 Hello everybody, welcome to the webinar. Fabio, should I kick this off or would you get an opening word? Yeah, I think you can start on Hydro. And yeah, Drew, just feel free to maybe kick it off and then I'll take it on the opening innovation. Yeah, cool. Thank you very much Fabio. Yeah, welcome everybody to today's webinar on open innovation in the sector. Why should we fund open innovation? So you can see from the webcams up that we have a fantastic panel to share some insights with us. And I have the privilege of opening today. So yeah, thank you very much to Fabio and Anaccess for co-hosting this with us. It's a topic that's very close to our heart and the way that we work. So yeah, my name is Drew Corbyn. I'm the head of performance and investment at GOGLA. I've been working with GOGLA for about four years and leading some of our interesting work on tech and innovation. And more recently, some of the finance and investment elements as well. And for those of you that are not familiar, GOGLA is the industry association for the off-grid solar industry. We have some 230 members from around the world from Guangzhou to San Francisco and London to Lusaka. They cover a range of product categories from solar lanterns, solar home systems, fridges and productive use technologies. And the aim of GOGLA is to catalyse the markets for 1 billion people that live without access to energy and also to serve some of the weak grid market with backup supplies as well. We do this through our program areas of policy and regulation, access to finance, I'm looking to increase investment in the industry and company performance, including a focus on technology and business innovation. So yeah, it's a real pleasure for me to be on this webinar and introduce the session today. Open innovation I think is really a powerful tool and a natural approach for the off-grid solar industry. It's an industry that's seeking to serve the 700 million people in the world that don't have access to energy. They are by their very nature low income, vulnerable, living in states of conflict and difficult and volatile economies. So it's a resource in industry. To date, there's been about $2 billion of investment into the industry. We estimate that we need between 10 and 100 times this to achieve SDG7 and provide access to energy for all. It's also a young industry, I've been around in the region of 10 years or maybe for PAYGO, something like six years. So it's resourced in and it's learning, it's expanding, it's innovating. And it's also a really tough business, serving low income people, difficult economies, long supply chains. We all know what are some of the challenges around there over COVID and the recent periods. So companies are resourced in and open innovation really has some very strong advantages to add here. It can be a very cost effective way of innovating and bringing products and services to market. It can be a fast way to learn and improve together as an industry. And also it creates opportunities for companies and consumers that are more closed or proprietary models don't offer. So I think open innovation is a very strong approach for the industry and we'll be hearing about why we think donors should fund it and what the benefits of that can be. I'd like to start by sharing a couple of tangible examples that Google has done on open innovation. And I'd like to check if I can share my... I think we've got them up here. I saw a slide there and it disappeared. Artie, will you share that or do you want me to? Let me try again. That should be clear, right? Yeah, we can see it just fine. All right, so yeah, very quickly, a couple of examples. This is the Connect initiative that is seeking to define a universal connector and firmware standards for 12 volt SHS kits and appliances. We're doing this in partnership and with funding from Efficiency for Access and NXS Foundation. And yeah, here's a quick look at the market. Three million plus SHS kits sold in the last few years and two million plus appliances. We have 107 companies that are reporting sales data for this and yet there is no industry standards on connectors. It is not the case that all of these companies want proprietary or brand specific models. There's simply a no industry standard that no companies can follow this interoperable market. And that is what we are seeking to change. So working with Google's technology working group and the partners, we are defining the technical requirements for this universal family of connectors. And you can see here, there's a range from the entry level low power dome lights up to the high power fridges with Pego controls. So that has got power and data that enables Pego activation and device control. Also you have the USB for the mobile phone charging there as well. This slide shows the connectors but actually we've defined a full interoperability stack. So you've got the physical connection, the electrical characteristics, voltage current etc. Communications protocol and I've been working with Solaris and OpenPego link. And then on top of that is Angaus's Nexus channel that defines the Pego activation and the device control. So with this we seek to define a universal interoperability standard that is voluntary for the industry. We think this can bring a range of outcomes that will help manufacturers of appliances, let's say chess kits, distributors and consumers to do, to make the supply chain work better and bring products to market quicker and cheaper more efficiently in ways that will offer flexibility and choice for consumers and ultimately lower prices as well. So market vision, it's that proprietary brands, connect affiliates and the open ecosystem can coexist and compete as part of the commercial landscape. It's open models aren't for everybody, nor should they be, we see that there is a role for all. This is an interesting example of open innovation, we've done a very participatory approach in terms of defining objectives, defining the technical guidelines and making them publicly available and we hope this can spur innovation and growth in the industry. Another quick example is from Google's consumer protection code, which is more of a business model and standard around policies and processes. We have an industry working group, consumer protection working group which is open to all of our members and they define and maintain the standard which is made up of these six principles and they are expanded into 37 indicators which serve as a self assessment tool for companies to measure, monitor and report their performance. These are again are publicly available on the on the Google website and really get to the heart of a Pego company in terms of how they operate and manage their credit risk and