4) The Innovation Factory

Part 4 of the 12-part series - 'A Grand Machine to Beat Covid-19' - describes how the Machine uses open innovation and crowdsourcing to develop new technologies and systems.

The Innovation Factory takes the outputs of the Knowledge Refinery and transforms them into new: ideas and plans; designs and prototypes; inventions and technologies. It can help to develop all of the necessary innovations required for the fight against C-19. Like the Knowledge Refinery, it operates using combinations of simple and complex crowdsourcing and blends of competitive and cooperative OI. Comprehensive, objective and rigorous scientific testing is another recurrent theme.

Innovation Challenges

Most Innovation Factory crowdsourcing projects are formulated as Competitive Challenges. Let’s explore using the hypothetical example of the ‘Diagnostic Technology Experimental Challenge’ – focusing on technologies that diagnose whether people have been infected with C-19 in the past.

The process begins by rigorously testing the efficacy of all existing diagnostic devices, in an experiment conducted by professional scientists and overseen by esteemed institutions. The technologies are assessed according to pre-specified evaluation measures, including: accuracy (sensitivity and specificity), time-to-results, total cost-per-use, ease-of-use, etc.

These should generally be formulated as quantified metrics: a percentage, number of minutes, amount of money, etc. Sometimes this can be done by using numbered categories (e.g. ease-of-use rated from 1-5, with ‘1’ meaning professionals in a lab need to conduct the diagnosis, and ‘5’ meaning untrained people can do it themselves, at home). Specialist crowds/ juries/ judging panels can be used to collectively make a variety of important subjective assessments.

Ultimately the diagnostic devices will be holistically rated, ranked and reviewed, with the best performer going to the top of a publicly-displayed leader-board. The MMM will also acknowledge different capability specialities – e.g. highlighting the easiest-to-use or best-value options. Ideally, comprehensive technical details of all technologies will be made openly available on the platform.

This should provide plenty of useful information for innovators competing/ cooperating in the ‘Diagnostic Technology Ideation Challenge’. The contest starts with an open call for ideas regarding new C-19-testing devices. Entrants submit their designs to be displayed on the platform, with other cogs able to comment on, engage with, and up-vote the concepts.

At set intervals of time (and after careful crowd-filtering) a specialist judging panel assesses the submissions and awards them points, based on factors such as viability, novelty, chance of real-world success, etc. All the ideas are presented openly on the platform (winners and finalists are emphasised) with intellectual property claims renounced, so anybody is allowed to use, improve and innovate the concepts.

Meanwhile, the Diagnostic Technology Experimental Challenge keeps going, inviting innovators to submit new prototypes for evaluation, as soon as they’re invented. Submissions come in from entrepreneurs and startups, open source teams and online collaborations… fresh entrants with new systems, alongside established players, improving on their existing devices. Participating cogs can make use of all the information, experimental results and ideas accumulating on the platform, as well as the opportunities to join forces and collaborate with others.

Credible submissions are put through rigorous MMM assessment trials, with gold-standard technologies highlighted at the top of the leader-board. The Ideation and Experimental Challenges keep going until humanity’s Coronavirus diagnostic devices are as good as we need them to be. And perhaps, it may be worth running a ‘Diagnostic Technology Manufacturing Challenge’, specifically focussing on reducing production timelines and costs.

This process, or something similar, can be applied to guide the development of all the technologies required to combat C-19. Clearly, there could be a parallel programme of Diagnostic Technology Challenges concentrating on devices that detect existing infections. And perhaps, a holistic Challenge, focussed on building an all-in-one diagnostic device?

Programmes can be targeted towards improved ventilators, personal protective equipment, contact tracing systems… and of course, treatment therapies and vaccines. Alongside these, an eclectic variety of pandemic impact-mitigation innovations are required – such as working-from-home, distance-education and remote-examination tools.

As well as technologies, specific systems can be objectively evaluated through the MMM. For example, assessing different ways of deploying the same testing-technologies, in order to identify best practice and highlight gold-standard approaches (comparing drive-through testing, mobile units, extra-large centres, etc.).

Ideas for planning and policy can also be crowdsourced: How can social distancing rules be made more humane without losing efficacy? Any ideas for making healthcare systems more robust? How should the vaccine be distributed, once it’s developed? The Machine thus provides policymakers and planners with an imaginative range of option alternatives, annotated with informed debate.

Some Challenges will focus closely around a certain subject-area, whilst others will be expansively framed. For example, an open question asking how to slow the spread of the virus might see all manner of different approaches advanced: alarm rings to stop people touching their face; novel contact tracing procedures; robotic, stick-on cleaners for public transport doors; etc.

