Why we invest in innovation

Imagine a world where millions of babies in remote and rural areas survive childbirth because their mothers got an ultrasound via their smartphone, or where the brutal disease known as “bonecrusher fever” is under control because mosquitoes have been inoculated with a bacteria that prevents them from transmitting it.

How about a world where vaccines can easily travel anywhere because of portable and power-free cold storage? Or one where children are getting precisely the correct amount of different nutrients? That’s because health professionals can gently insert a tiny camera through a child’s nose, see exactly what’s going on inside their digestive system, and use the information to restore the power of their gut.

All these exciting innovations—and many more—are closer to reality thanks to the work of our partners. For 20 years now, guided by the belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life, we have been working hard to make sure that state-of-the-art technology and top-of-the-line health care reaches everyone, no matter where they live. One of the primary ways we go about this important work is by investing in potentially groundbreaking technologies that other funders can’t or don’t.

These days, philanthropic institutions have an especially critical role to play in accelerating the cycle of innovation. While the U.S. government has historically been a strong supporter of scientific research, American R&D funding as a share of national GDP has been trending down for decades and reached a 60-year-low in 2018. Private industry has worked to take up the slack, more than quadrupling its R&D investments since 1980. But companies face pressure to invest in research that will yield returns, leaving promising technologies that don’t show immediate market potential unfunded and ultimately undeveloped.

This is where organizations like our foundation can play a key role. Simply put, philanthropy can take risks that the market doesn’t and give scientists working at the cutting edge the freedom to experiment without worrying about generating a profit. That’s why, through both our Grand Challenges program and a myriad of other investments, we seek out bold ideas that could make a tremendous difference for people, but that can’t attract financing from the usual sources. (It’s hard to find investors for moonshot R&D.) 

As a philanthropic organization, we are motivated by potential rather than profit. So, we can invest in exciting innovations that, while they may seem like longshot at firsts, could transform peoples’ lives if they get the support they need. Just look at the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s—a billion of lives were saved from malnutrition thanks to Norman Borlaug’s decades of research into improving crop yields. You never know when a particular idea might change the world; we invest billions in science and innovation to give more of them a chance.