How Impact Licensing Unlocks Technology for Good
During a recent Impact Europe webinar, experts from EURICE, the UN Technology Bank, the Impact Licensing Initiative, and the Gillès Foundation came together to explore how impact licensing can bridge the gap between scientific innovation and societal need.
Hosted by Impact Europe’s Valeria Balzarini and moderated by Klara Schneider of EURICE and Jennifer Marzullo of the Impact Licensing Studio, the session delved into a crucial question: how can Europe’s thriving research and innovation ecosystem better serve global and societal challenges?
Opening the discussion, Klara Schneider from EURICE outlined the paradox at the heart of Europe’s innovation system. While the continent leads in scientific excellence and public investment in research, it continues to face barriers in transferring these breakthroughs into real-world impact.
Fragmented technology transfer structures, limited follow-up funding, and a shortage of private capital often leave promising solutions stuck in laboratories. Yet, as Schneider explained, “the EU is taking steps to close these gaps” through initiatives such as the EIC Fund, the STEP Programme, and the upcoming Scale-Up Europe Fund.
She emphasized that impact-oriented frameworks — including knowledge valorization, social entrepreneurship, and impact licensing — are now gaining recognition in the EU’s research agenda as tools to link innovation with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Global Need: Technology Gaps in Developing Countries
Adding a global perspective, Asli Hekimoglu from the UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries described how technology access remains a fundamental barrier to sustainable development. Her organization, the youngest UN agency, works with 44 least developed countries (LDCs) to strengthen their science, technology, and innovation capacity through Technology Needs Assessments (TNAs).
“These assessments identify national priorities — from climate-smart agriculture to healthcare technologies — and provide roadmaps for local innovation strategies,” Hekimoglu explained.
She presented concrete examples:
- In Bhutan, a partnership with Medtronic Labs introduced hearing-aid technologies for children, now integrated into the national health system.
- In Gambia, a collaboration improved cashew value chains through technology transfer.
- In Tanzania, the UN Technology Bank is now working with the Impact Licensing Initiative to deploy passive cold chain systems for fisheries and agriculture.
The findings, she noted, consistently point to the same challenges: weak institutional capacity, limited financing, and the absence of practical mechanisms for licensing and adapting technology to local contexts — precisely the space where impact licensing can make a difference.
Introducing Impact Licensing
Johan Moyersoen, founder of the Impact Licensing Initiative (ILI), introduced the concept of impact licensing as a legal innovation designed to connect unused or underused technologies with societal markets. The impact licensing model allows technologies to be licensed specifically for social purposes, creating unique opportunities to address pressing issues such as food security, healthcare access, and climate resilience.
“Many key technologies developed in universities or corporations never reach people who need them most,” he explained. “Impact licensing offers a structured way to unlock them — through agreements that define not only who can use a technology, but for what purpose.”
Instead of restricting IP to commercial exploitation, impact licenses allow organizations to use technologies exclusively for social objectives, such as improving healthcare delivery or smallholder productivity.
Moyersoen illustrated this with the success story of iKeep It Cool (iKIC) — a venture that adapted supermarket cold-chain technology to create energy-free cooling solutions for vaccines, medicines, and perishable foods in Africa. The company, supported by impact investors, now operates pilot programs in Ethiopia and beyond, showcasing how private-sector innovation can be reimagined for public benefit.
Building Ventures Around Impact Licenses
Continuing the discussion, Jennifer Marzullo introduced the newly launched Impact Licensing Studio, a venture-building platform that turns impact licenses into viable, scalable businesses.
“The Studio is not a traditional investment fund,” she clarified. “It’s a bridge between innovation and capital — adapting technolgies, validating markets, and building the teams that will take these solutions to scale.”
Each venture goes through feasibility assessment, adaptation, and piloting before being spun out as a stand-alone company. The Studio’s blended model combines catalytic capital (first-loss funding) with impact investment to balance financial viability and social outcomes.
According to Marzullo, the approach allows the team to enter smaller, underserved markets, partner with local businesses, and reduce development costs by starting from existing technologies rather than inventing from scratch.
The Case for Catalytic Capital
Bringing a funding perspective, Cliff Prior, senior advisor and former CEO of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing, framed impact licensing within broader trends in the impact investing movement.
While the global market now stands at around $1.6 trillion, Prior noted that challenges remain — including political backlash against ESG investing and the need for clearer, more relatable narratives. “People don’t respond to ‘decarbonization’,” he said. “They respond to clean air, better jobs, and lower bills.”
He stressed that early-stage innovations like impact licensing need venture philanthropy and blended finance to thrive, citing successful examples such as the SDG Loan Fund, which mobilized over $1 billion through a mix of institutional and catalytic capital. In this context, he called impact licensing “one of the most promising new tools” to activate dormant intellectual property for social and environmental benefit.
Christ’l Joris, President of the Gillès Foundation, offered a concrete example of how philanthropy can catalyze innovation. Her foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment in Africa, has supported the Impact Licensing Initiative through a credit facility for Coosha, a project developing off-grid solar hydrogen systems for cooking and cooling applications.
“The structure wasn’t a blank check,” she emphasized. “It was a credit with milestones and accountability, ensuring that funds translated into real progress.”
The foundation’s flexibility allows it to blend grants, credits, and guarantees depending on project needs. Joris also announced the foundation’s intention to contribute $1 million in catalytic and first-loss funding to the future Impact Licensing Fund. She described this as a natural extension of the foundation’s philosophy: “Our role is to take the first risk — to make it possible for others to follow.”
A Shared Vision for the Future
The discussion around impact licensing will continue at Impact Week in Malmö, where several speakers will participate in person. The message, in the end, is fairly clear. Impact licensing is not just a legal mechanism but a mindset shift — one that reimagines innovation as a global commons, capable of serving both economic and social goals. By aligning the efforts of researchers, companies, investors, and international organizations, it may well become a cornerstone in building a more equitable and sustainable innovation ecosystem.
We find that worth exploring, and we hope you will join us for the journey!