Listen: The Essential Podcast, Episode 94: Searching for True Innovation, Thomas Ramge on the Brink of Utopia

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Nathan Hunt: This is the Essential Podcast from S&P Global. My name is Nathan Hunt. What are we to make of technology? That question used to be simple. Indoor plumbing was undeniably a good thing, electric lighting banished the night, penicillin alleviated horrible suffering and death from sepsis. But as a society, our attitudes towards technology have become more measured. Social media has proven to damage the self-esteem of teenagers.

Automation has eliminated many manual jobs and AI may eliminate many others. We are in a moment where we doubt technology. We question it. We even question whether technology is actually leading to innovation or whether we are engaged in some sort of innovation theater. My guest today is not afraid to ask these questions about technology and arrive at an answer rooted in techno-optimism.

Thomas Ramge straddles the divide between technologists and public intellectual. Together with his co-author, Rafael Laguna de la Vera, he has written a book called On The Brink Of Utopia: Reinventing Innovation to Solve the World's Largest Problems. Thomas. Welcome to the podcast.

Thomas Ramge: Thanks for having me, Nate.

Nathan Hunt: Thomas, I want to start our discussion from first, principles. How would you define techno-optimism for our listeners?

Thomas Ramge: It's a state of mind which helps you to bring new technology in the world that actually fosters progress. Progress in the sense that it maximizes happiness, health, finding its own potentials of the highest number of people possible.

Nathan Hunt: So one of the things that I love about the approach you took in the book, along with Rafael is it is fundamentally a thoughtful book. It is almost a philosophical book. And the book has, at its base level, sort of utilitarian philosophy. And on this point, you quote Jeremy Bentham, the greatest happiness for the greatest number being sort of a working definition of utilitarism.

One of the criticisms of this way of thinking, of utilitarianism, is that it can lead to a tyranny of the majority, wherein the majority's happiness outweighs the demonstrable unhappiness of the minority. But it seems to me that you are addressing this criticism through your use of Maslow. Can you tell me a bit about the hierarchy of innovation and how it balances or complements utilitarism?

Thomas Ramge: Well, indeed, we sort of created a new lens how to look at what kind of innovation do we actually need these days. And in fact, the starting point of our book is to say that, well, possibly, it only feels like we are living in very innovative times with all that Silicon Valley speak of how everything is moving faster with the future and so forth. But have sort of lost a good scope on what kind of innovation do we really need?

And you're right, the simple thought of Bentham, Malthus utilitarianism just maximize the happiness of the highest number of people is a bit too simplistic. But if you combine it with a lens where you ask the questions, what kind of innovation do we need, and then combine it with a Maslow pyramid of human needs, you come to the point where you think, well, all right, the kind of innovation we had in the last decades, doesn't, in many senses, pay off really at the bottom of the pyramid.

So you reframe the question of what kind of innovations we need from, well, we need the next gadget. We need, I don't know, to shop even faster, get fast-moving consumer goods within 10 minutes into apartment towards how can we substantially address the big health questions for which we don't have answers yet. Just let me start with dementia. See how much progress we've made with cancer, some, but of course, not fair enough.

And then move on to how do we fight poverty for 800 million people worldwide who still live in extreme poverty and possibly then look at energy. I mean, by far, having enough green energy, we need in order to stop climate change. So you're right. Bentham is a bit too simple and controversial in many senses anyways.

But to stop sort of accepting that a lot, what is sold as innovation is sham innovation, that doesn't really improve things for many people that has lost of sight what innovation means at least in some sense or technological innovations using technology to foster progress, then, I think we have to start a new conversation. And our book is the aim to rethink innovation in different terms than we often do. Starting with the question, do we really live in such an innovative times as we often think?

Nathan Hunt: One of the things about your book that stopped me and got me to, first of all, pick it up and engage with it is the title, On The Brink Of Utopia. Utopia is a very ambitious notion and the idea of engaging with technology, reengaging with true innovation in order to achieve utopia with such an interesting and somewhat controversial notion. I was intrigued personally by your use of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how perhaps meeting those goals can lead to this better world, this utopia. That didn't feel like techno-optimism to me in its familiar form. What drew you as an author to those 17 sustainable development goals?

