James Kanoff, a Symbolic Systems B.S. Stanford University student, had always been drawn to solving critical problems. He had heard about the sought after “Hacking for Defense (H4D)” course on campus and was captivated by the idea of using the Lean Launchpad methodology to tackle real-world challenges. In the spring of 2022, he learned that a climate-focused version of the H4D course, “Hacking for Climate and Sustainability (H4CS)” (now known as Innovation for Impact™ under NobleReach), was being offered. His background in climate initiatives and his already strong belief in the Lean LaunchPad approach made this course a perfect fit.
Teaming up with Sasankh Munukutla, BS, MS Computer Science, James embarked on the challenging journey of addressing soil carbon sequestration. Initially, they knew they wanted to contribute to carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW), a method of soil carbon sequestration James had been researching before taking H4CS. They quickly realized that measuring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) the carbon sequestered in the soil was a critical component of the puzzle.
Through their rigorous customer discovery, James and Sasankh narrowed in on two primary stakeholders: project developers (farmers, mine owners, & agronomist groups) capable of generating carbon removal through ERW projects and private entities willing to pay for carbon removal to meet net-zero goals.
One assumption they heard during their interviews was that farmers and developers were not interested in learning new farming processes and were “hesitant to deviate from trusted processes because of the operational and financial risk it poses.” After finding a project developer interested in working with them, they put together a Facebook ad campaign targeting farmers in Mexico, and that assumption was quickly disproven after they received hundreds of WhatsApp messages from farmers. They knew the most important thing here was to have the highest quality MRV system, to ensure that when someone claims they remove carbon, it is verifiable. “If you can measure it, we will pay for it,” James said, summarizing his customer discovery to Terradot’s potential clientele.
All their hard work culminated in receiving a grant from the TomKat Center for Innovation Transfer. This funding allowed them to travel to Mexico to implement their very first project. There in Chiapas, Mexico, they collaborated with local developers and farmers to implement ERW and test their MRV prototype. They ended up enrolling 100 farmers across 250 hectares and recorded three to five tons CO2 equivalents in GHG removal and reductions per hectare.
Post course, the team incorporated into a start-up and successfully raised a pre-seed round to get them off the ground. The team is preparing to raise another round of funding to expand their operations and hire additional staff. Reflecting on the Innovation for Impact methodology and its influence on Terradot, James notes that
It’s just the way we operate. It’s in the DNA of our company. We use the [Innovation for Impact] approach in most things we do now.
James Kanoff
James highly recommends the course to entrepreneurial students passionate about solving significant problems.
William Kosann, an economics student at Northwestern University, was drawn to entrepreneurial opportunities that could drive meaningful impact, leading him to enroll in the new “Innovation for Impact” course in Spring 2024. Alongside Environmental Sciences student Sam Rappin, William decided to work on the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premieres’ (GSGP) problem of finding ways for commercial and tribal fishers to more productively use 100% of each fish in order to reduce waste and generate more value.
Early on, the team believed that they needed a two-pronged approach: to educate consumers on the impact of fully utilized fish, and help producers use more of each fish. However, through early beneficiary discovery, William learned that “if we can change the way [the fishermen and producers] act, we can change the whole ecosystem.” Narrowing in on their primary beneficiaries, they quickly realized that nothing would change unless the fishermen and producers were properly incentivized.
The team developed a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a survey and spreadsheet for fisheries. that collects data on current operations and the spreadsheet calculates and demonstrates to fishers and producers how much potential revenue is being left on the table. Now, two months after the course has finished, the team is working with GSGP to roll out their MVP, which they will use as an entry point into the industry to get more operationally involved, by connecting fishermen and producers with opportunities to make more revenue and use 100% of the fish. William and Sam plan to use the small grant funding they received to further their research and continue engaging with fisheries. The team will expand their outreach to the other side of the industry, such as fish food and collagen producers, to validate their concepts and scale their impact.
Looking back at the course, William recalls the most rewarding aspect of the course was the methodology itself.
The Innovation for Impact approach pushed me out of my comfort zone but ultimately honed my problem-solving skills
William Kosann
Williams notes, recalling how he learned to use the skills he gained from prior sales experience in a completely new way to solve impactful problems.
