Inclusive Innovation Ecosystems
It is widely recognized that innovation will be required to address the pressing challenges facing societies today. Success is more likely when all available talent and experience can be leveraged. A wide range of actors must be able to participate in innovation ecosystems. Intellectual property rights help to make this happen. IP rights such as patents allow technology and know-how to be shared and traded. They enable innovators without a significant in-house R&D capacity to access and use technology, and to integrate that technology into their value chains. Innovators of all types and sizes benefit from access to these business tools. Certain innovators – such as SMEs and minority inventors – will require support to secure protection for and effectively manage their IP. Innovation Council supports initiatives to broaden participation in innovation ecosystems.
Challenges for women entrepreneurs & strategies to address the gender IP gap
Innovation Council prepared these slides to raise awareness regarding five challenges that contribute to the IP gender gap. You can read about actions to address the IP gender gap here.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has commissioned a study, which is to be released shortly, for the purpose of identifying policies that enhance access to the intellectual property (IP) system by women inventors, creators, and entrepreneurs. While stating that it is not yet possible to identify a list of “best practices” in this area—due simply to a low level of research on the subject to date—the authors pinpoint a number of promising programs for the advancement of women in the IP system. They distill both a short list of barriers to women’s success in this arena and a lineup of possible next steps towards surmounting each of them.
Launch Event of ACCELERATE2030 4th Edition, 25 March
The launch event of ACCELERATE2030 4th Edition as part of the United Nations SDG Global Festival of Action will take place on Thursday 25 March 2021 from 18.30 – 19.15 CET. This year’s theme is “Partnerships for Circular Economy” and the launch event will be an opportunity to meet global leaders as well as entrepreneurs supported by Accelerate2030, and to learn how your organisation can get engaged in 2021 and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic put in evidence that no organisation or individual can address the global economic, social and environmental challenges that we face with an independent approach. It is now time to rebuild the existing business models with a more circular approach and address change by prioritising solutions that help reform systems around the world.
Featured innovator: Diana Trujillo
Diana Trujillo started her journey when she travelled from Colombia the USA with no English and just $300 in her pocket. “As a little girl, I saw the women in my family give up a lot. It gave me the tenacity that I needed to say ‘I’m not going to give up on my dream. I want to be out there looking back in, showing my family that women have value, that women matter.’”
She took any job she could get, working nights, housekeeping, and cleaning bathrooms, in order to put herself through community college. Eventually, Diana transferred to the University of Florida, where she majored in aerospace engineering. She later became NASA Flight Director and helped design the rover’s robotic arm, which now collects rock samples on Mars.
Quotes from speakers during the “Women in Innovation” webinar, International Women’s day 2021
The Women in Innovation: Providing leadership, Creating Solutions and Driving Change webinar, held on International Women’s Day 2021, offered a glimpse into the different paths of resilience that women have taken. The impactful stories told at the event brought to light the challenges faced by women across the African continent, and offered innovative solutions that can be used to solve Africa’s problems and transform livelihoods.
Read through the quotes of the speakers here.
Girl Scouts Intellectual Property Patch Program
The Rocky Mountain Regional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will host the second annual Intellectual Property (IP) Patch Program, in collaboration with the Girl Scouts of Colorado. Junior Girl Scouts are invited to come learn about inventions and patents, and to receive their IP Patch.
The program includes support for the girls’ normal school curriculum, as well as structured activities for girls of all ages. These activities are designed to increase awareness of, and interest in, the creation and protection of intellectual property (IP) across disciplines, and particularly as it relates to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Read the full story.
Fatima Alkaabi (18), inventor: The world needs girls to study AI
Fatima Alkaabi (18) is an inventor wants to encourage girls and women to study AI. Around the world, girls and women are underrepresented in STEM classes and jobs, particularly in AI; indeed, more than 80% of AI professors are men and only 22% of AI professionals are women. One of these female AI professionals is Fatima, whose inventions have earned her prizes such as the Abu Dhabi Award and first place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Robot Olympics. Importantly, she does not want to be the only young female inventor getting these opportunities. As Fatima herself puts it: “We need women to create things that fit our needs as a society, and without their contributions, many of our needs might be ignored or misrepresented.”
Clarkson University webinar with Dr. Jayshree Seth, 10 March
Dr Jayshree Seth, a successful woman in STEM and innovation who attended Clarkson University, will be speaking at 1-2PM EST at the Ignite Speaker Series on 10 March. Dr. Seth, who graduated from Clarkson with a PhD in Chemical Engineering. She is a recipient of the 2020 National Achievement Award from the Society for Women Engineers, and is the author of The Heart of Science: Engineering Footprints, Fingerprints, and Imprints. She currently serves as Corporate Scientist and Chief Science Advocate for 3M.
Intellectual Property Meets SMART Agriculture Webinar
The purpose of this webinar was to discuss how smart agriculture can support African communities to ensure food security and how the patent system can contribute to increased knowledge and skills in agriculture in order to enable these communities to make more effective use of these advanced technologies.
Watch the webinar here.
International Women’s day: Women in Innovation event
On 8 March, join a panel discussion on “Women in Innovation: Providing leadership, creating solutions, and driving change,” at the Africa Health International Agenda Conference. The session is co-organized by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC), and the Innovation Council.
Many of the speakers will have made an impact in their communities, or regionally and/or globally, by thinking differently and driving change through innovation and creativity.
How SMEs can use IP to secure success in the new data-fuelled AI paradigm
As the next generation of data-driven analytics gets underway and the need to deliver value from AI system outputs becomes more urgent, smaller players are eyeing up their chance to stake a claim in this multi-billion dollar landscape, which so far has been dominated by Big Tech. The author of this article explains the need to enhance IP protection beyond contractual rights to build controls and safeguards. Robust contracting and reinforcing the human element as an operational step will help to secure ownership through IP rights. This new space offers rich pickings – particularly for smaller, more agile players. The prizes will go to those best able to manouvere through the shifting web of IP, data protection, new data laws, new data governance laws, and new regulation, to claim a piece of the new AI bounty.
IP Matters in Europe
The key findings from the joint study by the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office are presented in this Innovation Council infographic. The six figures show at a glance why IP matters, underlining the important contribution of IPR-intensive industries to the prosperity and competitiveness of Europe. The full study is definitely worth a read: it provides a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of how industries that make intensive use of intellectual property rights (IPR) contribute to EU economies. It updates and extends the findings of a previous study released in 2016. The original study can be found here.
Healthcare Needs More Diverse Experts To Guide Innovation
According to Silicon Valley Bank, total healthtech investment in 2020 was $15.3 billion, compared to just $10.6 billion in 2019. While healthcare deals were up across the board, a trend towards telehealth, virtual clinical trials, and other remote practices helped bring digital health to the forefront. However, many great ideas failed simply because they lacked access to knowledgeable insiders. And those experts that did exist tended to be monolithic or act as gatekeepers rather than sources of valuable guidance. Shelli Pavone founded Inlightened to help bridge that gap and break the hold of those gatekeepers. By creating a vast network of diverse healthcare experts for innovators to tap for guidance, she hopes to nudge more good ideas towards solving healthcare’s most compelling problems.