the product risk and their service risk to consumers. And we're in the process of developing a third party scheme that will be available soon as well. And yeah, I think, you know, it was very participatory processing that really helped kind of getting the buying from the industry. So, you know, we've now had commitments from, from more than 50 players, you know, and, you know, big, big, small and everything in between. And it's been endorsed by many of the industry's investors and supporters. And again, you know, this is, you know, very much an open innovation and standard that we encourage a wider adoption from. Cool. So that's, that's all the slides that I have to share. Oops. Cool. So yeah, I think, you know, what's, what's been instrumental in both of these initiatives is is donor support. You know, they were both had them had, you know, strong donor partners in in both these initiatives and they were really critical to, you know, I think to get things moving, you know, where any individual company would not have the resources to do it. And, you know, it's enabled us to, to convene to facilitate, you know, get, get buying. And I think, you know, that's enabled, you know, broad kind of participation and ownership. So yeah, we're very much, you know, I think donor donor support can be catalytic for open innovation in the industry and we could warmly welcome more and yeah, with that I look forward to hearing from from the panel. And you can see who we have today. The top of the screen is Fabio Pascal from an access foundation and a thought leader and energetic supporter for open innovation and the brainchild for this session today. Stephen Hunt, the senior energy advisor, innovation expert for FCDO and a long term, a long time supporter of tech and business model in innovation in the industry. We also have Rebecca Rhodes from the gogler team. Rebecca works as the senior project man program manager for consumer protection and technology. And she's stepping in from Marie from the Dune Foundation who's unfortunately has come down with some, some virus or other. So it's not able to make it today. And then finally we have Benjamin Stewart, who's a data scientist and geographer, GIS open tools and data at the World Bank. So I welcome the four, four panelists to the stage and Fabio I believe you're going to moderate the session so I'll hand it to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks so much. And thanks for the intro. Indeed, I'm humbly trying to moderate today's session and I'm pretty happy about it because we had a, of course, a prep call before this and already then the conversation started being so interesting. So I'm really looking forward to where we're going to go. Just a couple of words to set up the context and, you know, define what we're talking about. I think the very broad question is what is open innovation and how what are we talking about today? There can be a billion different definitions and all of them are pretty valid. The way we look at open innovation, it's an all encompassing term to effectively cover anything that can be shared. It can be just open. We will start with a simple open source. So that would be really software focused. But in reality, there is also open hardware and so that we are just talking broadly about tools to open tools at that point. But it can go much beyond that. It can go into open business models or models that work in the sector and even lead to, you know, open data. What I do like is that in the panel today, we have a certain diversity of experience and we have people that have experience with each and every of these parts. So Drew talked correctly about the Connect initiative, which is definitely more on the open tools and the open standards. While Ben with his experience at World Bank is probably going to talk about open tools and open data. And Steven and FCDO have actually supported pretty much everything in there. And with this introduction, first was just about to say what is open innovation? It's all of this. And I think it's important that we maintain that breadth, that openness, vagueness, if you want, in definition, for one reason. Every single actor in the sector will have a certain inclination to adopt or to work with a certain part of open innovation. There's going to be actors that really push and embrace open tools, open source software or open hardware, while others will be much more inclined to go towards open data. Now, why is this important? This is important because my opinion is a fact that the energy access sector is a sector which relies very heavily on distribution for success. More than other bits, there are other sectors which will really be technology heavy. There are sectors which are business model heavy and so forth. Energy access has again and again proven that technology is an absolutely necessary enabler. And so are sound and healthy financial models, access to finances, fundamental and so forth. But the reality is a lot of companies actually make it and can scale up because they are great at distribution. And finally enough, distribution is one of those things that you just got to do. Now, the question is, can we open up all the other things that are underlying the substrate infrastructure in terms of open technologies, open tools and open data? One last thing that I want to mention and then I'm going to actually start having more interesting people talk. The last thing that I want to mention is one very common misconception about open innovation. It doesn't mean free. There is a number of business models that are in fact hinged on the idea of having an open approach and sharing stuff. Without necessarily becoming, I can't monetize it. And so there are a lot of examples of that in other sectors, namely the software sector is particularly mature in that sense. There is a lot of companies that work with open source software and open source products yet make very healthy profits. So this is something definitely possible. So I would not conflate the two concepts. That's a very, very obvious myth that we see when we talk about open innovation. Really, I would see open innovation as something that one could want to embrace. One could want to go towards open innovation as a practitioner, as a funder because that could help others while actually also helping my own organization or company. So this is just a couple of opening thoughts. Now, this said, I'm sort of even hoping that the people after me will disagree and will make this conversation very interesting. I sort of wouldn't be surprised. But let me just go over the tour of the table and I would say just going to be random in terms of order. I will ask the same one question to all of you now. What's your experience with