Innovative solutions take 15 years to reach their full potential. For the “grand challenges” model of development, now over a decade old, that means the clock is ticking.
How long does it take to bring promising ideas from zero to scale? Ask those closest to the “grand challenge” model — a funding platform for crowdsourced innovations in global health and development — and they’ll balk at such a generalization. Then, more often than not, they’ll find their way to the same magic number — 15 years.
Developers in the health sector were the first to notice that the drug pipeline took about 15 years to produce new pharmaceuticals and vaccines, said Peter Singer, head of Grand Challenges Canada and one of the founders behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges — considered one of the first such platforms in global development.
About the author
Molly Andersmollyanders_dev
Molly Anders is a former U.K. correspondent for Devex. Based in London, she reports on development finance trends with a focus on British and European institutions. She is especially interested in evidence-based development and women’s economic empowerment, as well as innovative financing for the protection of migrants and refugees. Molly is a former Fulbright Scholar and studied Arabic in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