The course solidified William’s interest in entrepreneurship, reaffirming that opportunities exist in available in every industry. He encourages other students, regardless of their specific interests, to take the course for its practical business insights and the potential to work on projects they are passionate about.
The journey of innovative ventures often begins with a spark of passion and a commitment to address pressing global challenges. For Fred Addy and his team, their journey started at Stanford University, where they embarked on a mission to prevent solar panels from ending up in landfills. What began as an idea born from their shared dedication to sustainability evolved into Sunkara, a pioneering venture focused on facilitating the repowering and sustainable disposal of solar arrays.
Fred’s journey into the realm of sustainable technology traces back to his early days at Stanford.“I wanted to be a part of the solution in the fight against climate change,” Fred mused. With a desire to effect meaningful change, Fred was drawn to a course called “Hacking for Climate and Sustainability”. The course offered a structured framework, adapted from the Lean Startup methodology, aimed at equipping students with the tools to tackle complex environmental challenges through innovation.
“I came into Stanford with a goal of starting a company in the sustainability space,” Fred recalls. “I had several ideas brewing, including solar recycling, which eventually became the focus of our venture.” Even before stepping foot on the Stanford campus, Fred had an entrepreneurial spirit, establishing ventures in high school like his own tutoring service and pioneering a toner package recycling initiative. Yet, it was his enrollment in the Hacking for Climate and Sustainability course that honed his abilities, equipping him with the essential skills to transform his ideas into a tangible business.
The journey truly began when Army veteran Fred Addy (MBA) and his team, including Stephen Beaton (PhD, MBA) from Stanford Business School, along with Matti Thurston (MS MatSci), Franky Barrera (PhD MatSci), and Luka Radosavljevic (MS MatSci) from the Engineering department, embarked on their exploration of solar panel recycling and repurposing. Aware of the imminent surge in solar power adoption and the consequent demand for recycling solutions in the next 5-10 years, the team was trying to understand how to make and keep solar power clean throughout its entire lifecycle and prevent solar panels from ending up in landfills. Armed with the methodology learned in the course, they delved into the problem space, conducting extensive discovery and engaging with stakeholders directly impacted by the issue.
“At the outset, we were determined to tackle all aspects of solar panel lifecycle management: upcycling, reusing, and recycling,” Fred explains. “However, as we progressed, we realized the need to focus our efforts and streamline our approach.”
Through interviews with key stakeholders, the team was able to rule out some of these pathways. In the first few weeks of the course, the team discovered that upcycling was not a viable path for their budding business model. With the significant drop in the cost of solar power and the growing demand in the resale market, it was now more financially beneficial to reintegrate the raw materials back into the supply chain.
However, their interviews up to that point unveiled a new trail to follow around solar panel recyclability – a polymer used in solar cells called ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA). The team took to Fred’s garage with a damaged solar panel with an idea for testing whether they could separate the elements in the solar panel using heat. After running current backward through the solar panel to heat them up and pull them apart, they were able to extract silver using a heat gun and a box cutter. Today, Fred is considering delving deeper into this process and pursuing a patent, but, at the time, the team ultimately determined that this pathway wouldn’t be a viable business, especially given the number of established companies already in the market.
Through this process of rigorous discovery and experimentation with key stakeholders, Fred and his team discovered a niche within related to reuse: repowering solar panels for off-grid applications.
“We recognized a growing trend in solar panel repowering, where older panels were being replaced with newer, more efficient ones,” Fred elaborates. “Our challenge was to find a viable solution for repurposing these panels, which were no longer suitable for on-grid installations.”
By the end of the course, the team had a minimum viable product (MVP) of a business that could address the residential sector’s repowering needs, and plans for a pilot program.