Thomas Ramge: To a certain extent, a disappointment on how much technology has contributed at least in the last 20 to 30 years to solve the world's largest problems. I mean, we know that we have very, very hard nuts to crack and we're not making enough progress, thanks to technology. And what we're offering in this book is a framework that might help to reinvent innovation and direct it to solve problems that fit into the framework of the 17 UN Development Goals.

Nathan Hunt: One of the exciting aspects of what you've done in the book is that you have actively engaged with critics of innovation, with people who look at where we are in terms of innovation today and said, "We're not really innovating. We're engaging in innovation theater." Do you think that we live in an innovative age? Or do you think that with effort and will, we can enter an age of innovation?

Thomas Ramge: This question is much harder to answer than you might think at first glance. The impulse we all have is, obviously, we live in innovative times. I mean we see it and we were -- we read about it everywhere, how science and technology in Silicon Valley and deep tech innovation changes everything and makes everything better. And if you look at the numbers, if you look at the true problems that the world is facing, you can only come to the conclusion.

On the one hand, we have massive, massive scientific breakthroughs in many fields that could indeed be the launch pad for massive innovation leaps but then it always feels like, "Oh, but they haven't happened yet." So Rafael and I, in our book, what we are trying to express is that yes, we can live in very innovative times. We are on the brink of utopia, and I'm happy to come back to the phrase on the brink utopia. But it hasn't fulfilled.

Something is holding us back, and that's something is incrementalism in many senses. It's a wrong setting of goals. It has to do with venture capital not being very venturous and many things, but rather pouring into innovation the world doesn't need or would you -- could barely call innovation. But a lack of venture capital in the really risky stuff and the deep tech stuff that could really advance the world and so forth.

So basically, yes, we could live in very innovative times if we sort of now find a way to really leap forward. And in that sense, and that refers also to our title, which actually has been coined by our editor, David Weinberger, comes back to the fact that in a sort of precise definition, you will never achieve Utopia. You cannot achieve a utopia. Whenever you do, it's not utopia anymore, you have to find another one.

But in many senses, in the sense of you look at the -- when you look at the hard problems we face, the huge challenges we face in terms of energy, in health, in fighting poverty, we do have the feeling, yes, we have the means it hand. We just have to use them now. And start with green energy.

I mean we think in utopian terms about green energy, we could come to the conclusion we just need to cheap to meet green energy. Plenty full of green energy, so plentiful that it doesn't -- it's not worth billing it anymore. That would be a utopian climate sense. We don't necessarily need to achieve that, but we need an abundance for green energy in order to solve many problems including, I don't know, if you have too much cheap green energy, we can obviously grow plants much cheaper and provide food for the hungry in the world, for example, but that would only be a starting point.

Nathan Hunt: I feel like the utopian ideal goes against a fundamental pessimism that we're dealing with in the society right now. But it also speaks to a need, a hunger. And I think of a very good friend of mine who is a serial entrepreneur.

And after his previous company, he'd sold it, he'd been very successful in selling it. He decided that he wanted to tackle a serious issue. And he now runs one of these vertical farming startups that's focused on sort of local food and growing food without pesticides and chemicals and stuff like that. Do you feel that hunger in society to have innovation that addresses the real problems versus the innovation theater that so much of Silicon Valley is focused on.

Thomas Ramge: Vertical farming is a very interesting technique also in the sense that, I mean, whenever we need much less land to produce our food, we could give it back to nature, could give it back to biodiversity. And when you started your question, you also said that pessimism and optimism plays an important role in it, and I totally agree. Our title also refers to a theme or a phrase coined by a German philosopher, Ernst Bloch, who spoke of the constructive power of concrete utopia.

I think in order to achieve these goals, you need to have an optimistic and a bright picture of the future to which you can then work on. And in many senses, our times are pessimistic in a self-destructive way. Pessimism is in medicine and also in technology development and the way we talk about technology, is the waste of time while optimism can become a reinforcing cycle because we believe in a brighter future, we gain the energy to work towards it.

