Innovators Take Centre Stage At WIPO Members’ Annual Assembly

In the context of a parallel event to the World Intellectual Property Organization annual General Assemblies, innovators from developed and developing countries shared their thoughts on how to foster a creative environment that encourages ground-breaking innovations.

The WIPO Forum 2013, titled “From Inspiration to Innovation: The Game-Changers,” presented the experience of four innovators in the fields of food, health and housing, namely: Diébédo Francis Kéré, founder of the Berlin-based Kéré Architecture; Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest University (US) Institute for Regenerative Medicine; Gopalan Sunderraman, executive vice president of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing (India); and Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project and coordinator of the Human Brain Project (Switzerland).

Earlier this week, the convening of the WIPO Forum in the plenary meeting room, displacing the work of the WIPO Assemblies for an afternoon, stirred controversy in the WIPO membership, with a group of 19 developing countries complaining about the lack of a formal decision by the members on the modalities of the event (IPW, WIPO, 23 September 2013). The African Group made a statement to the Assembly today to this effect, saying that while the forum was a useful event, it should not be held in place of the work of the Assembly unless agreed by the full membership. Work on the Assembly agenda was resumed in a late evening session.

The four speakers underlined how innovation processes are increasingly structured as collective efforts and the involvement of the community is crucial in many instances. In this regard, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry claimed that innovation is a process that involves “all societies at all stages of development” and that “we are at a very long way from an individual sitting up in his bath and say ‘Eureka, I discovered it’.”

In their presentations, Kéré and Sunderraman emphasised the importance of developing innovative solutions tailored to local needs. Kéré described an Aga Khan-winner project in his Burkina Faso birth town where he utilised local materials to build a school with an innovative ventilation system without air conditioning. According to Kéré, one of the main challenges of the project was convincing the local community to utilise local clay instead of more expensive materials.

Kéré explained that architectural projects in African countries often “reproduce buildings of the Western world that are built with concrete, steel and glass and require air conditioning.”

“This is not an optimal solution for poor countries,” he said.

In the same vein, Sunderraman called innovators to “jump in the fishbowl” in order to understand the needs of the community. In describing the innovation process of a cooling device called “ChotuKool”, he explained that 80 percent of Indians do not have refrigerators. ChotuKool, a red 45-liter plastic container that can keep food cool using a 12-volt battery, is addressed to those who cannot afford a refrigerator or lack of access to electricity. This device was awarded the 2012 Edison Award Gold prize for the Social Impact category.

For their parts, Atala and Markram described the complexities of medical and scientific innovation.  Atala explained the sophisticated processes used to grow human cells, tissues and organs to address the shortage of organ donors. New technologies described by Atala include 3D printers, scaffolds utilized to regenerate tissues, cells cultures and body scanners used for curing severe burns.

In his high-tech presentation, Markram illustrated a €1 billion euro research project financed by the European Commission aimed at building a complete computer model of the human brain. Markam explained that the project might lead to a complete mapping of brain diseases, easing the development of tailor-made medicines and favouring investment from pharmaceutical companies that in recent years “unplugged millions of euros” due to the high risks linked to research and development (R&D) on brain diseases.

The four speakers also highlighted the commercial relevance of their innovations and the role played by intellectual property rights. In this regard, Markram explained that the Human Brain Project (HBP) is structured as “a non-competitive R&D platform” involving more than 80 institutions across Europe and that the measure of its success will be how industries use the platform. Particularly, if the project discovers target brain diseases, IP will probably come in at many levels, including new drugs, “but all competing companies can benefit from our platform,” he said.

According to Markram, the innovations directly developed by the HBP are not always patented. “Enabling technologies go open source. However, if they are not enabling technologies, it is important to patent,” he stated. Finally, Markram said that standardised approaches to intellectual property protection among different countries would be beneficial for innovation.

Atala also emphasised the importance of IP in the development of new medical technologies. “Unless intellectual property is present, we have no tools to commercialise very expensive technologies in a wide manner,” Atala stated.

“To be able to reduce the costs of the technology, so that it does get to everybody at a low cost, you need to have high production. For this, you need to have high levels of investment, and you can’t attract that kind of investment unless intellectual property is there,” he concluded, while calling for a reduction of red tape in clinical trials that are experiencing increasingly longer regulatory processes and costs.

In a different perspective, Sunderraman explained that his cooling device was built from the combination of existing technologies, suggesting that because of limited funds he had to use unpatented technologies to start. However, in time, more sophisticated instruments have been used in the production of ChotuKool.

“We wanted to make frugal innovation, so at first we look for different commodities to put the parts together and make a difference for people,” he said. However, to adapt the technologies to India’s climate conditions, Godrej licensed out the technologies and afterwards partnered with another company to use nanotechnologies in the ChotuKool production process.

“That’s how we graduated from commodities to owning the technology that we are creating,” he stated.

Outgoing US Ambassador Betty King remarked on the all-male makeup of the panel of innovators, and said she looked forward to WIPO taking this event forward for the future.

In his closing remarks, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said that “the process of innovation these days seems an extremely complex one and increasingly involves an innovation of collective nature.”

“The challenge for the IP community is how to make the IP regime responsive to social innovation,” Gurry concluded.