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The Reinvantage Reinvention Awards 2025 reveal how transformation happens

December 31, 2025

6 min read

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December 31, 2025

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6 min read

Photo: Dreamstime.

At most awards ceremonies, winners share a stage. At the Reinvantage Reinvention Awards 2025, they share something more consequential: a blueprint for how societies, institutions and economies actually change. Across eight categories, this year’s laureates demonstrate that reinvention is neither accidental nor aspirational. It is architectural.

The awards recognise efforts across Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus. However, the winners reveal a pattern that goes beyond geography: genuine transformation occurs when entities redesign not merely their operations, but the underlying logic by which they create value, deliver services or generate opportunity. 

UNbreakable Romania doesn’t just teach cybersecurity; it treats talent as a continuous pipeline linking education, competition and employment. Lithuania’s climate-neutral buildings initiative doesn’t retrofit structures; it rewrites municipal planning rules before emissions are locked in. Moldova’s Dorin Recean didn’t simply reform institutions; he reframed rule of law as national security infrastructure.

This is reinvention at source—changing how decisions get made, not merely what decisions are taken.

When the classroom becomes the pipeline

The Reinventing Talent award went to UNbreakable Romania, run nationally by Bit Sentinel. By 2024–25, the initiative had engaged more than 5,000 students nationwide, with over 1,400 participants in its latest edition alone. Around 80 per cent actively pursue cybersecurity careers, many transitioning directly into Security Operations Centre roles.

UNbreakable’s reinvention lies in treating talent development as infrastructure rather than instruction. Participants progress through hands-on bootcamps, real-world challenges and team-based competitions that generate individual skill reports used directly by employers. It demonstrates that future-ready skills emerge not from theory-heavy curricula, but from practice-based ecosystems where education, assessment and employment function as one continuous system. Romania now produces cybersecurity professionals at scale not because it teaches better, but because it designed the pipeline differently.

Regulation as climate strategy

Lithuania’s Climate Neutral Buildings project earned the Reinventing the Planet award by addressing emissions where they’re decided: in planning offices and procurement departments. Launched in 2024, it delivered validated technical guidelines and energy-performance algorithms for zero-emission buildings, tested using real data from Vilnius. These tools now inform municipal planning practice and national discussions on building standards, aligning Lithuania’s urban development with EU climate neutrality targets.

Most climate initiatives retrofit existing structures. This one redesigns the regulatory framework that determines what gets built. By embedding climate neutrality into planning codes before construction begins, Lithuania demonstrates that environmental transformation happens not through persuasion, but through changing the default settings of urban development.

Collaboration as operating system

The Reinventing Collaboration award recognised the Rokiškis–Latvia social entrepreneurship ecosystem, which brings together municipalities in Lithuania and Latvia, the Lithuanian Social Business Association, educators and EU funding instruments. By 2025, the partnership had delivered joint education programmes, built a shared social-innovation database and laid foundations for a competence centre dedicated to social enterprises.

The project’s reinvention lies in treating collaboration itself as infrastructure. Rather than isolated initiatives, it builds durable coordination assets connecting schools, public services, entrepreneurs and regional partners. Funding is deliberately blended—municipal resources alongside Interreg, ESF+ and InvestEU—aligning public policy, civil society and entrepreneurship around shared missions. Small regions achieve systemic impact not through scale, but through designing collaboration as a long-term operating model.

When growth redistributes value

ElevenLabs, founded by Polish entrepreneurs, claimed the Reinventing Growth award by transforming how audio content is produced, localised and accessed. By 2025, its AI voice platform was used globally by creators, publishers, educators and enterprises to generate high-quality speech across dozens of languages. The company’s Voice Marketplace enables individuals to license and monetise their voices globally, redistributing value within the creative economy.

ElevenLabs’ reinvention shifts voice from a scarce, centralised resource to a scalable, participatory one. Its AI-dubbing tools expand access for smaller creators and underserved languages, whilst lowering production costs by orders of magnitude. This model redefines growth as inclusive and resilient—demonstrating how deep-tech innovation can reinvent industries whilst scaling from the region to the world.

Government as service platform

Ukraine’s Diia (Дія) earned the Reinventing Government award by evolving into what amounts to a digital state layer. By 2025, it served more than 22 million Ukrainians, delivering over 140 public services—from legally valid digital IDs and business registration to social support and housing compensation. Built on cloud-first architecture and agile delivery, the platform remained fully operational during sustained wartime disruption whilst deploying new services in days rather than months.

In 2024–25, Ukraine open-sourced Diia’s core platform, embedding transparency and reuse into public administration itself. The reinvention shifts government from bureaucratic gatekeeper to responsive service platform—proving that even under extreme pressure, institutions can deliver trust, resilience and citizen-centred governance. It also demonstrates that digital transformation succeeds not through comprehensive planning, but through iterative delivery under real-world constraints.

