Earlier this summer, for Wired, I interviewed Larry Brilliant, the new head of the Google Foundation, about his plans for the foundation’s billion dollar bankroll. Besides being a fascinating character — former head of the smallpox eradication effort in India and elsewhere (something his guru in an Indian monastery told him to pursue), founder of “The Well” and two technology companies, personal physician to Jerry Garcia, and a participant in a number of other public health initiatives, including the polio eradication effort — he’s got some interesting ideas about mixing for-profit and non-profit ventures to tackle global problems like poverty and global warming.
What’s your mandate?
We’ll have three big areas: climate crisis, global public heath, and global poverty, not necessarily in that order. I’m going to approach this the way a venture capitalist would – map out the industry to see what the gaps are. You fund an initiative, learn what works, and ask, “Will it scale?”What makes Google.org different from, say, the Gates foundation?
We are not really a foundation. It’s a bit of a 501(c)3, a bit of a C corp, and a bit of an academic environment. I can play more of the keys on the keyboard. A 501(c)3 can’t lobby. A 501(c)3 can’t invest in a company or build an industry. It may be that the only way to deal with climate change is to create an industry or build companies.
Read the rest.
Posted at 8:11 am | Filed under Recent stories, Wired |
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