Through the course of the semester, Fred met a company that would eventually become a partner, Decom Solar, which has established itself as a leader on decommissioning and sustainable disposal of solar panels in the commercial and industrial sectors. Decom Solar had successful partnerships with non-profits who are actively reinstalling used solar modules in countries in need of free electricity, so the synergies between them were immediately clear. Over the summer, Fred worked with Decom Solar and together they successfully worked on several decommissioning projects, removing solar panels from commercial sites in the United States. They are currently collaborating to establish more robust overseas partnerships with developers and logistics groups that will allow them to send larger quantities of modules to other countries including Haiti and Tanzania.
His efforts culminated in the creation of Sunkara, a venture dedicated to saving solar panels from premature disposal and extending their lifespan through repurposing. In the aftermath of a surge in shipping prices due to global unrest, Sunkara has successfully created a new subset of their business: an online model that helps customers estimate when they can profitably replace their solar panels. Sunkara, with the partnership of Decom Solar, has completed 20+ megawatts worth of projects and aim to add another 30 MW this year. By 2027, they hope to reach the Gigawatt scale, moving the world closer to net zero.
Sunkara became more than just a business venture; it became a mission to bridge the gap between sustainability and defense. Our journey wouldn't have been possible without the guidance and structure provided by the course at Stanford.
Fred Addy
As Sunkara continues to make strides in the realm of solar panel repurposing, Fred remains grateful for the transformative experience that shaped their journey. Looking ahead, he envisions further growth and impact, leveraging their expertise to address the pressing environmental challenges of our time.
“Taking the course was a turning point in my career,” Fred concludes. “To students considering it, I would say: treat it like it’s real, because the impact you can make is real. Embrace the journey, and you’ll emerge better equipped to confront the world’s most pressing challenges.”
From the classroom to pioneering efforts on the global stage, Fred and his team exemplify the power of student-driven innovation in shaping a sustainable future for generations to come.
My VMM story begins on the 2nd of June 2001. I was standing outside of the Michie Stadium at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The lore at West Point is if it rains on your graduation day, your class is going to war. It not only rained; it absolutely poured down. 3 ½ months later, 9/11 occurred. And not only was my West Point class at war – but also the nation.
I served as an Infantry officer in combat in Iraq in the years that followed 9/11. As I returned back to the United States from that experience, I recognized we needed to engage our broader society in service to the nation.
In the years that followed my military service, it became my mission to engage our broader country and society in solving the great challenges of our time.
Following serving as a professor at West Point and a staffer on the Hill, I co-founded a non-profit called the Common Mission Project, which is focused on solving critical public problems through an innovation and entrepreneurship program called Hacking for Defense (H4D).
H4D brings together the government, universities, and the private sector around these critical public problems – introducing student talent and entrepreneurs to national service and creating dual-use start-ups focused on solving public problems.
Today, at NobleReach, my objective is to help further scale tech and talent programs to continue to solve the great challenges of our time.
My career in public service spans over 40 years. It started out of necessity as opposed to a sense of patriotism. I was born and raised in the Washington Heights section of New York City. Attending college for children in my neighborhood was a rarity. My “destiny” was to join one of New York’s construction trade unions as was the norm for my father, uncles, and grandfather.
I wanted to go to college. My parents were emotionally supportive but did not have the resources. Their hope was that I could find a way to go through scholarships, etc. After a long search, I came across a program sponsored by the United States Navy – the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate Program. Through enrollment in a four-year science or engineering degree and agreeing to ~ 7 years of service as an officer onboard a nuclear submarine, the Navy would cover tuition and books. An answer to my problem had been found.
During my service, I came to appreciate how much members of the Armed Forces, and their families, sacrifice to protect and serve our Nation. I was hooked. This was truly mission oriented work.
After my obligation ended, I transitioned to working for the Department of the Navy, and later the Department of Defense, as a civil servant. I worked on engineering problems that were complex and key to national defense. It was extremely satisfying.
After promotion to the Senior Executive Service, my perspective on public service broadened and deepened. I had the privilege to testify in front of Congress multiple times, personally brief POTUS many times and work on seminal policy decisions such as veteran’s homelessness, women serving onboard Navy ships and effective treatments for PTSD. I even got to spend time in Afghanistan to create plans to restructure their banking system.
Those are 40 years I would not trade for anything. I had the privilege to work with people that were dedicated to our Nation and worked, for the most part, without fanfare and recognition. They are true patriots.
