Translator: Giovani Balarine Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
This is not a lesson
but the story of a guy like you
who is looking to use his time
to try to do something for those who have real needs.
I am trying to use new technologies,
scientific innovation,
to try to solve global challenges.
To match problems far from us
with solutions which are available right now
or to find new ones.
It is incredible to be part of a startup that,
with only a few people,
a few financial resources and maybe a lot of craziness,
can try to solve some of those problems
which are serious and afflict our society.
Like I said I am a guy like you
and maybe because I live in between Harvard and MIT,
I got bitten by the entrepreneurship bug.
Here we see daily the invention and creation
of incredible technological solutions.
Software to predict tsunamis,
immunotherapy that gives us the possibility
to instruct our cells to self-produce their medicine,
machines for encoding our DNA,
which can be done in a few seconds.
Despite that, we have to ask ourselves
how to link the world with this technology,
how this technology has the potential
to have an impact on those who need it.
Very often, in a world where we talk about tech,
we forget that technology makes no sense at all
if it can't, somehow,
fight poverty,
reduce some of the inequalities,
and resolve the most serious problems.
How many of us know Snapchat
and the photos that disappear in seconds,
but do not know the potentiality of RNA?
I think this needs to make us reflect.
And this is a journey
that started for me in Cambodia.
My first job was not at an investment bank in London,
but it was with the United Nations in Cambodia.
In a city called Phnom Penh,
which we cannot even pronounce the name.
And one of the projects
that I most liked, the most fascinating
was to try to help the local farmers
in the rice fields, to diversify their income.
How to create an alternative source for these farmers.
One of the projects that I worked on
was exactly that: to look to diversify their income
by farming silk.
Sericulture could have an impact on the farmers
which could be very high.
After one year, lots of money invested
by the United Nations on the project,
but unfortunately the project half failed.
Actually, let me be honest:
it was a complete failure.
The farmers were able to produce silk
in large quantity.
Unfortunately the quality wasn't good enough
to connect them with the global market,
to give them an outlet for their product
and increase their income.
So, what to do?
I was lucky enough
to have always been a big fan of TED Talks.
In one of them an Italian scientist,
who now lives in Boston, Fiorenzo Omenetto,
explains how silk could be used
as an innovative biomaterial.
With a platform of scientific and innovative findings
related to biomaterials, physics, chemistry, electronics
and many other implementations.
When I saw that TED talk, my life obviously was changed.
Fiorenzo and I started to think
how to connect the rural Cambodia,
which I had experienced,
with their scientific findings
at a laboratory in Boston.
At the same time, I was lucky
to land in Harvard,
where I tried to understand
how entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship,
could form a winning duet
to solve people's problems
in Cambodia and in our society.
I have been lucky to have other mentors and other people
with whom I could consult.
One of them was Muhammad Yunus,
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,
also the founder of the modern micro-finance.
In one of our meetings I asked him,
"Prof. Yunus, how can I create
a sustainable business that has the potential
to solve a very serious problem
but doing it in a pragmatic way,
being idealistic, but at the same time pragmatic?"
His answer was disarming in its simplicity.
He said "Livio, try to focus on someone that you love,
someone that you know well enough to be able to resolve
any specific problem for them.
Focus on this problem, and you will see the solution will come.
At the same time, you will see that your solution will be applicable,
not only for that person, but for many others as well.
So, in my head,
how could I not think about those fields in Cambodia,
now from Cambridge, in Massachusetts.
And how could I not think about "T",
a little girl, the daughter of a farmer
who was working on our project with the United Nations.
How could I not think of the problems of a seven-year-old girl
living in a rural area, isolated, in a place that no one knows about?
I remember conversations that we had with her mother, with her;
I asked what their problems were.
One was that the closest rural clinic
is 47 km away from their house.
And her mum, like all mums, wanted the best for her children,
so she took that route many times,
back and forth, to take Tida
for her immunisations for polio and measles,
for vaccines that we all have,
so that we can be immune forever,
and never need to think about it again.
Why?
One of Tida's biggest problems, of public health care,
is having access to medicines, particularly to vaccines.
97% of the vaccines need to be refrigerated
and Tida is not alone: 2,5 million children die every year,
as they do not have access to medicines that the rest of us have close at hand.
One reason why these medicines
do not reach the people who really need them
is very simple, and again disarming; it's the cold chain.
These substances need to be kept between 2° and 8° Celsius.
Outside of that range,
they all need to be thrown away.
So I thought: is there anyone in this world,
is there any scientist, is there any technology
that could solve that problem?
It seems fairly straightforward.
One of the technologies that Fiorenzo and his team developed
is based on silk,
and how it can stabilise vaccines and other medicines,
so they don't need to be refrigerated
and they can be shipped at a higher temperature.
I wish it could be as simple
as inserting a vial inside a silk cocoon.
Obviously it's not: it's a biotechnological process
based on dissolving a protein inside the silk
that reacts as a matrix
for trapping the molecules of vaccines and other medicines,
thus stabilising them and preventing molecular movements,
preventing the possibility of aggregation at high temperatures,
of denaturation and loss of effectiveness.
I presume it has the potential
to solve the problem of access to vaccines,
to take these medicines
anywhere in the world.
We can get to children like Tida and many others,
bringing these products to them, giving them their "life insurance"
through vaccines that work.
And I believe our startup
which we founded
after two years, a lot of sleepless nights,
many millions dollars of funding received
from public and private,
has the potential to change the outlook for vaccines,
creating new medicines, new vaccines,
new products of a different category,
which do not need refrigeration
to get to the children who most need them.
At the same time, I would like to give you
a small snapchat
of how it's possible to create a bridge
between sustainability, science and entrepreneurship.
At the same time I want to ask you
as you are young people like me,
how you would solve some of the problems
that are important to you for someone specific that you care about.
And I can't wait to see you
implementing these solutions
for someone who really needs them.
Many thanks.
(Applause)