Challenge Definition and Design

Essentially, the Grand Challenge of solving C-19 is broken down into myriad overlapping, interconnected Programmes, themselves dividing into webs of Challenges and Sub-Challenges… and all beautifully visualised on the MMM. This requires a comprehensive process of ‘Challenge Definition and Design’, which needs to be crowdsourced itself. Individuals (healthcare workers, public procurers, scientists… or anyone whose interested) can propose Challenges, and a crowd with varying specialisations and skillsets will then help to edit, develop and fine-tune the proposals. ‘Cog Circles’ (councils) provide oversight, to weed out poorly-conceived Challenges, or those that replicate existing initiatives.

It’s important to involve experienced crowdsourcing experts in Challenge Definition, because programme design is always more complex than it sounds. The right question, must be posed in the right way, with the right balance of openness and specificity. Success metrics should be carefully formulated, with all sorts of intricate complications factored in. Challenge Programmes will need to be properly sequenced, spin-off or Sub-Challenges drawn out, overlapping projects taken into consideration... with everything thoughtfully framed, so as to expect (and encourage) the unexpected.

The Challenges described here, have been relatively straightforward mechanisms:

· Different variations of Ideation-style Challenge subjectively assess concepts, proposals, theories, research papers, etc.

· Experimental/ Prototype Challenges apply scientific methods to evaluate practical innovations

· Forecasting Challenges live-test predictive models against freshly-emerging data

· Different variations of Data Challenge focus on data manipulation, organisation and analysis

Interestingly, there are more indirect and intricate ways of framing Challenges – approaches that imaginatively transform innovation tasks into enjoyable games, for example. We’ll avoid going off on this tangent, but it’s worth noting: OI mechanisms are highly versatile tools, with endless scope for ingenious design.

Innovation Challenges usually offer financial rewards to the winners. This hasn’t been emphasised so far, as it seemed inappropriate to foreground in the context of a deadly, global pandemic. And in this wartime atmosphere, there’s plenty of people ready and able to work purely for the Cause. However, awarding financial prizes to competition winners and runners-up is a good idea in many circumstances.

For example, Ideation Challenge winners should receive money to fund the development of prototypes for testing in the related Experimental Challenge. Same goes for Theory Challenge winners receiving finance to cover their participation in subsequent Research Challenges. The system thus meritocratically allocates research and innovation investment based on proven past success.

The reputational reward of winning an MMM Challenge should be a substantial motivation to compete. In the case of many experimental competitions, attaining gold-standard approval for a specific technology could enable entrepreneurs and enterprises to convert this prestige into significant profits… especially if they own the intellectual property. Which calls to attention an important issue – in the global crisis context, it’s clearly undesirable (and politically unrealistic) for key solution technologies to be owned through private patents (and the open system of the MMM generally conflicts with private IP development, anyway).

Yet, many of the more expensive innovation tasks, involving manufacturing physical products and bringing them to market, clearly require the involvement of private enterprise and professional workforces. The Machine should therefore find synergy with market forces and fully enable profit-seeking engagement.

For example, where appropriate, the MMM system can facilitate ‘IP Buyouts’ – purchasing gold-standard patents on behalf of the world… to be protected as public IP, that anyone is free to use and improve upon. Rewards can also take the form of ‘Advanced Procurement Commitments’ (APCs) – promising to buy a certain number of products from the competition winner at a pre-specified price (e.g. doses of vaccine).

Summary

The Innovation Factory process can be simplistically summarised as follows:

1. Refined knowledge flows into the Innovation Factory

2. Cogs develop comprehensive programme of C-19 Innovation Challenges

3. System objectively tests existing technologies – rating, ranking and identifying the gold-standard

4. Cogs generate ideas for new innovations

5. System assesses innovation ideas – highlighting most useful and filtering extraneous

6. Cogs develop prototypes of new innovations

7. System objectively tests new innovations – rating, ranking and identifying the gold-standard

8. System awards prizes to innovations that fully meet victory conditions – where appropriate, purchasing associated IP on behalf of the world

9. All info, data, knowledge and innovations are fed back in, assimilated and presented on the MMM platform… and the process repeats, cycles and continues

10. Cogs work continuously to improve Innovation Factory – developing new systems and AI features

In this way, the Innovation Factory facilitates the development of all kinds of useful new technologies and systems. Also encouraging diffusion of the most valuable innovations and best practice approaches. Ultimately, it can play a key role in the development of the most important C-19 technologies: treatments and vaccines…

Read the next blog in the series - Part 5 - Challenge Programmes