By the way, I did not escape working in the building trades. Every college break, you would find me on a NYC building site working by the side of my grandfather, a master mason, carrying bricks and mixing cement.
Toni Townes-Whitley’s journey from Princeton to Peace Corps to corporate consultant shows that a mission-driven career can yield skills that employers cherish.
The people best suited to thrive in the face of uncertainty and tackle large systemic problems are those whose experience draws from diverse perspectives. While the national, cultural, ethnic, and social forces that have shaped you are determined by chance at birth, professional diversity is largely an individual choice shaped by one’s passions and the knowledge attained across different industries and sectors.
Case and point: Toni Townes-Whitley, CEO of SAIC, which provides engineering, digital, artificial intelligence and mission solutions across the defense, space, civilian and intelligence markets.
My career was built along the premise that public and private-sector work would allow me to see where I could make a difference—and to apply technology to do so.
Toni Townes-Whitley
CEO of SAIC
Seeing Government from the Inside
“I’m a military brat, so I’ve been moving around my whole life,” she says. “I think that really shaped how my professional life unfolded.” Townes-Whitley, who now sits on the boards of organizations such as NASDAQ, PNC, United Way Worldwide, and Johns Hopkins Medicine, recalls her professional beginnings. “When I graduated from Princeton with an economics degree, at a time when everyone who graduated was going to graduate school, I decided to join the Peace Corps, in hopes that I could apply my economics and business principles right there on the ground. I went to several countries along the equator and started building schools, learning different cultures, and exposing myself to new situations and experiences. And when I came back from the Peace Corps I decided that I wanted to join the government. I went right into the GAO—the Government Accounting Office, which has since been renamed—and I started working with three- and four-star officers in the military and State Department trying to find fraud, waste, and abuse across the government. It was a great way to see the government from the inside.”
She goes on to say, “My next move was over to the private sector into Arthur Andersen as a tech consultant and then later to Microsoft with the goal of running their public-sector technology interface on a global scale. And I was able to see how the private sector really interacts with the state and federal governments in regards to how new and emerging technologies shape and can address societal and national challenges. For example, we had many discussions on issues of responsible AI, Microsoft’s role in the healthcare industry as a HIPAA-certified platform, and the role of technology in educational equity. The company really began to focus on the UN sustainable development goals and ESG targets while working with the government and trying to understand the intersection of civics and technology. And in some cases, I actually felt like I was working for the DoD, as we were shaping policy as technologists that the government was not equipped to easily understand.”
The Value of Professional “Cross-Training”
Townes-Whitley’s greatest piece of advice: “Find the diagonal. The broader and more diverse your scatter plot, the better your regression line is in terms of your own career. For me, I created a pretty broad scatter plot. I did public- and private-sector work, and I found that the learnings are important to apply across the two. Look for the vertical opportunities to learn something new. And then look to the horizontal opportunities to apply what you’ve learned. I think we’ve got to break down the construct that ‘Oh, I’m doing A or B.’ To find the diagonal—to really walk this critical path of developing skills and experiences, you have to extend your curiosity into different areas.”
A lifelong hooper, Townes-Whitley is quick to make a basketball analogy about her career. “Be a triple-threat athlete. In basketball, the most valuable player on the court for any team is the player that can shoot, dribble, and pass. The triple threat. And I realized the importance of this coming out of Princeton. When I joined tech, it was the economics background and the regressions and the econometrics models that led me to see how to define the need in business innovations. And when you consider that, growing up as a kid in a public-sector family, I had this idea of volunteerism and making a difference ingrained in me. And my career was built along the premise that public and private-sector work would allow me to see where I could make a difference—and to apply technology to do so.”
One final piece of advice from Townes-Whitley—there’s no dichotomy between purpose and profit. She says, “I never felt like I ever had to make a choice between doing good or making money. While my parents were exceptional public servants, I made an amazing amount of money working at Microsoft, and yet it was my most impactful work on the globe in terms of social change. The idea that you can’t make money while making a significant and meaningful change is wrong. And even more so when you have the technology to really scale this change.” Townes-Whitley is a remarkable and shining example of how to develop a skill set to thrive in the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem.
