MIT Global Ventures ~ Emergent Newcos 2019!

Great to see all 29 final projects in our MIT Global+Development Ventures class this past Fall 2019, a joint-offering between MIT D-Lab, MIT Sloan School of Management, and MIT Media Arts & Sciences in the School of Architecture & Planning! My MIT Media Lab co-instructors Alex "Sandy" Pentland, Ramesh Raskar, and I are all keen to see where our students will take their projects next. Many have received MIT Sandbox support, others are Legatum Fellows or have Legatum Voyager grants over IAP/January 2020, most are entering MIT IDEAS and/or MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition Accelerate & Launch phases, and a few are engaging up-river in Harvard's President Innovation Challenge! And, of course, there's many more things to do beyond grant-seeking and contests, most especially actually founding, financing, and building these newcos! Here they are alphabetically...

1. 1Room ~ Kenyan Affordable Personalized Learning System
2. AiBaobao ~ Chinese Active Parenting Solutions
3. Aqua ~ Argentinian Digital Banking
4. AZEKI ~ African Designer Brand & Operational Solutions
5. Co.Mig ~ Venezuelan Migrant Integration & Employment
6. CON-DE ~ Architectural Material Reuse Solutions
7. Corpus Law ~ Digital Accessible Legal Info
8. CorruptionMonitor ~ Citizen Reporting Solutions
9. Experimental Fund ~ Fast Harvard Student Project Funding
10. Green Source ~ African Local Sustainble Fair Palm Oil 
11. GRIA ~ African Snack Foods
12. IT VC for EAC ~ East African ICT Investment Fund
13. KAAN ~ Latam Retired Expat Co-Living Communities
14. Kinderoo ~ Affordable Distributed Day Care Services
15. mBody ~ Pakistani Girls Body Literacy
16. Medical Records ~ Ownership & Transportability
17. Molo ~ Cote d'Ivoire Pay-as-you-go LPG
18. MYLA ~ Make Your Life Awesome Virtual Personal Assistant
19. Mylea ~ Sustainable Fashion Materials
20. OneBeat ~ Social Exercise Engagement
21. Pandar ~ African Smallholder Farmer Informatics
22. RateMonk ~ Indian Online Academic Ratings & Informatics
23. Red Feather ~ Canadian Indigenous Certification & Products
24. RISE ~ Colombian Rural Innovations for Solidarity Economies
25. Salut ~ Brazilian Integrated Healthcare Services 
26. TABIGO ~ Chinese Social Travel Planner
27. Text4Health ~ Anonymous Sexual Health Services
28. TOWARDS ~ Presentation Speech & Performance Coaching
29. Wala ~ Ghanaian Blood Supply Solutions

Global Ventures ~ Inclusive Prosperity ~ Fall 2019

My MIT Media Lab colleagues Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Ramesh Raskar and I -- together with instructor colleagues Beth Porter, David Shrier, Indu Kodukula, Thomas Hardjono, and Nathan Eagle -- are co-hosting an upgraded incarnation of our Global Ventures class this Fall 2019 at the Media Lab top-floor E14-633 starting Thursday afternoon September 5th from 10am-12noon.

Also known as Development Ventures, this class has been offered since 2001 and is part of the D-Lab family. GV seeks scalable solutions & exponential innovations for emerging markets and underserved communities anywhere. This class is about planning ventures which deploy solutions reaching as many people as possible with positive impact and maximizing progress towards inclusive prosperity. The most promising class projects have formed the basis for real ventures, including such alumcos as MAX, Sanergy, Wecyclers, Jamii, PEN, WAY, MDaaS, and dozens more. Those interested are invited to join us at our kickoff class session on 9/5/2019!

Connected World ~ International Collaborations

Nature shares Connected World infographic spotlighting patterns of international collaborations from 1 February 2018 to 30 January 2019 as captured by the Nature Index...

EARTH ~ All of Humanity on One Chart...

Visual Capitalist helps us visualize where people live? Roughly 1/5 in each of Eurasian-Americas, Africa, Rest-of-Asia, Tjina, and Hindia.  Or on EARTH for short...

Tectonics in the Tropics ~ Ice Age Triggers!

Jennifer Chu of MIT News spotlights recent research indicating that Tectonics in the Tropics Trigger Earth’s Ice Ages...

"Over the last 540 million years, the Earth has weathered three major ice ages [each] preceded by tropical “arc-continent collisions” -- tectonic pileups that occurred near the Earth’s equator -- in which oceanic plates rode up over continental plates, exposing tens of thousands of kilometers of oceanic rock to a tropical environment.  [The] heat and humidity of the tropics likely triggered a chemical reaction between […] the rocks’ calcium and magnesium […] pulling the [CO2] out of the atmosphere and permanently sequestering it in the form of carbonates such as limestone [cooling] temperatures globally and ultimately [setting] off an ice age."