And that obviously should not be confused with techno-naivete that we see in other context because the technology will not solve all our problems. Technology always can only solve problems if it is built in, in social systems in the right way and only if technology is aiming and built to solve problems that we really have and to solve problems that -- and needs of -- and human needs of many people.

Nathan Hunt: So speaking of a naive approach to techno-optimism, your book has been out in Germany for a while, it is newly out in an English language version. And the timing is almost perfect because on October 16, Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist published his Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

And I suppose I am revealing too much of my opinions by referring to it as technological techno-naivete, but what was your response to reading what he wrote after you had obviously spent all of the time writing this very complex, very thoughtful book?

Thomas Ramge: Well, I think the answer is -- looked a little bit simplistic to me. A little bit too much of, well, technology solves the problems. Technology can solve the social problems by themselves. And we don't believe in that. I think we need -- or Rafael and I do think that we need a framework that helps to reinvent innovation in order to be more useful, fighting the largest problems or solving the largest problems that we have.

And to believe that just pour much money or provide a lot of money for a bunch of young creatives, start-ups without giving any direction probably will not lead on a path where technology solves what it hasn't solved in the last 30 years. And we need, on the one hand, societal consensus on what are the aims of innovation to a certain extent, at least, in abstract terms. And we also obviously have to do technology assessment in the sense that new technology can be used in many senses. It can be harmful.

The risks of the harmful aspects. And that hasn't been reflected in that manifesto at all, I think. And on the other hand, I think -- not talking about Andreessen personally, but about the venture capital ecosystem. Well, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? So if you really believe in that technology solve many, many problems, why do you mainly fund projects that might make life a little bit more convenient, but not much, much better for many, many people?

And in that sense, tecno-optimism has more than welcome and a venture capitalist would not have it, then we'd probably be doomed. But on the other hand, to believe that many will do the job, that's naive to us. We need involvement of society, defining the goals, we need involvement of government in many senses, starting with basic science and government involving by its procurement power, bringing new products into life for which we don't have a market yet as new vaccines, for example.

That's what exactly happened 3 years ago where for solar power, the German government played an important role here, creating a market about 20 years ago, but also by less government involving -- bringing down red tape, which hinders innovation, not only in Europe but also in the U.S. in many senses.

Nathan Hunt: I want to touch on government. But before I dive into some of your analysis of what sort of structures the society needs for true innovation, you have another side to your argument where you're talking about individuals. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about who creates important innovations? What are the characteristics of people who truly innovate?

Thomas Ramge: That's an important question also for -- I mean, for any innovation -- public innovation agency. On the one hand, obviously, innovation and radical innovation is a team sport. Nobody does innovation all by itself, but there are always -- almost always, in most cases, at least that we have looked at, and they are outstanding individuals who are not very intelligent or good in combinatorial thinking and so forth. But who have as a sort character trade, first, a deep interest in something that borders obsession.

That is often hard to understand for anyone else which lead these individuals to find the spark of something that can become an innovation leap or a radical innovation on or a technical breakthrough. Second, those individuals often have a very unusual level of resilience against criticism or ostracism often even in the sense that what they always do, these individuals, they question a scientific paradigm.

They basically always claim we can do something completely different and therefore, much better than we are doing it right now. So that's a sort of precondition in order to be a radical innovator is to question something to a point where the mainstream, obviously, will criticize you, may even confronting you to the fact that you might be crazy.

If you talk to radical innovators, if you talk to Noble Prize winners in the sciences, you often find that element in their biography and they need a special kind of resilience to accept that and to go forward anyways. Many of these radical innovators have actually have to have the wish to have a lot of impact in the world that, on the one hand, sounds obvious, but especially among scientists, it's not as obvious.

Many other scientists in Europe more than the U.S. very, very satisfied having written many, many papers that have quoted many, many times, but true innovators obviously don't want only create the knowledge, but they also want to create a company or at least a framework in which a company can grow that builds something that has the impact. And that sounds sort of conflictive or conflicting with the second point.