Krish Mehta entered the Stanford Graduate School of Business with a clear objective: to launch a startup in the climate sector, focusing particularly on the decarbonization of concrete. Despite his initial lack of specific knowledge about the concrete industry, Krish was aware of its significant environmental impact, contributing to 8% of global CO2 emissions. With this problem in mind, Krish enrolled in Stanford’s Hacking for Climate and Sustainability (now known as Innovation for Impact™ under NobleReach Foundation). This course, recommended by peers, was designed to deep dive into environmental issues and foster innovative solutions. Here, Krish would have the opportunity to learn and practice entrepreneurial methodologies rooted in Lean Launchpad, a process for quickly testing and iterating ideas through customer discovery interviews.
Once enrolled in the course, Krishjoined forces with fellow classmates Shilesh Muralidhara (MsX, GSB), Tony Cruz (MS, Sustainability), Manju Murugesu (Ph.D., ERE), and Ayaan Asthana (MS, Sustainability)and formeda teamthey named “Gremix” to address the concrete problem Krish identified.The rigor of the class offered substantial rewards. The teaching team would let the students know that they would need to conduct over 100 customer discovery interviews over the following quarter, and although this would be more labor intensive than many of their othercourses, this customer discovery process would be critical in Krish’s eventual journey to start Phoenix Materials, the startup he spun out of team Gremix.
Team Gremix initially started out with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that consisted of a type of cement that required less processing, and thus less emissions. Through their discovery interviews with their future customer base, ready mix concrete makers, they quickly invalidated that idea as it produced a low-quality product that no one wanted. Their first idea was feasible and viable, just not desirable.
The methodology taught us to think first in terms of customers and value proposition, which is usually always second when it comes to CO2 emissions. It’s tempting to go in and say there is a product that has lower emissions and will help the world... but worthless if no one uses it.
Krish Mehta
In true Lean LaunchPadfashion, they set aside their initialgoals and instead engaged ready-mix concrete manufacturers to understand their needs and challenges.“We realized that we needed to start with solving the business problem first, and then create additional value through methods that lower greenhouse gas emissions(GHGs),” Krish said. What they discovered was a desire for easier access to fly–ash, a coal byproduct with significant benefits when added to concrete, reducing both material usage and GHGs during production. With this insight, team Gremix knew they could resolve their customer’s pain points and produce more environmentally friendly concrete.
As team Gremix continued their discovery into fly-ash, they seized the chance to visit a cement production site firsthand.Witnessing the immense scale of the operation left a profound impact on Krish and his team. Reflecting on the experience, Krish emphasized, “visiting the plant was truly eye-opening. It made it so obvious that any solution that was low carbon had to be scalable and easily available.”
Phoenix Materials was born knowing they needed to source more fly-ash. As they continued their research and interviews, they realized that with the shutting down of coal power plants in the US, there was less fly-ash being produced as a byproduct. Phoenix Materials nowunderstood that their challenge is to find a GHG friendly way to source fly-ash.
They knew their customer base, they knew the customers’ pain points, and they now figured out how they are going to address it. Phoenix Materials will go to landfills that containfly-ash, process it, and extract multiple end products from the refining process, including fly-ash to be sold to ready-mix concrete makers. This refining process does take energy, but it still provides a 15% reduction in GHG emissions when compared to concrete.
Krish notes that,“by understanding the rest of the value chain, we understood the incentives of the rest of our customers. This mapping was extremely important.”Now, Phoenix Materials has a solution to a problem that is feasible, desirable, and viable, that also provided an environmental benefit. Phoenix Materials is looking to raise 2 million dollars in a pre-seed round to build their pilot and accelerate their go to market.
Innovation for Impact students are on a mission to reduce emissions and electronic waste (e-waste) by revolutionizing the repair process for electronics in Kenya. What started out as a course at Stanford has evolved into a company, Revivo, a business-to-business marketplace for consumer electronic spare parts based in Kenya.
