We Need Shared Responsibility, a Bit of Rebellious Spirit, and Good Navigation Skills — Lessons from AidEx 2025
2.11.2025 Sami Puttonen, Project Manager at Business Tampere for INGOs -project.
AidEx 2025 did not end the discussion — it opened a new chapter.
The humanitarian field today is standing in a moment where the complexity of crises is accelerating faster than our structural ability to adapt. Innovation is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is how fast new solutions can be validated and deployed — ethically, responsibly, and before the next crisis wave hits.
“The humanitarian reset was very visible at AidEx this year. While budgets have been cut, the shift in funding and priorities also provides us an opportunity to help organizations automate and consolidate their humanitarian activities.”
Johan Ehnberg, CEO at Molnix
The humanitarian field is changing — and this is good news
Across AidEx, one message was consistent: traditional procurement alone is not enough to serve tomorrow’s humanitarian needs. We need more flexible, multi-path mechanisms that allow collaboration in more agile ways. The duality is becoming clearer — it is not “procurement OR innovation”. It must become procurement PLUS agile Proof of Concepts (PoCs).
PoCs offer faster learning, lower risk experimentation and a realistic way for SMEs and local actors to enter collaboration pathways. This is how we speed the journey from idea → validated solution → scalable structured procurement.
But behind this technical shift, there is something more fundamental. Every delay, every silo-driven process, every systemic freeze has a real human cost. The slow pace of structural change impacts those already in the most vulnerable positions. We must hold this human perspective present. Humanitarian reform is not only institutional redesign — it is moral obligation.
Our seminar was not just conversation — it was alignment building
During the AidEx pre-seminar “From Procurement to Piloting”, organised under the Central Baltic INGO project consortium, this tension was strongly visible and openly acknowledged throughout keynote, panel sessions and roundtable discussions.
We collectively recognized that when crisis hits — there is no time for co-creation and no time for PoCs. Then action must be immediate. Therefore, the shift must be preventive. The faster we can learn upstream, the better we can reduce human suffering downstream. This also requires donors to evolve their mindset. Funding must support PoC development and learning before crises occur — not only after impact has already materialized. The future of humanitarian innovation depends on donor willingness to enable pre-crisis experimentation.
A new navigation code for public-private partnership in humanitarian innovation
What we observed as a consortium is that three elements carried the strongest resonance throughout the AidEx week:
Shared responsibility
Shared responsibility means shared ownership of risk — and includes donors also holding responsibility to finance preventive PoCs before crises.
A bit of rebellious spirit
Constructive challenge to the system is needed. Faster decision cycles. More open-door collaboration. Less bureaucratic fear of trying new methods.
Navigation skills
Humanitarian markets are non-linear, politically fluid, uncertain. Navigating requires not only operational expertise, but also the capability to map uncertainty and move together — not react alone.
In the current sea of global crises, those who can navigate complexity together will define tomorrow. As a good navigation guide, remember to get familiar with our new published digital catalogue highlighting innovative solutions from Nordics. Click here to access the catalogue.
What comes next?
AidEx 2025 should not be remembered as an end-of-event checkpoint. It should be understood as a directional shift. The INGO consortium will continue developing formats where humanitarian actors, donors, SMEs and innovation agencies can collaboratively shape upstream PoC work — to shorten the distance from idea to validated impact, and to reduce the human suffering that current systemic delays produce.
And that is where we invite collaboration — across globe, across sectors, and across mandates — because the future of humanitarian field will not be built by one community alone. This Central Baltic -funded programme is there to support especially bringing Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Sweden closer to eachother through their innovative SMEs.
The next step is not the next event.
The next step is the next PoC.
