2022 Future of Global Governance Series

Proceedings for Venture Strategy Group at Unbuilt Labs Innovators in Residence (IIR) Program

by the Center for Global Agenda (CGA) at Unbuilt Labs and Venture Strategy Group at Unbuilt Labs at the UN General Assembly Science Summit

29 September, 2022

Abstract

The Venture Strategy Group (VSG) at Unbuilt Labs launched the Innovators in Residence (IIR) pilot program between 2021 and 2022 where founders looking to set up solutions-oriented research organizations to solve grand challenges receive 1 year of support through monthly 1:1 advising sessions.

VSG invited two of the IIRs to present their findings on emerging issues. We are pleased to welcome Dennis Larsen and Shady El Damaty, Ph.D.

Excerpts

Excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Dennis Larsen (Co-Founder and Director, Initiative for Global Sustainable Economies (IGSE); University Lecturer, BI Norwegian Business School)

Presentation 1: Initiative for Global Sustainable Economies (IGSE)

DL: Presenting from Oslo, Norway today, hence the Northern Lights in the Zoom background. The Initiative for Global Sustainable Economies (IGSE) was developed out of the foundational concept that we have to make more informed business and political decisions with a stronger awareness of long termism and not only current needs of society and stakeholders, but also future stakeholder, societal, planetary, and ecological needs. I think back to the Norwegian previous Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was part of the United Nations. Of course, the Brundtland Commission was named after her, and she was one of the godmothers of sustainability, if you will. The Brundtland Commission defines sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This is what we have to start to embrace and embody in our economic modelling and in our business and political decision-making. I want to bring to life five overarching points that led to us to focus on this initiative. I will end with a bit of detail around the initiatives that we are looking at exploring.

DL: We see changes in the field of economics. We have to re-explore what economics is becoming and how it can inform better decision-making. We see increased polarization, populism, and short termism in decision making, which can be seen to be halting progress towards more sustainable and circular economic systems. We are also starting to see increased fatigue in concepts such as ESG, kind of overused terms – we have heard about green washing. We see a bit of fatigue setting in around the concepts in the political and media discourse.  We also see that reporting standards are evolving both internationally as well as from an EU and even the SEC, looking more at how companies should be reporting on climate impacts, but also other ESG material issues which can have both positive and negative impacts on true sustainable business models. Finally, we see increased anti-greenwashing activism on the part of NGOs. Some business leaders are shirking away from taking bold action and indeed being more careful in their claims, given the potential counter reaction that they will be facing.

DL: Economics is changing as a field of study, as a field of science, but also as a concept. We are moving much more towards circularity regenerative economics, donut economics, organic, more systems approaches. When I studied economics back in the 90s there was this concept of a homo economicus like this rational all-knowing being which govern all the economic models and decision making course – an impossible concept. We are starting to see in the field of economics more infusion of sociology, psychology, more of the empathy and emotional concepts as well, as well as understanding that there are boundaries, upward boundaries in terms of what the climate can hold which need to be factored into economic decision making.

DL: Second, we have seen enhanced or increased polarization over the last few years. We started studying this from a language and communication perspective to see what are some of the terms and concepts that can better frame the discussion around environmental recycling and global warming as opposed to the phrase “climate change”. We did some research in the United States and started looking at what will work to bridge the divide politically and socially to foster a common purpose and attention on this extremely important topic. We found some interesting results. Highlights here include moving towards concepts such as reuse, repurpose, recycle, focusing on a future environment for all as opposed to the term climate change, which can in itself be polarizing. We are looking at how learnings from this research program apply globally as well.

DL: Third, as I mentioned, ESG fatigue. We are seeing reporting from international news media being a little bit more cynical in the last quarter or so. Investment in ESG funds have dropped significantly, a near 60% drop in Q1 of this year compared to last year. Fatigue is setting in both from the financial markets perspective where we had a positive ripple effect initially when Larry Fink heralded a new age of companies being forced or at least expected to focus much more on purpose and on sustainability, and moving from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism. But we are now seeing a bit of a pendulum shift towards the other side again towards short termism and financial capitalism and not paying enough attention to longer term negative externalities and impacts on societies.