Every year, humans generate approximately 50 million metric tons of e-waste, posing a threat to the environment and human health. While consumer electronics, like cell phones, can be life changing, enabling people to communicate with loved ones, run businesses, make payments, and consume media, these products are expensive and break easily. When they break, not only does it contribute to e-waste, but creating new products to replace them contributes to global emissions.
In Winter 2022, Sarah Johnson, an MBA student at Stanford University, embarked on a mission fueled by passion: to leverage her experience working on sustainable technology in East Africa to tackle the problem of e-waste. Sarah brought this problem to the Hacking for Climate and Sustainability (now known as Innovation for Impact™ under NobleReach Foundation) course at Stanford University, a transformative course designed to equip aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools to address critical challenges that our world faces through innovation.
Sarah was drawn to the course’s focus on addressing global issues and fostering collaboration across diverse academic disciplines. It gave her the opportunity to team up and collaborate with students from various backgrounds, including fellow MBA students Jon Karp and Wenxi Duan and Computer Science PhD student Anelise Newman. The team’s reach expanded beyond Stanford University, collaborating with Ritah Nabucha, a teammate based in Kenya. They chose the team name Revivo – a name that reflected their mission of renewal.
The team started with an idea that eventually transformed into a company: How can we create a better repair ecosystem to lengthen the use life of electronics? To maximize their impact, the team chose to focus on West Africa, specifically Kenya, due to the rapidly expanding market for consumer electronics and its status as a tech hub.
In this course, students leverage Lean StartUp, a powerful methodology which involves iterative testing bolstered by real-time stakeholder feedback to rapidly learn and get to solutions quicker and cheaper. The driving force behind this methodology is the “customer discovery” process, where students are challenged to “get out of the building” to conduct interviews with people directly experiencing the problem. Throughout the course, the Revivo team spoke to over 100 individuals, including potential customers, repair technicians, and spare parts dealers, and further validated the high demand for a repair market in Kenya.
This methodology wasn’t just about starting a business; it was about responding to real-world problems, adapting based on feedback from key stakeholders, and understanding our impact.
Sarah Johnson
The team estimated that increasing repairs could reduce emissions by almost 1% and could cut e-waste by up to 50%.After hundreds of interviews and six iterations of minimum viable products (MVPs), the team arrived at their concept—a B2B marketplace for spare parts and a franchise model for repair shops.
Following the course’s conclusion, Sarah resolved to continue championing the vision of Revivo. Armed with the foundational knowledge acquired during the program, she embarked on refining the business model and expanding operations. “The course provided me with the necessary tools and support to bring Revivo from a mere concept to a concrete reality. Without it, Revivo may have only existed as an idea,” Sarah acknowledges. Since completing the course, Revivo has gone on to sell over 45,000 products to thousands of customers and has received grants from Stanford University’s TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, as well as a $635,000 pre-seed round.
Reflecting on Revivo’s current success and the pivotal role played by the Hacking for Climate and Sustainability course, Sarah offers invaluable advice to future students: “Take advantage of the opportunities this course offers. It goes beyond the realms of academia; it’s a gateway to make real, visible change. You’ll emerge equipped with a profound understanding of how to confront the most urgent environmental crises facing our planet.“ Today, Revivo stands as a testament to the transformative potential of educational frameworks that foster real-world applications and student-driven initiatives.
New opportunities are emerging as some traditional nonprofit founders are realizing that to have scalable impact, they must redefine themselves as for-profit ventures to attract the requisite capital and talent, and go from “doing good work” to “transforming industries.”
One such example is Iora Health, a health care company that redesigned primary care to allow patients to better manage their health and navigate the healthcare system. With an idea to tackle the existing barriers and excuses that linger in the healthcare system, Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle cofounded Iora Health in the Boston Area in 2010.
“When I set out to build an organization to transform primary care, I initially thought that as a mission-driven organization, we needed to be a nonprofit,” says Fernandopulle. “So I went to all the usual nonprofit funders and I learned quickly that they were willing to fund studying the problem, but not actually building solutions. I realized that it would take a lot of work to raise tens of thousands of dollars, and I needed a lot more (it turned out we raised over $350 million), and that I needed sustained funding over a decade (really took over eighteen years), and nonprofit funders unfortunately would move on to the next priority too soon even if Iora was successful. So, eventually, I decided it was best to harness capitalism to fund social change by being a for-profit…and it worked.”
