kind of smaller at regional or industry levels?
Katherine Foster: Absolutely need both and everything in between. It's interesting to be here in Europe, having grown up in North America and through the diplomatic world, to be seeing the multilateral frameworks, tools, trade agreements, not collapse, but being pushed aside, being ignored, or being reshaped, shall we say, more diplomatically. And what's interesting to me in the European context is to see how that international collaboration can work. It's working fairly well in Europe, despite all of the issues that we're facing. But I think Europe is in a good place in terms of its regulatory, financial, political framework to be steadfast. Yes, we're seeing challenges and a bit of slowing on certain policies and frameworks. But I think progress is still happening. And I think it's an essential stabilizing factor globally, which I think is essential at this time. At the same time, I think what I'm witnessing at the local levels, even in my home communities in Canada, is a real surgence, a real surge in local actor innovation, local community, stakeholder coming together and really building resilience and sustainability from the ground up and the frameworks we needed to match and connect those two. Multilateral agreements, organizations, collaborations are still absolutely essential. I think the key for me is ensuring that the two interconnect. and that we don't look at a one size fits all. Because right now the dialogue about global South and global North is omitting a lot of stakeholders as well. So, and that to me is an issue because of the multilateral capacity that we have to bring all of the actors together. Let's ensure that we're not through that definition omitting specific stakeholders and and innovators as well.
Katherine Keddie: Are there any examples of communities or I guess spaces, policies where you see progress? Like give us some optimistic examples that we can point to.
Katherine Foster: Yesterday, I had a great chance to catch up with some of the startups I had supported previously and some of the members of the Climate Chain Coalition. And we were talking about what's happening in specific Indigenous communities in Canada with forestry, carbon credits, and it's Indigenous-led. And that I'm highlighting that one because it's not making the headlines internationally, because it also doesn't frame that global north, global south. And we also have that capacity of financial innovation for carbon, for forest, for water that is really scaling up there. And the way that the stakeholders have been brought together, the way that the actors, the indigenous communities have really embraced their ownership and their leadership and held steadfast to that, has actually served well the overall country and the overall communities because they actually created their own systems, basically. Well, how shall I say, not created because they were always there. but they've managed to link them into the existing financial frameworks and reporting and all of that. And it's, yes, using technology, it's using the financial system as and the multilateral or frameworks that we've put in place. but it's still very much locally led, regionally led, indigenous led.
Katherine Keddie: I loved what you said earlier about not talking about indigenous voices, but saying indigenous expertise as a framing because understanding how to care for and steward a specific local area is very expert knowledge. And, you know, it goes all the way back also to farmers who steward the land on which they live and have a great understanding of how the natural ecosystem works together. So I think while you're, you know, advocating for having you know, supranational or multilateral collaboration and frameworks that allow us to act. It's also a focus on how do we use local expertise, local communities, communities in which we live to build ideas together and to create results.
Local expertise and indigenous knowledge in innovation systems
Katherine Foster: Absolutely. Two concrete examples come to mind as you were saying that and recapping so eloquently, which I tend to go long on. There are two examples that really do come to mind of how that interconnection between the local expertise and our international efforts, shall we say, need to come together. One is when I was first starting my career and I had a job with the Forest Fire Management Centre of Canada in my local community. It was actually the Ontario base, but it is the base for Canada. And that was in the mid 80s or late 80s, I should say. It was after the Indigenous knowledge and expertise had been sort of sidelined from the fire management approach in that region. And it was the worst forest fire season we'd had ever at that time. And What I saw was the technology was quite low as well. We were very analog still. We were using lightning strike radar and outposts and observations. But I really think that exclusion of the local expertise and working with the communities had a huge impact on that season and how it was managed. We've seen great progress on that, on incorporation and working with them, not just incorporating their expertise, but working with them in terms of the land management. And it's everything from the knowledge of the species and the mixed replanting or the knowledge of also the community and the transportation in and out, all of the infrastructure. It's the locals who understand that and what would happen when the winds shift, when the fire starts. Because controlled burning and forest fires are part of the natural ecosystem, it's part of the natural system, but it does have an impact when human activities both ignite more fires and amplify the impact and also in terms of the human communities and infrastructure that's at risk. So that is really essential. The second example, I have an example from multi I have an example from microfinance. When I did my adult internship, I was then hired into the team to do their communications and stakeholder engagement. And