Top 10 IdeasLabs for 2011

The World Economic Forum IdeasLab series presents the best ideas from the world’s leading minds. Below is a handpicked selection of the newest visions, inventions, insights and designs helping to change our world for the better. IdeasLabs are a unique format presented at World Economic Forum meetings around the world. In each IdeasLab, top academics present their current projects and thinking to a small international audience. Ideas are then openly examined and discussed in a powerful global platform.

1. IdeasLab: Treating and Preventing Chronic Disease
DNA mapping can predict future health risks but will commercial genome scanning place us in danger of knowing too much about our genes? Watch Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, United States, and decide whether medical technology could one day strip us of our humanity.
Find out more.

2. IdeasLab: Breakthroughs in Nanomedicine
Get sick every time you fly? Sonia Trigueros is developing nanoparticles to kill drug-resistant bacteria. Such nanoparticles to be developed in the laboratory can be used on surfaces in hospitals and air-conditioning units on airplanes where the spread of contagious diseases has become almost inevitable. Watch Sonia Trigueros, Research Fellow, Biological Physics, Oxford University, explain her second generation antibiotics and discuss why society first needs to be educated and informed to understand the potential of nanotechnology. Find out more.

3. IdeasLab: Curing Unhappiness

Jonathan Flint is discovering how to change brain behaviour to prevent depression and other mental illness. The World Health Organization has identified depression as the potential cause of a major health crisis in terms of impact on population health, quality of life and susceptibility to disease. Understanding the biological basis of common disorders such as depression and anxiety is a starting point for developing effective therapies. Jonathan Flint is Co-Director for the Programme for Mind and the Machine at Oxford University. Find out more.

4. IdeasLab: Microinsurance to Protect the Poorest Haitians
Step by step, Anne Hastings is building a staircase out of poverty. Watch her IdeasLab and discover her plan to give the poorest Haitians a future. All Haitians deserve a chance to participate in the economic development of their country, particularly women, who often lack access to credit and skills training. Fonkoze is a Haitian microfinance institution offering rural women access to a full range of financial and educational services and accompanies them as they struggle to make their way out of poverty. Anne Hastings is Chief Executive Officer of Fonkoze Financial Services. Find out more.

5. IdeasLab: Public Policy

David Ellwood says the world is pathetic at predicting risk and the future now depends on exceptional public leaders to stop a crisis. Nations and individuals fail to act on foreseeable problems – even when they are highly significant and when early action would dramatically reduce the costs and consequences, he says. Watch Professor David Ellwood, Dean Harvard Kennedy School; discuss why leaders need to know how to solve problems, not problem sets, and to use technology to communicate the issues in vibrant and impactful ways. Find out more.

6. IdeasLab: Organisms as Chemical Factories

Kristala Prather is getting greener biofuels from tiny microbes. The world needs to provide ever-increasing amounts of energy to the five billion people in developing countries who aspire to developed country lifestyles. Fossil fuel-based energy production consumes immense amounts of water. It also creates intense air pollution. Microbial synthesis is a method of harnessing the synthetic power of biology to build microbial chemical factories. Kristala Prather is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Find out more.

7. IdeasLab: Biocatalysis
Jonathan Dordick is using human cell cultures to test drugs to reduce the number of deaths from adverse drug reactions. Adverse drug reactions are a leading cause of death in the United States, deaths which are preventable with a better understanding of how drugs interact with the human body. Most drugs are tested on animals so results do not always correlate with human reactions. Watch Professor Jonathan Dordick, Director, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, explain why drugs need to be evaluated on human cells to best understand how humans will react. Find out more.

8. IdeasLab: Innovating with Risk and Uncertainty

It is the business leader’s role to prepare for the future but the future is not always predictable. Anil Gaba discusses our quest for the artificial resolution of uncertainty. Attempting to control too much is not only a fruitless and frustrating exercise, he says, but it closes the leader to the beneficial and perhaps innovative outcomes that may occur when a person accepts that not everything can be controlled. Anil Gaba is the ORPAR Chaired Professor of Risk Management at INSEAD. Find out more.

9. IdeasLab: Innovation Lags

Watch Henrich Greve on reducing uncertainty to increase production. Innovation lags – the lag between innovation and adoption – occurs when there is a delay between a new idea or technology becoming available, and its uptake by industry. While cost and efficiency benefits may be proved in a lab, even the most rational managers can remain uncertain about real world application, and delay adoption. If business can work out how to shrink this lag, new innovations will be adopted more rapidly and business will benefit more immediately. Henrich Greve is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. Find out more.

10. IdeasLab: Agricultural Sciences

The world faces significant food quality and quantity issues. Biotechnology and agricultural science offer an opportunity to tackle both problems. Paul Nampala is focusing on improving legume production and other staple food crops such as East African highland banana and sweet potato in a bid to biofortify crops. This includes incorporating desirable traits to facilitate crops to produce more micronutrients to counter the lack of vitamins and micronutrients such as zinc and iron in African diets. Paul Nampala is Executive Director of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences. Find out more.