Iora focused on patients over the age of sixty-five years who do not have easy access to the healthcare system, and linked each patient with a personal physician and/or health coach. The company used technology to keep the patient and provider in close contact, whether by email, text, or video, in addition to the traditional in-office visits. To keep patients on track with their health goals, it also provided educational offerings and group sessions. Iora was able to use their private-sector capabilities to solve a key public-sector problem. The company’s market success led One Medical to acquire it for $2.1 billion in 2021.
Attractive markets and societal needs are increasingly leading to the creation of mission-driven ventures, where a tighter coupling between purpose and profit is a winning proposition.
Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, co-founders of Coursera
The education sector is ripe for data-driven innovation. Online learning, or blended learning environments of traditional and digital instruction, has been identified as an area in which disruptive innovation can not only break the cycle of traditional learning models but also open up education to be more accessible, inclusive, and customizable.
Coursera, a massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University professors, works with organizations to offer online classes, certifications, and degrees. Coursera has partnered with businesses through corporate e-learning, and governments, and earns revenue through selling certificates that verify successful completion of courses. However, the company subsidizes paid programs if the learner has a financial need, and its courses can also be accessed online for free without the paid certificate.
Coursera, offering over five thousand courses and working with over two hundred universities and companies, went public in 2021 with a valuation of over $4 billion. Coursera is not alone. The education and skills learning sector now has several worthy competitors, including EdX, PluralSight, Linkedin Learning, Udacity, Cloud Academy, Udemy, and SmartUp, that offer compelling alternatives to traditional classroom learning models.
Biotechnology is an area budding with innovation and breakthroughs. One biotech company, founded in 2009 by scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is Ginkgo Bioworks.
Using grants from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the Department of Health and Human Services, Ginkgo Bioworks invested in a long-term vision for synthetic biology by developing a specialized capacity of using genetic engineering to produce bacteria with industrial applications. It did so by innovating the traditional method of engaging in organism engineering.
Traditionally, companies searched for genetic DNA sequences from nature to perform particular functions and worked to scale manufacturing when they had the right sequencing of strains. In contrast, Ginkgo Bioworks developed organisms specific to the agriculture, food, health care, and energy sectors, and built specialized foundries to optimize these strains. Their codebase of engineered strains was able to create network effects, as they did not need to code new applications from scratch and could start from their knowledge and relationships among the different strains.
The interesting thing to program in the
21st century isn’t going to be computers—it’s biology.
Tom Knight
Founder of Ginkgo Bioworks
In 2021, Ginkgo Bioworks’ innovative model led the company to go public at a $17.5 billion valuation.
The government is an engine of innovation, having funded much of the R&D for our modern technological marvels. In the book, Venture Meets Mission, we detailed actions that ventures could take to help rebuild trust and create public value by resolving some of the design challenges of government- venture arrangements. With the government increasingly relying on the private sector for technological innovations, trust indeed is a critical first step toward constructing a “Venture Meets Mission” ecosystem. And perhaps even more important is rebuilding trust in our governing institutions and bringing back an optimism in the government as a force for positive change. To begin that journey, the government can take bridging actions that further build upon its shared values with ventures.
Trust is the bedrock of all collaboration. We have a generational opportunity to create the future we want by rebuilding that trust between government, venture, and civil society. Civil society has bounced back from the pandemic with an appetite for mission-driven work but is confronting barriers to action. Ventures have emerged as a willing, yet unguided and uncoordinated force for societal impact. Governments remain politically polarized and limited in their ability to solve society’s most pressing challenges.
For these groups to work together to solve societal problems, trust becomes the bedrock of their collaboration and the enabler of impact. Trust in the government can rally these groups behind a guiding mission; trust in business can facilitate more effective trisectoral collaborations; and trust in civil society can bring talented changemakers into mission-driven work. We need trust to bring us together to meet society’s most pressing problems head-on.
