Creating a Global, Citizen Driven Scientific-Industrial Complex

Brent Lessard
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Humanity’s progress has been driven by scientific and technological innovation. Traditionally, investments in innovation have come from government or corporate interests. Centralized research programs of the past led to revolutionary technology, but the investment pace has slowed dramatically over the past four decades and the focus has shifted away from the open ended research that yielded some of our greatest discoveries. Unfortunately, investors today (government and corporate) seek research that is quickly converted into profits. This shortsightedness has resulted in an innovation bottleneck, where technologies that can have incredible impact on humanity have been impeded or, worse yet, entirely ignored.

How much of an impact does innovation have on productivity and overall prosperity?

One study, which earned its author a nobel prize, attributed 80% of historical US economic growth to technological progress and predicted that, in the long-run, growth is achievable only through technological progress. Later, Paul Romer found investments in R&D were essential to improving productivity through technology. Combined their research shows technology allows societies to produce more goods per single unit of raw material and that there is no correlation between increased resource usage and economic growth. Technological innovation drives economic growth.

In health, technological innovation has driven a rapid increase in life expectancy. A child born in 1900, regardless of where they were born, had a life expectancy of 31 years. A child born in 1950 had a life expectancy of 48 years. Today, regardless of where a child is born, they have a life expectancy of 71.4 years. The development of new treatments, vaccines, antibiotics, and methods of distribution have seen the mortality rate from infectious disease drop dramatically, not to mention the containment of deadly epidemics. Innovations in clean water alone (filtration and chlorination, for example) have been attributed for nearly half of the mortality reduction in American cities between 1900 to 1936, as well as health benefits for Americans twenty-three times higher than the costs of the investments.

Innovation makes technology accessible

And continued innovation makes technology accessible. Today we have the ability to access almost all of the world’s knowledge in our pocket, and the cost of computing power to consumers continues to plummet.

“You live in a world where an entire operating system can fit on a wafer thin piece of plastic smaller than your finger tip. And you can run this on a $5 (or $10) computer that is small enough to give away on the cover of a magazine. You should be amazed, excited, and happy about this.”

Innovation is not limited to technological discoveries, but also includes concepts on how to reorganize to increase efficiency and productivity. Over the past couple decades we have witnessed innovations allowing retailers to streamline their supply chain and require less work to achieve higher output. The benefits, to some capacity, flow to consumers through lower prices which disproportionately benefit low-income households who spend more of their income on basic necessities.


Despite all of this, traditional corporate structures have demonstrated a complete disregard towards discovery and innovation. One study, aptly named ‘Killing the Golden Goose’, found that the number of publicly traded companies publishing research in scientific journals has dropped nearly two-thirds from 1980, down to only 6%. The study states:

“Large firms appear to value the golden eggs of science (as reflected in patents) but not the golden goose itself (the scientific capabilities).”

Scientific advances and acknowledgement, which may earn a company prestige within the community, does not always result in profit, and difficulty in monetization dissuades traditional investors from opening their pockets.

Of late there has also been an uptick in pleas for governments to increase investment in R&D. But I believe the future lies not in a geography-focused capacity for innovation. Rather, I think the focus should be on the human capacity for innovation.

Perhaps the time for reliance on government and legacy corporate structures to drive such investment and research is past. Perhaps all of us, the “crowd”, can compensate in new, creative, and innovative ways.

I believe the future of innovation belongs to all of us, and not the profit-driven motives of traditional investors. The foundation for such an innovative organization is what we are creating now. We are connecting globally distributed talent and resources on historically localized opportunities. We are pioneering processes in collaborative virtual design and remote manufacturing. We are re-imagining how people work together, how they are recognized for their contributions, and how they are rewarded for their work.

We want to allow anyone, anywhere, to work together on world-changing technology, at anytime. This is the better future I see for my family, for my neighbours, for our planet, and for humanity.

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