[Random-bits] KEI remarks on accepting the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions

[James Love]

Yesterday I was in Chicago with Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Manon Ress to  
receive a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.    
This is an award created this year by the MacArthur foundation, and  
we were among the first recipients.   We received the award in  
recognition of CPTech's work over the past sixteen years, but also to  
support the costs of a new corporate entity we have created --  
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), which should become more  
visible by 2007.  KEI's board currently includes Sakiko Fukuda-Parr,  
Tim Hubbard and Colleen Daniels.

The new MacArthur award, which you cannot apply for, is designed to  
recognize the collective work of small institutions, and it was in  
every respect about our entire team, including all of our (current  
and past) talented and dedicated staff, and also all of the  
individuals and groups that we have collaborated with over the past  
16 years -- without these collaborations, very little would have been  
accomplished.

The web page for the award is here:  (http://www.macfound.org/site/ 
c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.2026921/k.297B/ 
MacArthur_Award_for_Creative_and_Effective_Institutions.htm)

   Jamie

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KEI remarks on accepting the MacArthur Award for Creative and  
Effective Institutions

James Love
Knowledge Ecology International
5 October 2006

Thank you.  Thanks in particular to Elspeth Revere and Kathy Im.

This award recognizes the collective efforts of our very devoted and  
talented staff and board.  The money and the recognition will make it  
possible for Knowledge Ecology International  (KEI), our new  
corporate entity, to do more.

What is KEI about?   At one level, we are concerned about fairness,  
and access to knowledge.   We also are supportive of creative and  
inventive communities.   To reconcile our interests, we promote new  
paradigms for the creation and management of knowledge resources.

Why knowledge goods?   Because knowledge is essential for so many  
things, including freedom, the exercise of political power, and  
economic, social and personal development.

Knowledge goods are also fundamentally different from physical goods  
and services.   They can be copied.   They can be shared.  They do  
not have to be scarce.  The rich and the poor can be more equal in  
knowledge goods than in many other areas.

One KEI focus concerns medical inventions, including medicines.  We  
have played a key role in persuading the world that governments  
should override exclusive rights of patents when necessary to obtain  
less expensive generic medicines.   We have promoted the idea that  
governments should refashion trade agreements to focus on global  
sharing of the costs of R&D, rather than dictating rules for patents  
or raising drug prices.

In the United States and elsewhere we are asking for a radical change  
in the system for incentives for supporting medical R&D.  We want to  
replace marketing monopolies for new medicines with new rewards for  
inventions that improve health care outcomes.   By this time next  
year there will be a much larger national and global debate on this  
new paradigm for supporting medical R&D.

This work, as well as our other projects, will benefit from the  
resources and prestige of this award.  Thank you.



---------------------------------
James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /  
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks."  Bill Walton