A new worldwide network of scientists and engineers is demonstrating how philanthropy can leverage a highly effective innovation model to solve urgent global problems.
History tends to turn scientific breakthroughs into stories of lone heroes in which individual researchers doggedly pursued a new discovery or charismatic leaders pointed to the horizon and made massive investments at scale.
What these accounts miss, however, is the reality that solutions to complex problems—and the resulting breakthroughs—more often require a network of diverse contributors with the capacity to drive the work toward a common goal. It isn’t only about applying resources; it’s also about creating the structures required to deploy those resources to facilitate such a synchronized effort. What’s needed to achieve more breakthroughs faster are new ways of working that systematically stack the odds in favor of success.
At a time when humanity is in urgent need of action, philanthropy can act quickly, without concern for election cycles or the lengthy process of realigning political will and global economic incentive structures. Indeed, independent philanthropy has the ability—even the duty—to actively hunt for the dramatic advances that current and future generations need.
In this talk, Dr. Regina E. Dugan will describe Wellcome Leap’s work to increase the speed and number of breakthroughs in human health.

Changing the Business of Breakthroughs, Issues in Science and Technology, Dugan & Gabriel, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4, Summer 2022.