Reinventing the Wheelchair

Reading Scientific American this morning I spied the innovation that won their annual World Changing Ideas Video Contest: the Leveraged Freedom Chair designed by MIT Mobility Lab.

It's a three-wheeled human-powered wheelchair that goes faster than normal and also navigates difficult terrain—rutted roads, cobblestones, trash-strewn slums. The genius resides in the vertical hand levers: Users simply grab higher or lower depending on how much torque or speed they need. It's like being able to change gears.

The drivetrain consists of common bicycle parts and so is "manufacturable and repairable anywhere in the developing world," according to MIT. Sometimes low-tech solutions are the most appropriate.

GSK's "Open Innovation" Strategy

I just got off of a conference call with Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He started out by saying that pharmaceutical companies like GSK need a more pluralistic approach toward solutions. To that end, GSK will pursue an "open innovation" strategy toward delivering better medicines to people in poor countries.

This strategy will include an "Open Lab" with 8 million dollars seed funding, an effort to share intellectual property to fight tropical diseases, and a pledge to create "sustainable pricing" for a malaria candidate vaccine.

This morning at Council on Foreign Relations, Witty made what he called "the most striking" commitment to put into public domain 13,500 chemical structures that may fight malaria. In doing this, Witty is hoping to stimulate more innovation efforts--increasing "the bandwidth of discovery." He does not necessarily expect GSK to be rewarded financially from this move. From the press release:

GSK has screened its pharmaceutical compound library of more than 2 million molecules for any that may inhibit the malaria parasite P.falciparum, the deadliest form of malaria, which is found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. This exercise took five scientists a year to complete, and has yielded more than 13,500 compounds that could lead to the development of new and innovative treatments for malaria, which kills at least one million children every year in Africa.

GSK will make these findings, including the chemical structures and associated assay data, freely available to the public via leading scientific websites. The release of these data will mark the first time that a pharmaceutical company has made public the structures of so many of its compounds in the hope that they could lead to new medicines for malaria.

He said it was partly a personal decision. His travels, seeing suffering abroad, have led him to want to fight malaria. A malaria vaccine (called RTS,S) is already in Phase III of clinical trials and is two years away from reaching the market. Last year, this pivotal phase was launched and it is well underway in seven African countries. The results of Phase III are expected next year--2011, and if all goes as planned, the vaccine could reach the market in the next couple of years. As further background, RTS,S is the result of a partnership between GSK, The Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation. (CORRECTED)

Witty said he hoped that other companies would join GSK's open innovation strategy.

In Witty's travels to poor countries, he said he noticed that pieces of the solution were present but were not put together. And this problem has often been used as in excuse for poor health conditions. GSK hopes to find local partners to serve as delivery vehicles of GSK's investment.

In the long-term, "it is all about horizons," he said. He hopes that African economies become prosperous. But for now the company's interest in applying investments and ideas to improve the conditions in Africa--a "non-commercial" interest.

Could open innovation become the dominant paradigm for developing drugs in poor countries? "It is one step at a time," Witty said.

America Shouldn't Blow an Opportunity for Green Diplomacy

Among all the talk about soft power and smart power something big and obvious has been missing: wind power. By not being a global leader on climate change over the past decade America has blown a major opportunity to engage in Green Diplomacy—the strategic use of clean energy projects to boost development and security in poor countries. Going forward, the Obama Administration should articulate and carry out a plan to align several of our national priorities: innovation, emissions reduction, development, diplomacy, and security.

When it comes to linking climate change and security it is common practice to trot out the specter of mass hordes of climate refugees inundating rich countries as their own coastal homelands disappear into the ocean. Likely this fear suffers from a case of xenophobic exaggeration. But an already-porous migration policy does motivate the United States to focus on the development of climate-resilient countries in its own hemisphere first. Fortunately a demonstration project exists in the region: Costa Rica, where reforestation and renewable energy combine in a national commitment to becoming carbon neutral.

One can envision the United States helping clean energy best practices radiate out from there, facilitated by domestic and international regulation. Thus it is heartening to see funding and institutional priorities coalescing around these goals in Sen. John Kerry's recently submitted Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act [PDF]. The bill calls for establishment of a Strategic Interagency Board on International Climate Investment, to be composed of the secretaries of State, Energy, Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture, the administrators of USAID and the Environmental Protection Agency, and any other relevant officials the president sees fit.

The SIBICI's task would be "to provide United States assistance to developing countries to develop, implement and improve nationally appropriate greenhouse gas mitigation policies," including preparation for participation in "markets for international offset credits for reduced emissions from deforestation." The bill also calls for the State Department to establish an International Clean Energy Deployment Program that would distribute funding either as bilateral assistance, to multilateral funds or institutions formed pursuant to the UNFCCC, or some combination of both. Similar funding would also be distributed under the International Climate Change Adaptation and Global Security Program to "provide assistance to the most vulnerable developing countries... in a way that protects and promotes interests of the United States."

The bill goes on to specify the details for emissions allowances and international offset credits, but much is also left open-ended to ensure that the executive branch has enough latitude to create and carry out these new programs. This bodes well for putting Green Diplomacy in the American power toolbox.

