Introducing CDL Recovery: The Quest For Innovative Solutions Is Underway
Nobody knows when the COVID- 19 crisis will end. Optimists anticipate a rapid V-shaped recovery, while pessimists worry this will take a long time and be a painful and protracted process. In a broad sense, there are two extremes:
• The Good Outcome: In this scenario, we achieve wide-scale distribution of a vaccine or treatment or develop herd immunity before the end of 2020.
• The Bad Outcome: In the second scenario, we achieve none of these before the end of 2023.
Like everyone, we desperately hope for the Good Outcome. Yet we must plan for the worst. CDL Recovery — a new program recently launched at the Creative Destruction Lab — is designed for managing through the Bad Outcome.
As indicated in the main article, there are two types of solutions to this management problem. First, information-based solutions involve predicting who is infectious and who is immune and then developing tools to leverage this information for contingent decision-making: if X is predicted to be true, then do A; otherwise do B. For example, if the system detects that someone in the office has an elevated temperature, then security is notified to direct them to a testing station for further examination.
Second, always-on solutions do not utilize information about who is infected. Instead, these are blunt instruments that apply across the board to everyone. Personal protective equipment, higher frequency sanitization-procedures, physical barriers like plexiglass screens, redesigned workflows and redesigned people-management processes all fall in this category. Lockdown is the most extreme always-on solution, requiring everyone — whether infectious or not — to stay at home.
CDL Recovery will focus on information-based solutions, which might include, for example, managerial decision-making tools based on: swab-based tests that predict whether the coronavirus is present in an individual; contact tracing; image analysis of people density or proximity; symptom monitoring, and; or workplace monitoring of air or sewage.
The Recovery program is not focused on health solutions (e.g. treatments, vaccines) or always-on solutions (e.g. PPE,
surface-coating materials). Many other excellent initiatives are focused on developing these. This program is also not focused on automation that enables commerce under physical distancing (e.g., robots) or goods and services that will experience an increase in demand due to physical-distancing restrictions (e.g. home entertainment). Such initiatives are extremely important and will be included in the core CDL streams that resume this fall.
Novel crises such as COVID- 19 require novel responses, and novel responses require innovation, often predicated on insights from science. For example, in November of 1944, President Roosevelt wrote a letter to Dr. Vannevar Bush reflecting the central role played by science-based innovation in World War Ii—not just the Manhattan Project, but radar, jet engines, penicillin, and many others:
Dear Dr. Bush:
The Office of Scientific Research and Development, of which you are the Director, represents a unique experiment of teamwork and cooperation in coordinating scientific research and in applying existing scientific knowledge to the solution of the technical problems paramount in war. Its work has been conducted in the utmost secrecy and carried on without public recognition of any kind; but its tangible results can be found in the communiques coming in from the battlefronts all over the world. Someday the full story of its achievements can be told.
CDL Recovery is designed to anticipate and address some of the most pressing needs that will arise over the next six to 18 months. Support from Scale AI, a Canadian investment and innovation hub, will bolster its capacity to respond nimbly to these evolving needs, scaling products and services for market as quickly as possible. All types of innovative teams may apply to the program: start-ups, corporations, informal collaborations, sole inventors, social impact ventures and not-for-profit initiatives. For more information, visit creativedestructionlab.com.