Pacific Islands ~ Mapping Oceanic Territories...

Emergent Megacities ~ VC Visualizes thru 2100

Visual Capitalist animates Top 20 Megacities by 2100...

Longterm Lens ~ Maddison's Economic Stats...

Today I want to salute Angus Maddison who was a pioneer in macro economic history whose team investigated, gathered evidence for, and ultimately guesstimated national accounts over the longterm, including GDP and GDP/Capita...

World of Standards ~ Alternative Choices!

Power plugs around the world... Railway track gauges... Left vs Right-hand Driving...

Causes of Death ~ Global Disease Burden by Age

The Lancet published Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality for 282 causes of death in 195 countries and territories, 1980–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 summarizing causes of human death...

"Deaths due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional causes continue to decline, while deaths from non-communicable diseases increase and injury deaths are stable. Declines in death rates of some non-communicable diseases have slowed or ceased. […] Non-communicable diseases remain the leading causes of death globally, and their burden is rising."

World Economy 2017 ~ Visualizing Global GDP...

WEF spotlights Visual Capitalist infographic visualizing global GDP...

Minorities & Health ~ Nordenstedt on Metrics

Professor Helena Nordenstedt gives TEDxKTH talk with help of Gapminder visuals on Minorities & Global Health, a framework for better understanding how health and economics go together...

Global Economy ~ GDP by Geo & Proportion...

The WEF shares World Bank data plotted by HowMuch about the Global Economy, mapping GDP by geography and proportion...

Economic HIstory ~ Longterm Global Dynamics...

The WEF together with Visual Capitalist share two charts visualizing long-term planet-wide economic history...

Global Flows ~ Submarine Cable Networks

Just a little MapPorn of Global Flows of data via submarine cable networks... And the very first trans-Atlantic cable...

Richest People ~ Money Project History Infograph

The Money Project spotlights the historically -- i.e. pre-Industrial Revolution -- richest people...

Global Urban Footprint ~ Hi-Rez Auto-mapping...

TR spots Global Urban Footprint Revealed in Unprecedented Resolution...

"What’s needed is a way of mapping urban areas from space at high resolution and in a way that is unaffected by cloud cover and without the ambiguities that traditional imaging introduces. [Now revealed is] a global map of urbanization that meets all these requirements. The result is a data set of the entire planet at a resolution of 12 meters that maps the global urban footprint with unprecedented accuracy and resolution. [...] Esch and co have created a global database of built-up areas based on synthetic aperture radar images from an Earth-orbiting mission called TanDEM-X. This consists of a pair of spacecraft that have been orbiting Earth in close formation -- just a few hundred meters apart -- since 2007. These spacecraft take radar images of the ground from slightly different angles, allowing researchers to create a 3-D map of the planet. In total, Esch and co have processed 470,000 pairs of images to create their map of the entire planet."

Global Incomes ~ Distribution Change over Time...

Thanks to Daniel Mitchell from International Liberty for spotlighting a great chart by Professor Max Roser of Oxford using Gapminder data showing the distribution of income globally at key point in recent history...

"There are three takeaways from this data. The first conclusion [...] is that the world is getting richer. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. That’s wonderful news. The second conclusion, as seen by the red section of the chart, is that a modest bit of reform in India and China has paid big dividends (and, given the success of Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans, I imagine those nations could become much richer with additional market-friendly reform). But I want to focus today on a third conclusion, which is that pro-growth policies are the best way to help the poor, not redistribution driven by a fixation on inequality."

Wealth & World-Class ~ Universities & Growth...

Thanks to a WEForum post for spotting infographics created for Times Higher Education by Ben Hennig, an associate professor at the University of Iceland, which spotlight the relationship between wealth and world-class universities...

"What are the essential ingredients needed to make a world-class university? [...] The answer always involves a discussion of the importance of institutional autonomy and academic freedom, and a recognition of the crucial fact that without great people, there can be no great university. But one element is undeniably more important than any other: cold, hard cash. [...] You can’t create the appropriate research facilities, or provide the appropriate teaching environment, without money -- but most importantly, you can’t attract and retain the required talent in a highly competitive global recruitment market without the resources to pay attractive salaries."

History of War Deaths ~ Global Rates since 1400

Oxford's Max Roser spotlights Global Deaths In Conflict Since the Year 1400 which shows the rate of warkills over the past ~600 years...