[Photo credit: Volcan Arenal, by Arturo Sotillo (CC).]

Making the Internet Connection

"Innovation is possible literally anywhere that the internet is in operation," says Vint Cerf, Google's "Chief Internet Evangelist," in an interview with Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson of the Financial Times. Of the 6.5 billion people in the world, however, only 1 billion have access to and use of the internet. What does that say about the untapped potential for global innovation?

Cert highlights some of the challenges to extending internet connectivity to greater numbers of people around the globe. These range from infrastructure and capacity building (such as electricity and training) to security and privacy concerns.

"If we ever move into a regime where the providers of basic internet service have any control over what users can put on the network as an application, then I see a potential hazard to innovation. At the present time, this is still a very open system."

As Evan O'Neil points out elsewhere, there are ethical issues related to the process of extending connectivity that may not be immediately apparent. Getting laptops into the developing world is a noble venture. But what if development is not the only motive?

The Economist: Innovation helps poor and rich countries alike

The latest issue of the Economist features a special report on innovation and the global economy which is well worth a look. In it you will read about the efforts of India's Tata motors to produce a $3,000 "people's car" and small biotech firms that are figuring out ways to produce generic drugs without trampling on Western patents.

"With manufacturing now barely a fifth of economic activity in rich countries, the “knowledge economy” is becoming more important. Indeed, rich countries may not be able to compete with rivals offering low-cost products and services if they do not learn to innovate better and faster. But even if innovation is the key to global competitiveness, it is not necessarily a zero sum game. On the contrary, because the well of human ingenuity is bottomless, innovation strategies that tap into hitherto neglected intellectual capital and connect it better with financial capital can help both rich and poor countries prosper. That is starting to happen in the developing world."

Click here to read about how so-called "open innovation" is transforming the corporate attitude toward intellectual property rights (in the public realm this is often referred to as "policy transfer").

See this graph for a nifty visual of the relationship between innovation, labor, capital and productivity growth in the US.

The Ethic of Stewardship: It won't be easy being Green

In the New York Times Magazine this weekend Thomas Friedman discusses the challenges of making environmentalism profitable, strategic, patriotic, and globally equitable. Political and technological innovation will play a crucial role in this process.

One major hurdle is the energy market and its often conflicting incentives: The world needs to simultaneously reduce demand for carbon-intensive energy sources and create demand for alternatives. Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative have innovated a series of "stabilization wedges"—aspects of the energy economy and changes in behavior that can be adjusted using current technologies. Their ideas could help bridge the transition to a Green economy over the next half century.

According to Friedman, McKinsey Global Institute has forecast that "developing countries will generate nearly 80 percent of the growth in world energy demand between now and 2020, with China representing 32 percent and the Middle East 10 percent."

Despite the advanced industrial world's historical responsibility for climate pollution, the developing world is catching up, and so Friedman concludes that the Green platform "will not go down Main Street America unless it also goes down Main Street China, India and Brazil. And for green to go Main Street in these big developing countries, the prices of clean power alternatives—wind, biofuels, nuclear, solar or coal sequestration—have to fall to the “China price.” The China price is basically the price China pays for coal-fired electricity today because China is not prepared to pay a premium now, and sacrifice growth and stability, just to get rid of the CO2 that comes from burning coal."

Friedman believes that the "only way we are going to get innovations that drive energy costs down to the China price... is by mobilizing free-market capitalism." But the market will only work if there is an accurate price for carbon, if countries "force their people to pay the full climate, economic and geopolitical costs of using gasoline and dirty coal."

But Friedman realizes that "the market alone won’t work. Government’s job is to set high standards, let the market reach them and then raise the standards more. That’s how you get scale innovation at the China price."

He goes on to suggest a number of areas where government can help:

• Raise efficiency standards for buildings and appliances


• Stipulate that utilities generate a certain amount of electricity from renewables


• Raise mileage standards for cars


• Tighten the cap-and-trade system for the amount of CO2 any factory or power plant can emit


• Offer loan guarantees and fast-track licensing for anyone who wants to build a nuclear plant


• Enact a carbon tax

Government, of course, means us. The market, of course, means us. People now must roll sleeves, cinch belts, and innovate. As the unpredictable havoc of doubling atmospheric carbon gets delivered to our doorstep, the Ethic of Stewardship becomes less about intergenerational sacrifice and more about shared humanity. It won't be easy being Green, but it will be worth it.

Balancing Innovation and Intellectual Property

"For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property," write Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf in the abstract to their recent paper: "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis" (Journal of Political Economy, 2007, vol. 115, no. 1). Their data and analysis show that file-sharing and downloads from peer-to-peer networks have had an impact on declining record sales "that is statistically indistinguishable from zero." (JPE online requires a password. Here is an earlier version of their paper.)

This information is relevant to governments and businesses in developing countries as they consider how to capitalize on creative and cultural industries as engines for growth. Caribbean economist Keith Nurse believes that developing countries have a comparative advantage and window of opportunity in these fields.

Finding a new balance that encourages innovation, respects intellectual property, and delivers fast results is especially important in the global health sector. Thomas Pogge argued in the first issue of Policy Innovations that new incentive structures could be designed to meet these goals.