Turn local challenges into investable businesses, backed by local capital, entrepreneurs and expertise.
Cities and regions face challenges across waste, housing, mobility, demographic change, energy and climate resilience. The harder problem is turning promising ideas into solutions that survive beyond grants, pilots and public funding cycles.
The Local Solutions Lab is an ongoing local capability for turning those challenges into local businesses, funded by local private capital rather than the next grant cycle.
The idea hasn’t failed. The structure supporting it has disappeared.
Find the challenges worth solving.
Build and test the business case.
Bring in the right capital and partners.
Launch and grow the solution.
Apply the model to the next challenge.
Four principles separate the Local Solutions Lab from the accelerators, pilots and challenge programmes cities are already familiar with.
Design and build solutions around durable demand and economics, not the next funding cycle.
Engage investors and strategic partners whose interests overlap with the challenge.
Move beyond workshops and concepts into business cases, operators, capital and business creations.
Each cycle strengthens local relationships, investor participation and solution-building capability, making the next opportunity easier to activate.
In Saudi Arabia, furniture waste is a costly and highly visible problem in fast-growing cities. At the same time, many people cannot afford quality, well-designed furniture.
We worked with a local group of business leaders seeking to make an impact locally. We developed Mustadam, meaning permanent in Arabic, the first furniture resale platform in the region. Mustadam connects buyers and sellers, and integrates services including logistics, storage, cleaning and refurbishment.
The sponsors initially envisaged a reuse charity, but soon found that a business could be investable, self-sustaining and scalable. Mustadam now operates across the country, and reached the fourth most downloaded app in Saudi Arabia for four days running.
Local challenges create costs, constraints and missed opportunities for businesses, institutions and communities. The organisations affected by a problem can therefore become customers, partners, investors or supporters of the solution.
A Local Solutions Lab identifies these aligned interests and brings them together around a viable business case.
Local opportunities, customers and operational benefits.
Strategic value, supply chains and market opportunities.
Local investment with financial and impact potential.
Mission-aligned capital that can catalyse solutions.
Investment in businesses rooted in the local economy.
Long-term economic and community interests.
Local investors with capital, expertise and connections.
The Local Solutions Lab connects the players a solution needs: local government to frame priorities and open doors, industry and investors to provide capital and routes to market, entrepreneurs and operators to build, and universities and community organisations to ground solutions in real demand.
Frames priorities, opens doors and convenes the right people.
Brings demand, supply chains and routes to market.
Supply the capital and the commercial discipline.
Build the solution and run it.
Ground solutions in real evidence and real demand.
Connecting the players, and keeping them moving in the same direction.
Net Positive LabsA Local Solutions Lab gives cities the infrastructure and specialist support needed to build ventures locally, without having to create an entire innovation programme from scratch.
Net Positive Labs provides the operating system, methodology, digital infrastructure and specialist capability behind the Lab, while the relationships, opportunity pipeline and value created remain locally rooted.
A repeatable structure for moving opportunities from local challenge through validation, investment and launch.
Hands-on support to coordinate stakeholders, maintain momentum and move opportunities through the pipeline.
Practical business-building tools, templates and decision points for research, validation, business-case development, investment and launch.
A shared digital workspace for challenges, business cases, investor engagement, resources and collaboration.
Access to experienced entrepreneurs, operators and specialists at the points where their expertise can add most value.
Product, technology, design, commercial, sustainability and sector expertise deployed as individual opportunities require it.
Cities can prioritise challenges, teams can develop business cases, investors and partners can discover opportunities, and mentors and NPL specialists can provide structured support.
Not every public challenge should become a business. The Lab exists to find the ones where unmet demand, avoidable cost, underused assets or new value can support a viable model.
Residents don’t sort waste properly, collection is inefficient, and landfill costs keep rising.
The city imports most of its food, making it expensive, fragile and environmentally costly.