They have to be not only resilience to a criticism, they still have to be very open to impulses from others. As innovation is a team sport and in at least today's innovation culture with all the complex, complex questions that have to be answered before bringing a radical innovation into the world, you need the impulses from others.

And we know these types in a radical innovation funding at the Federal Agency of Racial Innovation (sic) [ Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation ] in Germany, but I think the same goes for our colleagues and public funding of vertical innovation in other countries, including the U.S. and DARPA and ARPA and so forth. We know these types that seem to bring everything to the table at sort of -- are a bit to narcissistic about their own ideas.

And then there's a last point that is important is that these radical innovators often have been able to transfer their enthusiasm and their deep interest to their teams without becoming micromanagers and so forth. So they often have aspiring qualities as you might prototypically find an Elon Musk or so forth. So somebody who is able to ignite the whole team with its own belief in its ability or in their ability to create a radical innovation. That's sort of the psychogram on the post card of a radical innovator.

Nathan Hunt: It's fascinating because in the book, I saw you create this persona and you have a number of examples in the book of radical innovators. And then as you expanded your lens to create the systems and the structures that could allow innovation to succeed at the societal level, I felt like a lot of what you were trying to accomplish was to create the structure wherein those kinds of people will succeed.

And one of those key structures is your model of innovation is collaborative. It is open. You suggest amendments to patent laws and celebrate open source software. The approach is not anti-capitalism but it is certainly anti-monopolist. How can society, how can we all move beyond viewing innovation as a game wherein there are winners and losers?

Thomas Ramge: Nathan, I really love this question, and I think it really nails it. And it also implies that things are always complicated. I mean that there is no black or white. And that in innovation, obviously, competition is good for business. So the very root of capitalism is that we believe in competition, that competition in the end is not a zero-sum game, but that it levers things overall. And we have 2 competing mechanisms in innovation.

On the one hand, as I've described with the individuals, they have to be cooperative. On the other hand, they have to be competitive and a term that brings both together, obviously, is coopetition. So innovation often strives in ecosystems that are competitive at the one hand, but cooperative on the other hand.

And those are put it typically, environments as you might find in the early [ tech genes ], which you'll still find in how open source software is created where, of course, you have competitive elements, but you have -- also have communal elements or in open innovation context where people are invited to solve challenges, for example, by competing with each other, but also by transferring knowledge from each other.

That's where you often sort of can have the greatest and fastest impact for innovation. If you create a setup in which competitive teams compete with each other, but also are forced to cooperate. And a very interesting setup, which led to a large innovation was a DARPA Challenge, I think, in the year 2012 on mRNA. And they invited 10 teams to play around, think about what we could all do with mRNA, not in the military context in that case, in the context of creating more antiviral drugs or in oncology.

And in the end, 3 out of these 10 teams that DARPA had invited in 2012, 2013, a played an important role in creating the mRNA vaccines in 2020. So I think if we, as societies also in international collaborations, especially in countries that share the same values. If we more often try to create environments in which we share information, in which we share knowledge, but still compete for products, I think we'll speed up innovation for the right causes.

Nathan Hunt: I think there are so many things that the United States does well with innovation. You referenced DARPA. There is a lot of the funding that has gone to the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS Act, which looks at sort of developing green energy and other technologies. I think one of the challenges for Americans when thinking about innovation is that we have this idea sort of the myth of the founder, genius, the [ Randy ] and the individual who will, just through sheer force of will, shapes society around their fundamental insight and genius. In your book, you talk about the role that government can play in helping translate innovation into applied innovation. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what government can bring to the table.

Thomas Ramge: First of all, you're totally right. The U.S. is -- and U.S. government and the public funding system and coexistence of public and private funding system for innovation in the U.S. is still world-beating and Europe can learn very much from it. This also applies to the most recent innovation packages. If the U.S. would take off the protectionist elements of the IRA and funding policy, I think the world could even benefit from it even more and the users as well.

So if you look on what can government do in order to foster radical innovation, the first thing that comes up to mind is government states can use the purchasing power. They do have to buy products that don't exist yet because that's something that the market can hardly do. It's very hard to convince private customers to order products that don't exist yet where they think they might be good, but they don't yet in quantities that you would need in order to scale up production.