this was in Namibia. And it was really interesting because the previous marketing team had come up here in Europe, with the logo, the colors, the marketing, understanding, of course, at a key level, that we're talking about a very different cultural context, very different geographic context. A community was hundreds of kilometers, not just a small sort of concentrated area. But what was really interesting was it was the knowledge about the local politics and the local. understanding of certain elements that were at work at the local level. I won't go into details, but just suffice it to say that two things that happened, and this speaks to why we need to work with the local communities and stakeholders. One, the very tall European, mainly men, chose motorcycles for their finance agents based on what they thought would be useful. Most of the agents were women, average five foot two, couldn't even put their feet on the ground. So the infrastructure that they put in for the bank for them to go, they thought, great, yeah, we need the agents to be able to do that. mobile, because the communities are so vast, we can't bring them together. So they purchased motorcycles that wouldn't fit the actual stakeholders. So that was one of the first big lessons learned. And that, to me, is an analogy for technological innovation as well. Does it fit the user? The second was the colors that were used for the marketing. happened to coincide with certain political movement. And some of our agents wearing the colors were at risk because of that. So it's that contextual knowledge that was essential.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, you know, I think what's really interesting about those two stories is they really well illustrate that this is not something that you're discussing, you're using your work, you're advocating for, that is based on the fact that it's the right thing to do. It's based on the fact that it is the smart thing to do. It makes most sense. You're leaning on expertise that is already there and that helps to inform better outcomes, better policies, better solutions to help scale ideas, technologies, etc. It's just better, which I think is something that is missed sometimes from the dialogue. It comes across sometimes like there are all these moral, personal reasons why you should take these decisions. Personally, obviously I agree, but I think fundamentally, if you want a solution to succeed, working with different communities at different levels is the best way to ensure that it works.
Katherine Foster: Absolutely. It's the co-creation capacity that we're missing there that is absolutely essential for the uptake. And it does go back to the bottom line, the economies of scale for that, and for the capacity to scale the innovation. And we saw a lot of that in the blockchain space as well, you know, how many different platforms or in the data space, and that the assumptions that we might have in Western world or in specific institutional context, We have to be very careful to not only check those assumptions, but to work with the users to ensure things are going to be compatible for their needs and their capacity.
Katherine Keddie: So taking a big step back from everything that we've discussed and looking ahead for the next 10 years, what are you most excited about and where do you think we need to see some progress?
Katherine Foster: I think what I'm most excited about or what I want to see is food, water and nature systems recognized as interconnected public goods. And that we have a capacity not to manage those in isolation and in our specific context. But I want to see finance reflect true value as well of those systems and our mechanisms to shift around those needs. I also hope that in the next five, 10 years, we see the use of the term scaling and the notion of the term scaling to move away from this linear definition that we assume. I want to see more of a systems approach. And that has risk of becoming a trope overused in and of itself, but the mechanisms put in place for that to actually happen.
Katherine Keddie: What does that look like for you? Because I think, I mean, a lot of people who will be listening to this podcast and that we've had as guests have been from the kind of technology scale up world. And I think many of us, when we think about scaling, imagine an adoption curve, which starts you know, goes into early adopters and then goes round and then back down again and it's a bell curve and there's different stages of funding at each point and there's different challenges that happen at each point. It's very linear, like you say. Absolutely. What does systems change scaling look like?
Katherine Foster: I think to me it's about moving beyond that notion, that narrow notion of the linear progression towards models that are more adaptive, that are more transitional. And that includes the type of financing that would support those through those different stages, so that it's more fluid as well. But that means that very specific actors have to be inserted or insert themselves and innovate at each point where they are able to intervene
Katherine Keddie: Okay, so that means that rather than just going through this bell curve, there's maybe a wider definition of what value is and the journey that a solution takes to be able to create that value at scale.
Katherine Foster: Yeah, I think it's a more long term notion of value. It's one that understands also that our definition of value may change over that time as well. Very concretely, I think it means that we have to recognize that political actors will change. Policies might shift. Financial capacity will go up and down. So we need to have a full set of tools, whether it's financials, whether it's data, whether it's policy, to help bridge those gaps so that they overlap. but that the burden of using those isn't on the specific community or farmer, actor, fisher, whoever the one who's carrying that burden right now. We need to alleviate that. We need to share that.
