Crowdfunding 2.0: the next-generation philanthropy: a new approach for philanthropists and citizens to co-fund disruptive innovation in global health.

T he past is not always a guide to the future, especially when it comes to disruptive innovation; groundbreaking ideas or products that seem to appear out of the blue can lead to new technologies or overturn markets, sometimes in short order. The automobile, semiconductor electronics and the Internet are examples of innovations that revolutionized economies and societies. But disruptive innovation is easier said than done. Many enthusiastic claims about “the next big thing” quickly turn out to be exaggerated once the innovation in question faces the test of reality and the context of real-life application. True disruptive innovation is a combination of vision, serendipity, knowledge and a willingness to think “horizontally” about multiple future outcomes and applications—which is why it is so exceedingly rare. There is a lamentable dearth of innovation in global health research, for example, on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cancer, which is a scourge in both developing and developed countries. Overall funding levels to find new diagnostics and therapeutics for many NCDs have increased steadily, but disruptive innovation has remained markedly below expectations. When more research money does not lead to commensurate results, one suspects that something is awry with the way how we do science. This question—how to fund research—is just as important as what research to fund but it is often the latter which defines the projects and questions in traditional laboratory science.