Why Does Tech Shy Away from the World’s Most Complex Problems?

Technological innovation promises to solve long-standing problems with creative and sustainable solutions. And for a subset of the human population, this promise is being fulfilled in spades — transforming life into one in which the desire for dinner, a haircut, or kittens can be nearly instantly gratified. However, startups that spring out of Silicon Valley and other tech hubs leave billions of underserved people around the world largely untouched.

There seems to be a strong bias in today’s tech community for catering to the needs of the upper-middle-classes of developed countries. Entrepreneurs are focused on, for example, disrupting the taxi industry or automating grocery delivery. This bias is driven by a number of factors:

1. The average upper-middle-class consumer has a thicker wallet and a higher level of digital literacy. This results in a greater perception of business viability due to individual wealth, and a shorter time-to-market due to mature platforms and infrastructure (e.g access to credit cards, smartphones, and internet connectivity).
2. Psychology tells us we have innate tendencies, such as mere-exposure effect and availability heuristic, that sway us towards solving problems that we experience in our own lives. Due to projection bias, entrepreneurs extrapolate their own life experiences onto the rest of the world.
3. It’s simply more convenient, cheaper, and faster to start companies close to home and in developed countries. For example, in the World Bank’s yearly assessment of global economies’ “ease of doing business,” the US ranks 7 out of 189.

This is not a criticism of today’s innovative companies — they do indeed improve the lives of a wide variety of people. But as we become more aware of these biases, new unmet needs at the global scale come into view.

Where Tech Can Help

There are several areas that desperately require the attention of tech:

• Public health. Each year, more than 13 million children under the age of 5 die from diseases that could have been treated. Digital health can significantly increase access to care by matching patients with healthcare providers, and can improve long-term outcomes in children and adults through better engagement.
• Education. Knowledge and learning tools are increasingly available online. Technology can help students without access to quality education reach these resources and perhaps even qualified teachers. Luckily, there is an increasing number of companies focused on innovation in edtech.
• Labor and human trafficking. Nearly 21 million people are victims of forced labor. Technology can be used to increase transparency in labor practices and empower individuals to break free.
• Hunger and water. $165 billion worth of food is thrown away in the U.S. every year, yet almost 793 million people globally are undernourished. This startling paradox points to the opportunity technology has to ensure food and water reach the people that need it.
• Poverty and income inequality. The 62 richest people in the world are worth more than the poorest 50%. Technology can lift people out of poverty by providing them with access to meaningful work and aid — chipping away at the colossal gap between the rich and the poor.
• Gender inequality and human rights. Sexism is pervasive in developed countries, but exists at even more appalling levels in other areas of the world. Technology can empower the marginalized to speak out and foster communities that provide financial support, protection, and guidance.
• Climate change. While the cleantech bubble was disheartening, there is still an immense opportunity available for technology given the societal and economic impact of global warming.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but represents in broad strokes where technology should explore further. As society we have already improved in most of these areas, but it is incumbent on us to push the envelope and accelerate this progress.

How to Effect Change

The tireless effort of nonprofits continues to improve the lives of people around the world, but fundamental change will require more firepower than they can provide on their own. These are massive, systemic problems. Solving them requires the coordinated effort of the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and governments throughout the world.

A common response to the call for private sector innovation in areas of social good is that there isn’t a compelling business case. I would argue that investment in these spaces should employ the same thinking that VCs apply in startups today: focus on achieving growth in the short term, and the doors to monetization will inevitably open up as the venture achieves scale. And given the magnitude of the opportunities we are discussing, scale is clearly within reach.

While there are certainly startups trying to tackle some of these problems today, there aren’t nearly enough of them. Exacerbating the issue is the lack of coverage on these topics from tech and traditional media.

The startup world thrives on creating elegant solutions that transform lives. As we move to the next frontier, one thing is certain: the opportunity to build something that can literally change the world and make millions, if not billions, of lives better should be enthralling to future founders. And if I had to guess, very soon we will see what the bright minds in Silicon Valley and beyond come up with.