Franco Furger and Francis Fukuyama Beyond Bioethics A Proposal for Modernizing the Regulation of Human Biotechnologies Reproductive medicine and biomedical research are advancing quickly—though few seem to notice outside the medical and scientific communities. According to the Centers for Disease Control, In 1995 über 280 fertility programs were operat- ing in the United States. Nine years later, In 2004, this figure had risen by 47%,

Timothy E. Wirth The Biofuels Conundrum Their Potential for Good or Ill is Enormous; Getting the Rules Right is Critical Climate change has risen to the forefront of the international agenda, and not just as an environmental issue—for its economic, politisch, and security implications as well. Preventing catastrophic climate change is the challenge of this generation. To succeed, we must foster a new energy economy

Karim R. Lakhani and Jill A. Panetta The Principles of Distributed Innovation “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else” is known as Joy’s Law in the high-tech industry. Attributed to Sun Microsystems co- founder Bill Joy, this “law” emphasizes the essential knowledge problem that faces many enterprises today, das ist, that in any given sphere of activity most

Robin Hanson The Policy Analysis Market A Thwarted Experiment in the Use of Prediction Markets for Public Policy Innovations Case Narrative: Policy Analysis Market The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in prediction markets. We have long had speculative markets in gold, currency, pigs, and other commodities, which as a side effect do a remarkable job of aggregating information. Prediction markets turn

Paul R. Verkuil The Values and Limits of Substitutional Sovereignty Innovations Case Discussion: Second Life I have been asked to comment on Cory Ondrejka’s “Collapsing Geography” in part because I have recently written about traditional sovereignty.1 I was not a partici- pant in Second Life (SL), but as a result of this assignment I have become one. This experiment with virtualism serves to critique values

Thomas M. Malaby Contriving Constraints The Gameness of Second Life and the Persistence of Scarcity Innovations Case Discussion: Second Life Cory Ondrejka’s case study of Second Life is a rich account both of what makes Second Life (SL hereafter) distinctive and of those possibilities that it may fairly be said to herald for the coming (arrived?) era of virtual worlds. There is little doubt that

Philip Evans A Silicon Silicon Valley? Virtual Innovation and Virtual Geography Innovations Case Discussion: Second Life Virtual worlds represent the “collapse” of geography, as Cory Ondrejka asserts. They are also its vindication. In the large, as with other Internet platforms, virtual worlds bring together people who in reality are dispersed across the globe. And within the virtual world people fly or teleport with an ease

Diego Rodriguez and Doug Solomon Leadership and Innovation in a Networked World In 2001, Scott Johnson was a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He had every- thing he wanted in life, except for one thing: afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) für 25 Jahre, he lacked a clear path back to full health. That year, he read a brief arti- cle in BusinessWeek about the possibility of

Cory Ondrejka Collapsing Geography Second Life, Innovation, and the Future of National Power Innovations Case Narrative: Second Life Geography constrains everything humans do. From our amazing abilities to navi- gate and model 3-dimensional space to the locations of multinational corpora- tions’ headquarters, physical and social evolution have been firmly shaped by geo- graphic constraints. At the personal level, it impacts how we build memories, com-

Thomas W. Malone and Mark Klein Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Address Global Climate Change Global climate change, caused by human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions, is perhaps the most pressing and important problem currently facing humanity. It is also unique by virtue of being a truly systemic problem of vast complexity: it affects every one of us, and is directly affected by every one of our actions. Wie

Thinh Nguyen Science Commons: Material Transfer Agreement Project Access to unique research resources, such as biological materials and reagents, is vital to the success and advancement of science. Many research protocols require assembling a large and diverse set of materials from many sources. Noch, often the process of finding and negotiating the transfer of such materials can be difficult and time-consuming. The ability to locate

Charlie Brown Open Sourcing Social Solutions Building Communities of Change Since its founding in 1981, Ashoka has elected nearly 2,000 Fellows working in over 70 Länder. These Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs who have pioneered innovative solutions to societal challenges. As agents of change, these individuals have been as inspiring as they have been effective. Jedoch, as Ashoka has grown, it has faced a new

Bhaskar Chakravorti Innovation Without Borders The classic image of the innovator is that of the iconclast who breaks away from the pack and “thinks different.” Quite surely, that famous advertising byline helped win the computer maker, Apple, ultimate iconic status of innovator as the ultimate iconoclast. Equally famously, Apple Computer made its system incompatible with the prevailing standard: you were either with the nearly 90%

Elisabeth Rhyne and María Otero Microfinance Matures Opportunities, Risks, and Obstacles for an Emerging Global Industry Microfinance is on its way to becoming mainstream. This transition creates tremendous opportunities for the service providers involved and, more important- ly for the millions of people who will, as a consequence, newly have access to finan- cial services. Yet the shift is neither inevitable nor without risks. Während

Mudit Kapoor, Jonathan Morduch, and Shamika Ravi From Microfinance to m-Finance Innovations Case Discussion: M-PESA In some countries it can take years to get a new telephone line installed. In 1990, there were just 10 telephone lines installed for every 1000 people in the Philippines. In Kenya, the ratio was 7 per thousand. In India, 6 per thousand. Compare that with the United Kingdom with

Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie M-PESA: Mobile Money for the “Unbanked” Turning Cellphones into 24-Hour Tellers in Kenya In March 2007, Kenya’s largest mobile network operator, Safaricom (part of the Vodafone Group) launched M-PESA, an innovative payment service for the unbanked. “Pesa” is the Swahili word for cash; the “M” is for mobile. Within the first month Safaricom had registered over 20,000 M-PESA customers, well

Robert D. Austin Kiva as a Test of Our “Societal Creativity” Innovations Case Discussion: Kiva.org The accomplishments of the team of founders at Kiva are impressive on many lev- els. Their use of technology to connect Westerners who have money with people in the developing world who need small loans to start businesses achieves both eco- nomic and social benefits. It creates a form of

Matt Flannery Kiva and the Birth of Person-to-Person Microfinance I started Kiva in 2005 with my wife, Jessica. Kiva is an online lending platform that allows individuals in the developed world to loan to small business people in the developing world. Kiva operates in the microfinance space and works with a grow- ing network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in more than thirty countries. Our MFI