Heatwaves are intensifying and older residents have no reliable support system during peak heat.
Valencia Innovation Capital wanted to strengthen the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and help promising innovators working on net zero buildings turn early-stage ideas and technologies into solutions with a clearer path to market.
We designed and delivered a bespoke venture-building programme bringing together more than 50 architects, engineers, consultants and deep-tech entrepreneurs. Rather than focusing on inspiration alone, participants worked through structured validation, customer discovery, value proposition development, MVP design and go-to-market planning, supported by international experts and targeted mentorship.
Teams left with better validated solutions, clearer customer propositions and practical roadmaps for the next stages of development. The programme also strengthened the wider ecosystem around them, connecting innovators with experienced operators, mentors and supporters.
The Local Solutions Lab builds on the same principle: local innovation needs more than ideas and funding. It needs the methodology, mentorship and venture-building capability to turn promising opportunities into viable solutions.
AI and new digital tools are dramatically reducing the time, cost and resources required to research, validate, prototype and launch new ventures.
A small local team can now do far more, combining local knowledge and relationships with AI, shared infrastructure and specialist support when needed.
The businesses a Lab creates can get much further with smaller teams and less capital, allowing ideas to be validated before significant investment is committed.
More ideas can be tested. More evidence can be gathered. Capital can follow what actually works.
Each Local Solutions Lab is designed around its own place, challenges and ecosystem. Over time, a network of Labs creates something more powerful: solutions, operating knowledge and real-world evidence can travel between cities.
A Lab can adapt a solution already validated elsewhere, reducing the time, cost and risk of starting from scratch.
When a locally created solution is adopted elsewhere, the originating business and local ecosystem can participate in the value created, through licensing, royalties, profit share or other commercial structures.
Cities facing the same challenge can combine knowledge, demand and resources to develop solutions together, reducing duplication and creating a stronger starting market.
You don’t need to establish a full Local Solutions Lab from day one. Start with an existing opportunity, activate your local ecosystem, and build the local capability from there.
Already have a promising initiative, research project or public-sector solution? Build the commercial and investment case around it, mobilise capital and take it towards launch.
Bring entrepreneurs, researchers, industry and investors around priority challenges, developing the strongest ideas into business cases designed for activation.
Create the permanent local capability to identify opportunities, validate business cases, mobilise capital and launch locally rooted ventures year after year.
The Local Solutions Lab was developed by impact and circular economy entrepreneurs and investors, together with Net Positive Labs, drawing on practical experience building ventures, mobilising capital and developing solutions to complex local challenges.
Each Lab is established around its own local team, priorities and relationships. We provide the methodology, infrastructure and specialist business-building capability to help the Lab get started, build its first opportunities and grow.
Kim Siew leads the Local Solutions Lab at Net Positive Labs, a natural extension of his own track record as a two-time entrepreneur and PPP expert. His focus is alignment and implementation: helping the public sector adopt novel tools and programmes to grow their impact.
He was Lead Circular Economy and Innovation Consultant for CircularAI, a platform that strengthens cities’ circular transition, where he led the change team behind circular adoption across more than ten European municipalities.
He has delivered over 40 workshops and masterclasses on innovation, circularity and digitalisation for public, private and civil-society audiences across Europe and Africa, backed by an MBA in sustainability from IE Business School and a certification in circularity (CEI).
Christopher Moken is the US Lead for the Local Solutions Lab. He is a circular economy entrepreneur, strategist and community builder, and has spent more than ten years scaling recycling and circular economy solutions across several US industries: mattresses, pet beds, plastics and municipal streams.
He is co-founder of Circular San Antonio, a non-profit that mobilises stakeholders across the South Central Texas region to accelerate the transition to a local circular economy.
He also leads circular economy study trips for senior US professionals to European cities, and works with European leaders to build new international collaborations in the circular economy.
A place shouldn’t have to wait for solutions to come from somewhere else.
