Abstract

If discovery is to come to the aid of our great global challenges in climate change, poverty, and disease, we have no choice but to become much better at linking discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship’ so argued former AAAS President Phillip A. Sharp. We will provide key insights into how to understand and promote these links, with a particular focus on the more impoverished parts of our planet. Is it possible to focus on the development of a “social needs” rather than a “science push” approach to address the most significant challenges facing the world’s disadvantaged? How is reverse innovation of relevance in advanced economies? We will explain how a partnership between government, a university, business and remote farming communities is being developed to successfully provide sustainable livelihoods for those who live in the harshest of the world’s landscapes. And we will showcase how individuals like ‘Water Queen’ Olivia Lum, and prolific inventor, rocket designer and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk are solving the world’s greatest environmental challenges.