Leadership as institutional redesign

Moldova’s former Prime Minister Dorin Recean won Public Figure of the Year for driving the country’s most ambitious justice and anti-corruption reforms in decades. In 2024–25, he explicitly linked institutional reform to national security, exposing and neutralising foreign attempts to interfere with Moldova’s elections. His leadership represents reinvention at the core of governance: shifting Moldova from a fragile, reactive system to one capable of defending its institutions and sustaining democratic choice.

Recean demonstrated that reinvention is not about speed or spectacle, but about changing the logic by which power is exercised. Under intense geopolitical pressure, he reframed rule of law as resilience infrastructure rather than compliance theatre.

Strategic clarity rewarded

The Professor Günter Verheugen Award, honouring non-regional leaders advancing emerging Europe’s integration, went to former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. In 2024–25, his leadership secured a 40 billion euros annual assistance commitment for Ukraine, established a new NATO training and security mission across Eastern Europe, and reinforced the alliance’s eastern flank. Crucially, his insistence that Ukraine’s path to NATO is “irreversible” reframed security as durable democratic trajectory rather than temporary protection.

The Princess Marina Sturdza Award, celebrating cultural and intellectual leadership from the region, recognised Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko. In 2024–25, her essays and lectures provided intellectual clarity at a moment when the region’s identity and democratic future faced existential pressure. She reframed Ukraine’s struggle as cultural and civilisational defence, elevating Eastern Europe’s intellectual standing whilst asserting culture as strategic force in democratic resilience.

The architecture of change

What unites these eight winners? None mistake activity for transformation. UNbreakable redesigns talent pipelines, not training programmes. Lithuania rewrites planning codes, not building specs. Rokiškis–Latvia builds coordination infrastructure, not one-off projects. ElevenLabs redistributes value, not just creates it. Diia open-sources governance. Recean redesigned power structures.

The lesson is structural: reinvention happens when you change the rules determining how decisions get made, resources flow and value gets created—not merely when you make different decisions within existing rules. The Reinvention Awards 2025 don’t celebrate ambition. They celebrate architecture.

The Reinvantage Awards Programme was first launched in 2018 as the Emerging Europe Awards. Previous winners are listed here.

Photo: Dreamstime.

Reinvantage Insight

Reinvantage Insight

The byline Reinvantage Insight is used to denote articles to which several members of the Reinvantage insight and analysis team may have contributed.

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Case study: Global technology company

1. The Client

A global technology company operating across EMEA, with a regional HQ in Istanbul. The company manages 20+ markets, handling everything from brand campaigns to strategic partnerships.

Role we worked with: The EMEA Head of Marketing (supported by two regional managers).

2. The Challenge

Despite strong products and a respected global brand, the regional team was struggling with:

  • Misaligned strategy across markets → campaigns executed with inconsistent narratives.
  • Slowed growth → lead generation plateaued despite increasing spend.
  • Internal friction → marketing, sales, and product teams disagreed on KPIs and priorities.

Traditional fixes (more meetings, more reporting) only created more noise.

3. The Sprint

We ran a 10-day Remote Reinvention Sprint with the regional HQ team.

  • Day 1–3: Intake → Reviewed decks, campaign data, and plans.
  • Day 4: Sprint Session (90 mins) → Breakthroughs:
    • Sales and marketing had different definitions of “qualified lead.”
    • 40% of spend was going into low-potential markets.
    • The team assumed the problem was lack of budget, but it was actually lack of alignment.
  • Day 5–10: Synthesis → Insights distilled into a Clarity Brief + Insight Canvas.
4. The Breakthrough

The Sprint uncovered that the issue wasn’t budget, but fragmentation.
Three sharp insights unlocked a way forward:

  1. Unified KPIs bridging marketing + sales.
  2. Market prioritisation → shifting budget to 5 high-potential markets.
  3. Simplified narrative → one EMEA core story, locally adaptable.
By just realigning resources and focus, the client could unlock an estimated £250,000 in efficiency gains within the next 12 months — far exceeding the Sprint’s value guarantee. The path to higher returns was already inside the business, hidden by misalignment.
5. From Sprint to Action (4 Pillars Applied)

With clarity secured, Reinvantage didn’t suggest “more projects.”

Instead, we used the Sprint findings to create laser-focused next steps — drawing only from the areas that would deliver the most impact:

  • Readiness → Alignment workshops for sales + marketing teams. New playbooks clarified “qualified lead” definitions and reduced internal disputes.
  • Foresight → A market-opportunity scan identified which 5 countries would deliver the highest ROI, removing the guesswork from allocation.
  • Growth → Guided the reallocation of €2M budget and designed a phased rollout strategy that protected risk while maximising return.
  • Positioning → Built a messaging framework balancing global consistency with local nuance, ensuring campaigns spoke with one clear voice.