Katherine Keddie: I mean, in the context of, we've talked about regenerative farming, it varies significantly how that's even defined between different circumstances. So I guess scaling, quote unquote, that solution or that approach relates more to shared learnings between the right people rather than going, okay, this works, replicate scale, because that's when you get monocultures, you get solutions that don't work for the specific environment, you cut out local stakeholders, you ignore co-creation, all of these challenges that you're flagging. If you follow that kind of linear scaling approach that you would for, let's say, a new building material that you're scaling, which is an example of maybe that bell curve VC approach, I guess that's very limited to one specific type of innovation and cuts out, for example, regenerative farming and mutual learning.
Katherine Foster: Absolutely. Actually, another example is sustainable cement. That is a point innovation. We've had solutions for over a decade, but it's the systems, the mechanisms around it that has basically been the barrier to integrating and upscaling that. So rather than just focusing on the technology, we need to then work with those actors who could refit their manufacturing process, their value chain, take that into all other sectors, all other regions. It's the process of innovation rather than the specific point innovation.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah. So what are the mechanisms around an innovation that allow for it to work at scale?
Collaborative innovation programmes and pre-competitive spaces
Katherine Foster: I really like the, as flawed as they can be, I really like the collaborative innovation programs that I'm seeing emerge around the world. The EU EIT is an excellent example. It has had its many challenges. But that capacity to bring the different actors together as partners to co-identify the specific challenges to sustainability, to region, to whatever the topics are, they can identify those and then they can work together to say, okay, I see an issue here. in this process, this part of the process, whether it's the funding, whether it's the mechanisms, whether it's the formula, whether it's the financing, and we can then help them to innovate.
Katherine Keddie: Yeah, I mean, I guess the challenge there is if, let's say I'm a large cement manufacturer, and there's one solution that I could go with that involves no change to my current processes, and one that involves change, obviously, as a business, I'm going to choose the former. is the kind of co-creation pathway, does that work better for these more kind of complex situations rather than that kind of easy decision? Or how would that apply in this circumstance?
Katherine Foster: I think it can be taken for both, honestly. I think, again, innovation doesn't happen in isolation. And whether that's a point innovation, a specific sector, a specific product, or if it is the overall system of agriculture, water management. I think both have to be more fluid. in how we come together. And it can be still competitive enough to meet the bottom line, but it has to be collaborative in understanding. And that's why institutions like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development are also important, because they bring the key actors together that may be competing out in the world, but they come together to identify specific challenges and work towards those together. That's at the top level, the global level. And then at the local level, you also have the key stakeholders that can be convened through specific mechanisms to say, OK, if we're going to incorporate this technology into our manufacturing processes or into our landscape, this is what we need and then we can sort of orchestrate that. It comes back to being able to conduct, to have that type of body or approach of being able to bring those actors together in a safe pre-competitive space.
Katherine Foster: Yeah, it's basically, that is the process that can be replicated.
Katherine Keddie: And you know, I see that process replicated a lot in the accelerator world, like I think it's quite common to have like industry partners, investment partners. For example, we are part of the Expert Network, which is basically the mentor tip network for ConceptionX, which is the biggest PhD venture spin-out program in the UK and has partnerships across the European Union. They do a fantastic job of bringing really early PhD-level research that has the potential for spinning out into kind of scalable technology solutions to the partners that would be buying them, to the investors that would be investing in them. to have those more open conversations about the ways in which those solutions can be scaled and the way in which they can fit specific needs that are felt within the industry, which I think is the foundation of what you're saying.
Katherine Foster: Absolutely. And I absolutely really do support so many both in morally but also pragmatically. So many of the accelerators are out there and also the innovation calls and the grants and the funding, because they are convening those experts. So it's not just the EIT that is doing that, but it really is all of these initiatives that we're seeing emerge. I can think of quite a few examples, the MIT Solve, the Accelerate 2030, these innovation challenges do a very excellent job of bringing the stakeholders together to identify the challenges, to make the calls, and then to enable those startups, those entrepreneurs, the innovations to evolve and to pivot. Because that notion of having a specific call or announcement or grant or funding for a point innovation, if you don't meet these criteria, that time has to end. We need to come together on identifying the criteria and the pathways forward.
Katherine Keddie: I think that's a really nice note to end the episode on. How do we bring together the right people to innovate in the right direction? So thank you so much, Katherine, for joining us and for sharing your expertise. And for anyone who wants to hear more from Katherine, the best place to follow her and find more about her work is on LinkedIn. So that's all from us. Catch us for the next Scaling Green-Tech episode. Thank you so much, Katherine, and goodbye. Thank you.
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