Kim Siew grew up in Mauritius and, like many people from small island economies, left. Not because it was a difficult place to live: the standard of living was high. He left because the infrastructure to build something was not there. Few early-stage investors, no accelerators, little specialist support. The challenges were obvious. The capability to turn them into businesses was not.
That gap is not specific to islands. Many cities and regions have real problems, capable people and local capital, but no reliable route connecting the three. Too often, they end up waiting for solutions, funding or technology from elsewhere that may never arrive.
The Local Solutions Lab exists to build that route locally, so a place does not have to wait.
Senior founders, investors and sector specialists who challenge our thinking and open relevant networks.
Concepción GaldónSustainable entrepreneurship · Director at IE Business School
José Manuel MollerCircular business models · Founder of Algramo, UN Zero Waste Advisory Board
Cristobal Garcia HerreraEntrepreneurship and innovation · Imperial College, founder of Wicked Acceleration Labs
Paris de l’EtrazEntrepreneurship · Managing Director, Venture Lab at IE Business School
Manuel Perez RomeroSustainable cities · Director, Sustainable Cities Center at IE Business School
Carlos MorenoUrban innovation · Originator of the 15-minute city, Paris Sorbonne
Jie ZhouSustainability and international engagement · Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
Yoko KojimaImpact investment · Mundi VenturesVenture-building infrastructure behind every Lab.
Net Positive Labs is an international innovation and venture studio that works with corporations, governments, investors and entrepreneurs to turn complex sustainability and economic challenges into viable businesses and solutions.
Its team brings experience across venture building, open innovation, entrepreneurship, circular economy and investment, providing the specialist capability and infrastructure that Local Solutions Labs can draw on as they build locally.
Established and led BBVA’s open innovation function, creating innovation labs globally and supporting thousands of founders. Built dozens of new ventures with BBVA and Xerox R&D Labs. Sits on multiple boards and mentors at Endeavor.
Early team member of the Innogy Innovation Hub, building and investing in technology ventures across Europe. Led the climate vertical at a leading corporate venture studio in Berlin.
Built and launched multiple circular and platform businesses with corporates, family offices and serial entrepreneurs. Leads a global angel syndicate and sits on boards. Teaches entrepreneurship, mentors and sits on panels at IE University, Imperial and Cambridge.
Valencia Innovation CapitalNet zero accelerator for the built environment, 40+ participants recruited and accelerated.
Digital Serbia InitiativeAI readiness bootcamp for 40 participants from across the national technology and banking ecosystem.
Saudi Industrial Development FundCircular business model training and capability building for a national industrial development institution.The Lab is locally established by the city and any other local founding sponsors. Net Positive Labs provides the operating model, programme management and specialist venture-building capability.
The ventures are independent and locally rooted. Exact structures can include entrepreneurs, the Lab, local investors, strategic partners and other relevant stakeholders depending on the opportunity.
The Foundation: a lean local team operates the Lab, develops cases and maintains stakeholder and investor relationships.
Net Positive Labs Infrastructure & Support: an initiation and annual fee provides access to programme infrastructure, methodologies, tools, the digital platform, mentors, specialist support and the growing shared solution library.
Solution Development Funding: pre-seed capital for selected ventures is raised from external private investors and strategic partners rather than treated as core Lab operating cost.
Initially the city and/or local founding sponsors. Costs can also be shared with community or private foundations, corporates, universities, family offices and other local impact makers.
Relevant local corporates, SMEs, family businesses, family offices, institutional investors and strategic capital providers. In some cases community investment or crowdfunding may also be appropriate.
The Lab does not start with entrepreneurs or ideas looking for support. It starts with real local challenges, develops commercially viable solutions around them, mobilises investment and builds the strongest into businesses. The objective is a repeatable local capability, not a cohort.
Some local challenges contain the foundations of businesses, investment opportunities and new sources of local economic value. Local Solutions Lab creates the capability to find and build them.