Because the Sprint had stripped away noise, these actions weren’t generic consulting ideas — they were directly tied to the breakthroughs.

6. The Results
  • +28% increase in qualified leads across the region.
  • 30% faster campaign rollout due to streamlined approvals.
  • Budget efficiency gains → €2M redirected from low-return to high-potential markets.
  • Internal cohesion → marketing + sales now use a single shared dashboard.
The client came in believing they needed more budget.
The Sprint revealed that what they really needed was clarity and alignment.

With that clarity, the four pillars became not theory, but practical tools to deliver measurable impact.

The Sprint guaranteed at least £20,000 in value — but in this case, it helped unlock more than 10x that within six months.
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Case study: Regional VC fund & accelerator

1. The Client

A regional venture capital fund and accelerator focused on early-stage tech start-ups in the Baltics and Central Europe.

The fund had raised a new round and was under pressure to deliver stronger returns while also building its reputation as the go-to platform for founders.

Role we worked with: Managing Partner, supported by the Head of Portfolio Development.

2. The Challenge

Despite a promising portfolio, results were uneven.

Key issues:

  • Scattered portfolio support → no consistent playbook for start-ups, every partner did things differently.
  • Weak differentiation → founders and co-investors saw the fund as “one of many” in the region.
  • Stretched team → too many small bets, not enough clarity on which companies to double down on.

The leadership team knew something was off, but disagreed on whether the issue was pipeline quality, market conditions, or internal capacity.

3. The Sprint

We ran a 10-day Remote Reinvention Sprint with the partners and portfolio team.

  • Day 1–3: Intake → Reviewed pitch decks, pipeline funnel data, and start-up performance reports.
  • Day 4: Sprint Session (90 mins) → Breakthroughs:
    • No shared definition of a “high-potential founder.”
    • Support resources were spread too thin across the portfolio.
    • The fund’s positioning was more reactive than proactive — it didn’t own a distinctive narrative in the market.
  • Day 5–10: Synthesis → Insights consolidated into a Clarity Brief + Insight Canvas.
4. The Breakthrough

The Sprint revealed that the challenge wasn’t pipeline quality — it was lack of focus and positioning.

Three core insights provided the turning point:

  1. Portfolio Prioritisation Framework → defined clear criteria for where to double down.
  2. Founder Success Playbook → standardised support model for portfolio companies.
  3. Differentiated Narrative → repositioned the fund as “the accelerator of reinvention-ready founders.”
These shifts alone gave the fund a path to add an estimated £2M+ in portfolio value over the following 18 months, by concentrating capital and resources where they could move the needle most.
5. From Sprint to Action (4 Pillars Applied)

With clarity from the Sprint, Reinvantage created a tailored support plan:

  • Readiness → Coached partners on using the new prioritisation framework and trained the team on deploying the Founder Success Playbook.
  • Foresight → Ran scenario analysis on regional tech trends, helping the fund anticipate where capital would flow next.
  • Growth → Guided resource reallocation across the portfolio and supported new co-investor pitches for top-performing start-ups.
  • Positioning → Crafted a sharper brand story for the fund, positioning it as the reinvention partner for globally minded founders.
6. The Results
  • 10 portfolio companies onboarded to the new Playbook → greater consistency of support.
  • Raised follow-on capital for 3 top start-ups with the new prioritisation framework.
  • +26% increase in inbound deal flow from founders citing the fund’s new positioning.
  • Stronger internal cohesion → partners aligned on where to focus resources.
The client thought the problem was pipeline quality.
The Sprint showed it was actually lack of clarity and focus inside the firm.

By applying the four pillars, Reinvantage helped turn scattered effort into concentrated value creation.

The Sprint guaranteed at least £20,000 in value; here it set the stage for multi-million-pound upside in portfolio growth.
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Case study: International impact Organisation

1. The Client

A large international impact organisation focused on entrepreneurship and economic empowerment.
The organisation runs multi-country programmes across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, often in partnership with global donors and corporate sponsors.

Role we worked with: Senior Programme Director, responsible for regional coordination.

2. The Challenge

The organisation had launched a flagship regional initiative supporting women entrepreneurs, but the programme was underperforming.

Key issues:

  • Fragmented delivery → each country office interpreted the programme differently.
  • Donor frustration → reporting lacked consistency and clear impact metrics.
  • Lost momentum → staff energy was spent on administration rather than scaling success stories.

Traditional programme reviews had produced long reports, but no real alignment or action.

3. The Sprint

We ran a 10-day Remote Reinvention Sprint with the regional leadership team and representatives from two country offices.

