In early February, the Portulans Institute launched ‘Innovation Exchange’, a podcast showcasing elements of successful innovation, as told to us by some of the world’s most future-ready innovators. From open-access innovation to youth-led innovation, Innovation Exchange amplifies emerging voices, transformative ideas and creative solutions. Learn more about the Innovation Exchange
Our first series of three podcasts explores the intersection between openness and innovation, featuring conversations with global thought leaders in the open movement. These episodes will dive into the question of open innovation, drawing attention to the context of Covid-19 and the crisis’ impact on open internet, open data and open source innovation. More generally, these episodes highlight visions for future-ready, digitally-integrated, innovative societies with openness at their core.
Why We Need Open Internet: A Conversation with Dr. Alek Tarkowski (Open Future Foundation)
In this episode, we explore the intersection of open internet and innovation with Dr. Alek Tarkowski, a global leader of the open movement and advocate of open, digital, future-ready societies. Alek helps us come to a clear definition of ‘open internet’, and why it matters, particularly in the coming decade. Then, he shares his vision for why open internet is at the core of future readiness, and the key characteristics of openness: equalizing access to knowledge, closing digital divides and building digital skills. Without these standards of openness, innovation fails to tackle the problems facing increasingly digitized, globalized societies. Alek also roots his comments in the context of the Covid crisis, and gives us a sneak peak of his work at the newly launched Open Future Foundation.
Why Open Access Should Be The Default: Speaking with Heather Joseph (SPARC)
We speak with Heather Joseph, the Executive Director of SPARC, an organization that collaborates with stakeholders to democratize access to knowledge. Heather has spent the past two decades fighting for open access policies and practices, and drew on her diverse experiences to tell us about why ‘openness’ should be the default. Heather also explains the role that global coalitions like SPARC play in fighting for the key enablers of open innovation, and creating ‘more than a read-only world’. Looking ahead, Heather identifies key conversations about open access innovation and Covid-19 to pay attention to across policy and advocacy circles.
How Open Innovation Brings People Together: Gaining Megan Doerr’s Insights (Sage Bionetworks)
In this episode, we meet Megan Doerr, a principal scientist at Sage Bionetworks, a health research non-profit that pioneers data-driven predictive modelling to understand and treat human diseases. In conversation, Megan tells us about why open innovation is so fundamental to the biomedical and health research fields: “open innovation is not just putting things out there – it’s bringing people together.” Megan also tells us how important it is to “get more minds on the data” and build global, inclusive communities of researchers, sharing insights about the intersection of reliability, regulation and real-world evidence. In other words, ‘better science happens when we can all check each other’s work’.
Interested in suggesting an idea or participating as a guest? Email us at info@portulansinstitute.org. Find Innovation Exchange on Spotify, and find our most recent episodes online.
