By: Louise Skärvall & Ben Thompson Coon, Accelerator Leads, BOOST
Over the last five years, BOOST, powered by UNDP, has supported more than 300 early-stage innovators across Europe and Central Asia. Each acceleration programme has taught us something new about what teams need, what local innovation ecosystems can offer, and what international expertise brings to the table. But one message keeps coming back: impact ventures thrive when the ecosystems around them have the right skills, resources and connections. Strengthening local business support organizations is therefore where BOOST can create the biggest long-term impact.
What the BOOST: Green Futures Challenge showed us
This became especially clear in our most recent programme, the BOOST: Green Futures Challenge, delivered together with partners across Ukraine, Moldova and Poland, and made possible through our collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Our aim was to create a space where impact-driven ventures could access expertise and opportunities that are not always available in their local ecosystems, and to do so through a cross-border, multi-actor approach.
From the start, we wanted to bring ventures into a wider circle of expertise and see how cross-ecosystem support could help them move forward faster. We were particularly interested in what a more mature innovation ecosystem, like Poland’s, could offer early-stage teams in Moldova and Ukraine working on green and resilience-building solutions.
To test this in practice, we embedded ventures in a broader support network, bringing in business support organizations capable of bridging ecosystems across borders, such as Venture Café Warsaw and the Polish–Ukrainian Startup Bridge. Alongside this, we engaged twenty Polish mentors, including founders, venture capital representatives and industry experts, to help the teams navigate user needs, business models, technology choices, regulations and investment pathways.
The result was immediate. Participating ventures from Ukraine and Moldova actively seized the opportunity to connect, learn and position themselves within this wider network. At the same time, new cross-border collaborations began to emerge between support organizations, investors, experts as well as amongst participating ventures. Several participants highlighted how the programme exposed them to new solutions and approaches they could apply directly to their own work. One team, for example, connected with a local packaging distributor as a commercial partner and a solar collector manufacturer to install renewable heating for their eco-friendly drying system – partnerships that support both scaling and sustainability.
Why this matters for BOOST
These insights reaffirm that strong, connected ecosystems are an engine for innovation and entrepreneurship. For BOOST, this means going beyond supporting individual founders and instead increasingly focusing on strengthening the connective tissue of the ecosystem itself. Our role is to enable relationships between public, private, and community actors so that ventures can draw on sustained, locally anchored support that extends beyond the lifespan of a single programme.
This approach recognizes the depth of talent and commitment that already exists within local incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs and academic instructions across the region. They play a critical role in helping teams translate ambition into practical next steps, navigate uncertainty, connect with partners and investors, and progress from prototyping to market entry. However, many remain overstretched and under-resourced, with limited opportunities to collaborate with peers, experiment with new methods, or position themselves within regional and international networks.
Where BOOST is going next
The next generation of BOOST will focus not only on accelerating ventures but also on strengthening the ecosystems that enable ventures to grow and scale. Rather than acting primarily as a programme implementer, BOOST aims to act as a connector and capacity builder within national and regional innovation ecosystems by:
- adapting and applying impact-oriented methodologies and tools, drawing on UNDP’s experience with challenge-driven innovation and SDG-aligned impact measurement and management;
- strengthening connections between innovation ecosystems and the different actors within them, including local incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs and expert communities;
- expanding access to high-quality support beyond major urban centres.
This is not a shift away from ventures; it is a strategy to amplify our reach. By investing in the organizations with a long-term presence and mandate, beyond project cycles, we help build ecosystems that consistently produce high-impact solutions to development challenges.
Building on momentum
The BOOST: Green Futures Challenge demonstrated what becomes possible when BOOST partners with business support organizations and connects multiple ecosystems with intention. We now want to build on this momentum and work with partners across the region to strengthen innovation ecosystems in a meaningful and sustainable way.
If this resonates with you, reach out to us at: boost@undp.org. Let’s build stronger innovation ecosystems together.