  • Day 1–3: Intake → Reviewed donor reports, programme KPIs, and field feedback.
  • Day 4: Sprint Session (90 mins) → Breakthroughs:
    • Donors cared about quantifiable outcomes, but reporting focused on stories.
    • Staff were duplicating efforts across countries, wasting time and resources.
    • The initiative lacked a clear theory of change — everyone described its purpose differently.
  • Day 5–10: Synthesis → Insights distilled into a Clarity Brief + Insight Canvas.
4. The Breakthrough

The Sprint revealed that the issue wasn’t donor pressure or programme design — it was a lack of shared framework and alignment.

Three critical insights reshaped the path forward:

  1. One Unified Theory of Change → agreed narrative for why the programme exists.
  2. Core Impact Metrics → clear, comparable KPIs across all countries.
  3. Smart Resource Sharing → digital hub to stop duplication and accelerate knowledge flow.
By eliminating duplicated reporting and clarifying what success looks like, the client saw they could save the equivalent of £100,000 in staff time annually — while also unlocking stronger donor confidence and follow-on funding opportunities.
5. From Sprint to Action (4 Pillars Applied)

Armed with Sprint clarity, Reinvantage proposed a laser-focused support plan:

  • Readiness → Trained programme leads on using the new metrics and integrated them into existing workflows.
  • Foresight → Analysed donor trends and expectations, aligning the initiative with the next funding cycle.
  • Growth → Developed a funding case based on the new unified theory of change, securing higher renewal chances.
  • Positioning → Crafted a regional success narrative and storytelling toolkit, helping them showcase results consistently across markets.
6. The Results
  • 30% less time spent on reporting → freed capacity for programme delivery.
  • Donor satisfaction improved → positive feedback on the clarity of impact evidence.
  • Secured new funding commitment → one major donor increased their contribution by 20%.
  • Stronger internal morale → staff felt they were working with clarity, not chaos.
The client thought it needed better donor management.
The Sprint revealed it needed a shared foundation across its teams.

By anchoring on the four pillars, Reinvantage turned alignment into efficiency gains and fresh funding opportunities.

The Sprint guaranteed at least £20,000 in value; here it unlocked both six-figure savings and future-proofed funding.
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Case study: National digital development agency

1. The Client

A national digital development agency tasked with driving the government’s digital transformation agenda, including e-services, citizen portals, and smart city pilots.

Role we worked with: Director of Digital Transformation, supported by IT and service delivery leads from three ministries.

2. The Challenge

The agency had strong political backing but faced hurdles in implementation.

Key issues:

  • Siloed projects → each ministry developed digital tools independently, leading to duplication.
  • Citizen frustration → services were digital in name, but still required multiple logins and offline steps.
  • Funding pressure → international partners demanded clearer impact in the short term.

The agency wanted to accelerate momentum but struggled to get alignment across ministries.

3. The Sprint

We ran a 14-day Immersive Reinvention Sprint with the agency’s leadership and digital focal points from three ministries.

  • Day 1–3: Intake → Reviewed strategy docs, donor reports, and citizen feedback data.
  • Day 4: Immersive Sprint Session (half-day) → Breakthroughs:
    • Each ministry had different definitions of “digital service.”
    • 20% of budget was going into overlapping pilot projects.
    • Citizens’ top frustrations were known — but not prioritised.
  • Day 5–14: Synthesis → Insights consolidated into a Clarity Brief + Insight Canvas.
4. The Breakthrough

The Sprint revealed that the biggest blocker wasn’t lack of funding, but lack of shared priorities.

Three practical insights stood out:

  1. One Definition of Digital Service → agreed across ministries.
  2. Quick-Win Prioritisation → focus on top 3 citizen pain points (ID renewal, business registration, healthcare booking).
  3. Shared Resource Map → pool budgets to eliminate duplication.
These changes alone allowed the agency to unlock £75,000 in immediate savings and deliver 2–3 visible improvements in the next quarter — meeting donor expectations and building citizen trust.
5. From Sprint to Action (4 Pillars Applied)

Based on the Sprint clarity, Reinvantage proposed a modest, targeted package of support:

  • Readiness → Facilitated inter-ministerial workshops to embed the “one digital service” definition.
  • Foresight → Analysed citizen feedback trends to shape the quick-win roadmap.
  • Growth → Supported the reallocation of funds to joint projects, reducing overlap.
  • Positioning → Crafted a communication plan highlighting early digital wins to donors and citizens.
6. The Results
  • 2 pilot services integrated into the central portal (ID renewal + healthcare booking).
  • Budget savings of £75,000 from eliminating overlapping projects.
  • Citizen satisfaction up modestly → call centre complaints on digital services dropped by 12%.
  • Donor confidence improved → short-term impact report received positive feedback.
The client thought it needed more funding and bigger projects.
The Sprint revealed it first needed clarity and alignment.

By applying the four pillars to a targeted scope, Reinvantage helped deliver visible results within a single quarter — proving progress to citizens and donors and laying the groundwork for deeper transformation.
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