The Institute for Venture Science (IVS)
Date: Saturday, November 05, 2016 @ 16:54:34 UTC
Topic: Investors


Funding Promising Ideas that Challenge Conventional Thinking

The Institute for Venture Science (IVS) will fund scientific inquiries into high-risk/high-reward theses. By virtue of their break with ideas that may have become more tradition than forward looking concepts, these fresh theses may lead to fundamental breakthroughs in understanding. The IVS will identify the most promising ideas that challenge prevailing paradigms; for each selected thesis it will simultaneously fund multiple research teams working independently in various nations around the world.

An unconventional idea independently pursued by a dozen laboratories that obtain mutually compatible results cannot be ignored. This means that proposed paradigms and prevailing paradigms can compete on equal footing.


When competition is made fair in this manner, the scientifically superior one should prevail. This strategy of producing a critical mass of scientific support for promising ideas can open up new pathways toward discovery and understanding of the world in which we live.

Growing our collective mind by gaining fresh understanding may seem an outright luxury in today’s culture of practicality. However, humans face multiple unprecedented threats, any one of which could drive us back to the Stone Age: catastrophic nationwide power-grid failure due to a solar storm; dwindling energy resources; diminishing supplies of potable water; increasing incidence of chronic disease; etc.

Practical solutions to difficult problems have often come from scientific breakthroughs: e.g., the antibiotic addressed the problem of bacterial disease; the discovery of electricity solved the problem of worldwide communication. Over the last century, however, technological advances that offer rapid economical payoff have largely supplanted bold scientific discoveries that come from a commitment to advance knowledge regardless of immediately recognizable economic benefit. More than ever, the world needs to get back on the track of revolutionary scientific breakthroughs to successfully address the existential crises that threaten our survival.

By nurturing conceived innovations through the embryonic stage and giving them a fighting chance of coming to life and thereby fostering breakthroughs in our understanding, the IVS will enrich the world with fresh vision, and help create viable solutions for today’s seemingly intractable problems.

More on their website: http://www.theinstituteforventurescience.net/
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[Vlad] The IVS idea was put forward two years ago and, if you do not know yet what this is all about, watch Gerald H. Pollack's 2014 presentation (here https://vimeo.com/97274471).

The pre-proposal submissions phase opened April 15, 2016 and closed June 25, 2016 (http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13369167.htm). Please read their "Possible Shortcomings of the Proposed Plan" section (http://www.theinstituteforventurescience.net/10-possible-shortcomings-of-the-propose). I'm looking forward to see the first set of energy breakthrough proposals to be considered by this group (as well as the Breakthrough Energy Coalition people formed last year: http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/who.html).







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