DL: Regulation is changing and we want to be part of this dialogue. There are currently consultations underway in the EU with the Corporate Reporting Sustainable Reporting Directive. The European Sustainable Reporting Standards (ESRS) which entering into force is expected to standardize how companies of a certain size wo;; report on issues that are deemed to be material not only in terms of how they would impact the companies, but also how they would impact society. The concept of double materiality is gaining traction, which offers great opportunities for companies to not only pick up the issues that are going to be most impactful to their future operating successes, but to start to communicate in a better and more standardized way to their stakeholders how they are having a positive impact on important sustainability issues.

Shady El Damaty, Ph.D. (President, Opsci; Co-Founder, Holonym)

Presentation 2: OpSci Society – Infrastructure for Distributed Research Coordination

SED: My name is Shady El Damaty, Ph.D. I am a neuroscientist, and over the past year, Marvin has been watching our decentralized science movement. Today I will be speaking about infrastructure we have been building for distributed research coordination, which is a very historically challenging problem. I want you to try putting yourself in the shoes of an undergraduate. They have a background in neuroscience and they might know a family member who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. They decide: “hey, I am going to go to grad school and research this, and perhaps have some impact since this is so close to me”. If you load up the widest reaching search engine for academic knowledge, artifacts, dimensions of AI, and put in a search term like amyloid beta oligomers, or perhaps just Alzheimer's disease, you are going to be completely overwhelmed with search results. It is very difficult to figure out where to get started and what an actual source of truth is. So it is quite clear that we have tons of knowledge out there. But how much knowledge actually exists and where can we identify that wisdom?

SED: I believe it has been validated over time that better coordination mechanisms are necessary to manage this information overload. Journals have been exceptionally important in the past for curating and helping us wade through information. They sit in the middle of this cycle between funders and knowledge creators, where scientists are generating knowledge and submitting that to journals for dissemination by other scientists. All the while the journals are collecting metrics to see which scientists are working together, which ones are publishing together – perhaps they are collecting other metrics like impact metrics or h-indices that tell us a little bit about how scientists are using each others’ works. So an important part of the publication process is the scientists themselves: they are outsourced labour for the journals and they peer review each others’ works; they sit on the advisory boards and editorial boards. You have a closed loop cycle where research evaluation relies on journals that produce metrics driven by business models, based on knowledge curation as done by experts that are not reimbursed or perhaps recognized for that work. This system has worked for about half century. It has been in existence, but it is far from perfect.

SED: In 2006, the crystal structure of the amyloid beta star 56 protein was allegedly identified as a great target for drugs to address or treat cognitive decline associated with early onset Alzheimer's. Rodent models have proposed that dementia-like symptoms seem to be related to the presence of this protein in large amounts from the brain. The team behind this was basically accelerated into academic stardom and started receiving millions and millions of dollars grants to further explore this drug and collect data that could be used for clinical trials and the creation of new medicines.
The PI behind this drug, Sylvain Lesné – his h-index is absolutely through the roof because of the results of this work. But it was not until just about the last couple of months that the data that was underlying AB 56, or amyloid beta 56 likely includes falsified data.

SED: So you have to ask yourself, is the h-index really tracking the impact that we seek to see in the product of scientific research? How could it be that millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer funding is channelled directly into falsified or non reproducible science? If you dig up the numbers and see what the reproducibility rates are for scientific findings, they are pretty dismal. About 10% of data collected by publicly funded research or taxpayer funded research in the US is published alongside the papers, and over 70% of researchers across fields have trouble replicating these results –  it is not just a neuroscience thing – it is also across fields such as physics and psychology. I think the lack of data and lack of coordination are to blame there.

SED: We can ask some follow-up questions. What does a scientific society configured around open science practice, data-sharing, the sharing of research findings, and collaboratively working towards actual impact look like? How do we create systems with mechanisms that drive behaviour towards specific objectives such as reproducible practice or training? We asked this question to about 700 members in our community and they consider these conditions critical to open science and reproducible research whether it is for researchers at an institution as an independent discoverer, independent investigator, or in industry roles. Number one: time and time again it is low hassle funding. That is followed really closely by recognition and compensation for scientists’ contributions whether it is working for a journal or working in a lab, or other types of collaborations. The last two that kind of really stuck out to us is the need for global community collaboration and connection. Scientists often feel very isolated and siloed in the work that they do. It is important that they are able to tap into the wealth of data that is being generated.