Call for Papers:
2016 UNESCO Tech4Dev: ​From Innovation to Impact

Kate will moderate two panels at the 2016 UNESCO Tech4Dev Conference. You are invited to submit an extended abstract for either panel.  Abstracts must be submitted through the conference portal by 6 November , 2015. 

Inviting

Incubators, Accelerators
& Funders (Impact Investors &
Venture Philanthropists) 

​Panel [SE18-CCI]: Incubating Tech4Dev &
​Accelerating Impact

​We have seen that social technology, such as Tech4Dev, take more time than traditional technology to achieve market impact. Incubators and funders (philanthropic and impact investors) are instrumental in enabling a new technology to reach substantial distribution, and they often work together to respond to the needs of new ventures and to shape an emerging market.

Incubators focus on advancing a business: from concept to pilot or from first market to scale. Increasingly, domain specific incubators have emerged (e.g. health, energy, hardware, BoP). These incubators and their funders leverage sector specific savvy in order to accelerate the impact of their portfolio companies. Working with multiple cohorts of companies, incubators and funders have an unique macro level perspective on critical decisions, barriers overcome, challenges navigated and failures.

Learning from this product/technology driven approach, it has become apparent that systems level change often needs to accompany an enterprise with pioneering social technology. As a result, some incubators and funders have adopted an ecosystem or systems level approach to incubation that may include concurrently supporting policy/regulatory initiatives, supply/distribution chain ventures, or other ventures that engage relevant stakeholders. This panel invites incubators and funders to present insights from these diverse approaches on how to accelerate impact for Tech4Dev ventures. 

Social Entrepreneurs,
Biomedical Engineers &
Product Designers

​​Panel [SE05-MED]: Bright Spots:  Innovations in the quality, reliability or safety of medical technologies

​Medical technologies deployed in low and middle income countries (LMIC) often encounter a lack of clear guidelines for how to address quality, reliability and/or safety (QRS).  In this regulatory absence, innovators have stepped up to develop creative QRS solutions for medical technologies. 


Strategies to solve these thorny problems may include:
a) technical solutions, such as quality assurance tests for field diagnostics,
b) hybrid technology and capacity building approaches, such as sms feedback loops with health care workers,
c) systemic solutions, such as allocating funds for adverse outcomes,
d) trust building solutions, such as transparent communications about outcomes, or
e) design solutions that reimagine existing technology to make it appropriate to the LMIC context while concurrently addressing the QRS of this appropriate technology

This session invites papers that share the impact of approaches to address the QRS of a medical technology. Papers will present the QRS problem identified, the solution developed to address the QRS issue, the impact of the solution and insights from the intervention. The session encourages papers to include barriers encountered, unexpected findings and failures. 

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Extended Abstract Guidelines

Extended Abstract Template

tech4dev2016_call_for_extended_abstracts_web.pdf
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tech4dev2016_extended_abstract_template.doc
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UNESCO Tech4Dev: Detailed Breakout Session Call for Abstracts