So the DARPA often has the American military with its very deep pockets that does the trick. But I mean, as a model, how government can sort of solve the [ hand and neck ] problem that innovation has, America still is a model. DARPA's a model. And Europe, Japan, South Korea are looking closely on what they can learn from this model. The second aspect how government can get involved is getting less involved because red tape hinders innovation not only in Europe, not only in Asia, but also in the U.S.

So if I talk to colleagues from the innovation ecosystem in the U.S., and I think, "Oh, go ahead. You in the U.S., everything is fine. You have less government evolvement." You wish. Don't believe that we have also, sort of in many contexts, prohibitive rules that make it hard to innovate and not easy to integrate. Third is exactly what you were referring to in your question is how can government or society help these nerds with a mission?

individuals who are able to spark radical innovation as team leaders. Let's put it that way because the person itself probably won't solve the huge problems. But how can we create an environment in which the highly creative, highly innovative teams with, in general, 1 or 2 individuals in a center of it can thrive.

And American top universities are sometimes good at it by fostering start-ups that are science-based, [ neutral ] science and helping them to turn their original scientific findings into a startup that develops a product, that we can take advantage of. Often happens in biomedicine these days, for example, in the U.S. So there's obviously, first of all, much to learn from the leaders, the ETH University in Zurich, for example, is also very good at that.

But there's also very much room for improvement for, let's say, the rest of the world. And there's something where I think private capital and public funding should also be more aligned and that's something that innovation scientists would call crossing the death valley of innovation.

So that's basically the phase where, on the one hand, we have developed the scientific knowledge that could bring upon an interesting innovation but doesn't have the technology readiness yet in order to get venture capitalist pick up the idea. And in our model, it's even more true for Europe and parts of Asia, but I think also for the U.S., if both players in that innovation financing field, private capital, venture capital and public funding would move a little bit more to the center.

So the public funding would fund a little bit longer in terms of developer prototype, get your technology ready to be interesting enough for venture capitalists who have to become more venturous basically going back to their roots where they have been very venturous. That's where the whole term comes from and then pick up the ideas at a stage where they don't know yet, "Oh, this digital platform has already worked in a certain market.

Let's transfer this idea somewhere else, and we'll make a lot of money." But basically betting on something that is completely new, where I don't really know if it will work out, but where you know if it works out, it will have a lot of positive impact. So public funding goes longer in technology readiness, private funding picks up earlier and the conundrum of how to cross the death valley of innovation is solved.

Nathan Hunt: You end the book with 10 innovations or disruptions you would like to see. And these fundamentally speak to the utopian project and the desire to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the sustainable development goals and bring this together. This is the expression of the type of innovation you need. If you had to only pick one, one of these innovations that you would like to see, what would be the one you would -- if you were talking to a young innovator, where would you direct them?

Thomas Ramge: It will be too cheap to meter green energy because if he solve that problem, if we have too much energy or energy abundance for any cost we could imagine, we can solve many, many problems. We can suck CO2 out of the air for basically nothing. We can green deserts. We can provide access to fresh water to everyone in the world.

We can help poor communities and poor societies become much more independent, possibly the world would become a much more peaceful place that would lead to [ no ] necessity of people to flee their home countries and so forth. So if there's basically one lever to cross the brink of utopia, I think energy, from at least today's view, is our best bet.

Nathan Hunt: Thomas, I had hoped you were going to pick out too cheap to meter green energy. I loved the discussion of that in the book. The book once again, On The Break Of Utopia: Reinventing Innovation To Solve The World's Largest Problems. Thomas Ramge, thank you for joining the Essential Podcast today.

Thomas Ramge: Thanks for having me, Nate.

Nathan Hunt: The Essential Podcast is produced by Patrick Moroney. At S&P Global, we accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence that is essential for companies, governments, and individuals to make decisions with conviction. From the Majestic heights of 55 Water Street in Manhattan, I am Nathan Hunt. Thank you for listening.

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