Imagine an inventive problem solver in a small regional university or company in India/Ghana/Vietnam/Colombia. This individual, usually with modest or no financial resources may perceive a problem or be charged with solving a problem of local relevance, perhaps a crop production challenge, or a public health challenge.
An idea about how to approach a solution may be germinating, or she may be overwhelmed by the responsibility. How can she find the energy, knowledge, toolkit and capacity to explore potential solutions and adapt and shape them for her problem? How can she form a mechanism for delivery whether public or private enterprise? How can she ensure a sustainable contribution to that solution?
The following scenario describes how we hope the BioForge will eventually work. To get there will require the efforts of a community of scientists, agriculturalists, activists, translators, etc.
The inventor described above will almost certainly have access to the web. This is increasing exponentially throughout the world and will within ten years be ubiquitous with affordable high bandwidth.
When she accesses the Bioforge from her own country, she will find many categories of problems being tackled by countless groups and individuals. She will readily find a group or groups that has some synergies with her and the problem she faces. If such a group doesn't exist, she can place a call to the BioForge community to help structure such a group.
In the Bioforge of the future we envision, she will find extraordinary databases navigable by the neophyte, that can indicate what worldwide progress in the public or proprietary domain has already been made that could be relevant. Is she re-inventing a wheel? Has her idea already been appropriated in the proprietary domain, or otherwise restricted by patents in relevant jurisdictions? Are there ways to manoeuvre within this minefield and find technical and legal means forward? The foundations of such databases are already present in the Patent Lens on this website, and we envision that the contributions of many country's government patent authorities will be added to it.
In the BioForge of the future we envision, she will have the ability to interpret and filter this massive information load through a culturally and personally friendly interface that uses powerful informatics aids to guide her queries based on her own knowledge, language and needs, using complex and dynamic relevance ranking systems - operating behind the scenes - to allow her to view those gems that are most likely appropriate to advancing her project. Without such assistance these databases afford only information, rarely knowledge and never wisdom. The foundations of such a search engine are already provided in the Patent Lens on this website, and we envision that the contributions of many translators and additional creative informatics will be well used and appreciated here.
Returning to the inventor in the hypothetical example, when she finds a group with a similar or compatible goal, the BioForge provides a simple means to access the expertise, and the assurance - by virtue of the BIOS license under which others are using the technology, as well as by virtue of the community norms - that she will have access to the fruits of the group's labours, without fear of misappropriation. If she needs to form a new group, a BioForge Portfolio manager who is conversant with the category of innovation she chooses will assist in the formation of the group, and championing interested individuals or institutions to add to its critical mass. We are looking for volunteers to help in this way!
Within her new group, we envision that the database and search tools described above will be supplemented by seamless research management software t ools that can query the status-quo of worldwide patent and life science databases, including traditional knowledge, to find legally and technically ap propriate cornerstones from which to build, and to guide the efforts of the teams - small or large - with contributions - small or large - that can be coalesced into a practical and deliverable project. If there prove to be bottlenecks of a technical nature, calls can be made to the BIOS and BioForge community to invoke incentives within the community - prizes, challenges - to craft work-arounds to these blockages. If you are reading this and feel it to be far in the future, realise that the first Bioforge project, Transbacter, was crafted in exactly this way.
Members of the worldwide research community can find opportunities to volunteer an hour, a day, a week of their time, secure that their contribution is going towards an end that has a high probability of making a difference. A grad student in Berkeley, a technician in Bangladesh can access BioForge of an evening, and find this project and offer assistance, which can be an observation of what has been tried successfully or unsuccessfully. If the project is particularly exciting, or a case can be made for its importance, one or more of the many public and private institutional investors and funders - foundations, governments, businesses - who also access the BioForge and use its facilities can be made enthusiastic, and can establish a revenue base from which to draw to overcome resource limitations on key players.
An inventor can surf and work within this site filled with biological innovators, secure in the knowledge that this community is based on a premise of sharing the tools and improvements that are developed. Everyone who logs in to the site has agreed to the legal environment in which BioForge is acting is crafted, similar to SourceForge or other Open Source project repositories, and many of the projects are being carried out under specific licenses that guar antee that other licensees will not take any action to prevent the collective contributions to commercial practice in her region.
This confidence can be shared by her local investors - public or private - who can be encouraged that a development based on and leveraging the open-source community can have real critical mass for improvement and testing, and legal precedent for delivery. This investment will be critical to ensure she has the sustainable resource base to implement, test, learn from, revise and ultimately deliver and support her innovation in the region in which she operates.
Small local enterprise can form around this innovation, not beholden to third-party rights, with the confidence that if it is successful it need not be unambitious but could trade the products or services that flow on from its development efforts on a national, regional or even international scale.
This scenario requires nothing that is without precedent, or that is fanciful. The community of goodwill that exists in the world scientific and biological community (extending to farmers and public health professionals) is without doubt. The legal and business precedents are strong as manifest by the extraordinary success and momentum of the open source software community. The software and informatics that must be created and harnessed are manageable. The communications paradigms and opportunities are in place and growing indisputably into the communities most neglected economically.
Biological advances are staggering, and offer the real possibilities of powerful transformative technology tools to allow what ten years ago would be thought only the province of the rich corporations. All that has been lacking until now has been the institutional and political will, and the base from which the BIOS initiative and BioForge could build. Return to the BioForge, and see what it is already building!
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