Potential scenario for a BioForge collaboration

Let us imagine BioForge in existence and properly functioning.

The inventor will likely have access to the web.
This is increasing exponentially in developing countries and will within ten years be ubiquitous with affordable high bandwidth.

She accesses Bioforge.

There, she will find many categories of projects by countless groups and individuals. She can readily find a group or groups that has some synergies with her and the problem she faces. If such a group doesn't exist, she will find an easy mechanism to form one, and place a call to the community to help structure such a group. The software will be available to make this a transparent and largely effortless process. She will find extraordinary databases navigable by the neophyte that can indicate what worldwide progress in the public or proprietary domain has already been made that could be relevant. Is she re-inventing a wheel? Has her idea already been appropriated in the proprietary domain, or otherwise restricted by patents in relevant jurisdictions? Are there ways to manoeuvre within this minefield and find technical and legal means forward?

The ability to interpret and filter this massive information load is provided by a culturally and personally friendly interface behind which sits powerful informatics aids to guide her queries based on her own knowledge, language and needs. Just as google page-ranks can show relevance to a simple search, within BioForge, complex and dynamic relevance ranking systems operating behind the scenes can be provided to allow her to advance her project not only based on information but also knowledge and expertise in the research area needed.

She finds or forms a group on BioForge to address her problem.

If a group with a similar or compatible goal exists, she has a simple means to access the expertise, and a guarantee by its very operating charter that she will have access to the fruits of the groups labours, without fear of misappropriation. If she needs to form a new group, a BioForge Portfolio manager who is conversant with the category of innovation she chooses, assists in the formation of the group, and the solicitation of interested individuals or institutions to its critical mass.

Within her new group, there are seamless research management software tools that can query the status-quo of worldwide patent and life science databases, including traditional knowledge, to find legally and technically appropriate cornerstones from which to build, and to guide the efforts of the teams - small or large - with contributions - small or large - that can be coalesced into a practical and deliverable project. If there prove to be bottlenecks of a technical nature, calls can be made to the BIOS and BioForge community to invoke incentives within the community - prizes, challenges - to craft work-arounds to these blockages.

Members of the worldwide research community can find opportunities to volunteer an hour, a day, a week of their time, secure that their contribution is going towards an end that has a high probability of making a difference. A grad student in Berkeley, a technician in Bangladesh can access BioForge of an evening, and find this project and offer a bolus of assistance. If the project is particularly exciting, or a case can be made for its importance, one or more of the many public and private institutional investors and funders - foundations, governments, businesses - who also access the BioForge and use its facilities can be made enthusiastic, and can establish a revenue base from which to draw to overcome resource limitations on key players.

She can surf and work within this site filled with biological innovators, secure in the knowledge that this community is based on a premise of sharing the tools and improvements that are developed. The legal environment in which BioForge is acting is crafted, similar to SourceForge or other Open Source project repositories, with licenses that guarantee her the right to reduce the collective contributions to commercial practice in her region.

This confidence can be shared by her local investors - public or private - who can be encouraged that a development based on and leveraging the open-source community can have real critical mass for improvement and testing, and legal precedent for delivery. This investment will be critical to ensure she has the sustainable resource base to implement, test, learn from, revise and ultimately deliver and support her innovation in the region in which she operates.

Small local enterprise can form around this innovation, not beholden to third-party rights, with the confidence that if it is successful it need not be unambitious but could trade the products or services that flow on from its development efforts on a national, regional or even international scale.