WIPO
- | March 13, 2024
The rapid global response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic shows how innovative activity can adapt quickly to shifting priorities and a similar effect is needed to urgently address climate change, according to WIPO’s World Intellectual Property Report, which probes the complex sets of decisions that direct the development of life-changing innovations.
The report launched today finds that human innovation is inevitable, but its outcomes are not: The direction of innovation is the result of multiple actions by entrepreneurs, researchers, consumers and policy-makers, and society’s needs can change quickly as they did during the fast-spreading COVID-19 pandemic.
With the onset of the pandemic, innovators shifted efforts to address the new realities of remote work, suppressed demand for a variety of services and, critically, the need for new medical products. These include anti-virals and the mRNA vaccines whose quick development benefitted from an emerging platform that was quickly employed to address COVID-19, with funding and other support of governments and a wide range of players in the innovation ecosystem.
This important report helps us understand what we all need to do to ensure that human ingenuity is harnessed and directed efficiently and with the greatest impact towards a range of common global challenges, notably climate change,
said Mr. Tang, adding that governments have a critical role to play:
Governments are uniquely placed to promote innovation, for example, by mobilizing resources, offering a wider perspective of society’s needs and generally creating the right incentives and enabling environment to promote and harness human potential.
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