Talk

Seattle, WA May 6, 2017
The Power of Open

It often goes unnoticed that the majority of innovations today stems from investments by government bodies to produce platforms, software and data for the greater societal good. The Internet, the Global Positioning System, voice-controlled software are all examples of these investments. The private industry has no business case for undertaking these efforts; as the business model and return on investment is often unknown. These well-known examples started as military projects in search of ethical commercial use cases. Private industry is often the biggest benefactors of the production of these systems. In this talk, I will speak about the cycle of open innovation, highlight a few examples, discuss what went and is wrong, and highlight course corrections. Specifically, the focus will be initiatives that were intentionally meant to be open , like weather data from NOAA, survey data from the Census Bureau, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and public health data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.