open innovation? And how did you go? Why did you go towards open innovation in a specific case? Essentially, the question is tell us a story and tell us what happened. Stephen, I'm going to start with you randomly just because I see you first in the screen. And then I'm going to actually hit with Rebecca and then Benjamin. Steve, the floor is yours and welcome. Thanks, Fabio. Let me start with a slightly controversial tack on this. But if you look at the history of DFID and now UK aid support to energy access innovation, if you want to call it that, it really dates back to the late 90s. And the model then was basically fund NGOs who had some good ideas and they developed the first solar lantern. And then those NGOs were developing essentially open source materials. They would develop like recommendations or technology and they would try to get private sector to take them up. And I think actually what you then saw in the next kind of middle decade or even bit more is that actually wasn't the best model. And we thought that market based approaches where you actually support the private sector to develop the ideas and the technologies and to take them to market. You aligned the incentives there because you weren't having a great idea then trying to get somebody else to do it. You were backing the person who had the idea and then they would try and take it to market. And then, of course, as you go into that, you saw a lot more buy in but a lot more focus on intellectual property because these are then the private companies. And they're trying to raise capital and they need to have something that what is what are you investing in? What do we own that justifies the capital? I'm sure we'll come back to this point. And so I think that seems to be going very well. There's lots of good examples and some good results there. But I think it's maybe a bit more recently, I think, that a bit of a focus has also come on to some of the disadvantages of that kind of approach around about the market structure just kind of evolves, but not necessarily in a way that really benefits the consumer or the ultimate objectives which are delivering the SDG. And so I think this is where when we were coming now to a conversation a bit more about this question with what? Rather than just letting the market go whichever direction it sees fit and you get in with 20 connectors that don't talk to each other and then your customer, you know, your person you're interested in, you know, customer beneficiary, whatever you want to call them, they then can't plug their new appliance into their old solar system or they're locked in these things. That I think that's now starts to feel like it's the market system is not benefiting the objective. So I think this is where I think there's some conversations to be had. I'm sure today about this how, you know, and we have then, you know, in line with that recognition started to fund through Efficiency for Access Coalition and through some of the initiatives mentioned earlier on a bit more of these kind of enabling market-wide technologies to try and address some of these issues. I think we're quite in the early stages of that, but it feels like an important direction for me and I'm glad to be involved in this conversation today. Same to me, I guess. Yeah, so I think I'm going to kind of go back. Fabi, you probably don't know this. So before Gogol, I actually used to work for Solaris of Grids out on their upside in Tanzania. But as you know, like they really are, to me, an example of a company that's kind of championing the open philosophy and open approach. Like you said, it doesn't necessarily mean free. But for them, I see, you know, they've taken this on because for their business model to succeed, the sector, the industry has to succeed as well. And so they're fostering this development, you know, the open Pego token. And this is really going to kind of help the sector grow, the distributors, you know, succeed in their businesses as well. And so I think that kind of really, that angle is really interesting to me that open innovation is about sector-wide improvements and benefits, not necessarily, you know, business kind of being closed off. But for every business to succeed, we need a sector that's growing and profitable and moving forward as well. And that's also that the kind of approach that we take in Gogol is, you know, we crowdsource best practice. We look to our members and we try to identify whether, you know, what's succeeding and what's helping companies. And we really crowdsource that, bring it together and then share it and kind of turn it into tools and resources for the wider sector as well. So for me, that's kind of yet my experience and the way that I see the benefits of open source for us and the companies as well. I think my perspective is a little different because I come from this from much more of the software and data side, although I think that those are obviously important aspects to a lot of the things we're talking about. Yeah, I was asked when we sort of had a pre-meaning to sort of my first experience with open data and it's an interesting story. When I started my masters at the University of Victoria in 2008, my supervisor was Dr. Mike Walder, a forester, and he was part of the Landsat continuity missions. That's a group that designs the Landsat satellites for the USGS and maintains the, well, like it says, the continuity of the sensors. So Landsat has, it's not the best satellite, but it has a history going back to the 70s. When I started working for him was 2008. It was the first year that they had made the Landsat archive available to the public. The previous way it worked is you had to purchase an image. I think it was like three grand per image. Once that image was purchased by everyone, it was allowed to be used by anyone. It was an odd commercial model, but it worked for a while. Anyway, in the first month, the Landsat archive was open. They distributed more images than the entire history of the Landsat archive. In the first paper I wrote for Mike, I downloaded 400 Landsat images. In his masters, he got two. And the second one he had to beg for so he could do a change detection. I think open data in my experience, in that experience, and then much more in the World Bank as I've been there, has been an open data. Open data makes data accessible. I know that there are lots of data that can't be open. I know that there are other concerns, but as far as the sort of private versus open, commercial versus open, I think that open makes things available for innovation. I think open fosters innovation because it's hard to justify buying 400 images or $3,000 a pop. I downloaded them with no consideration because I was like, oh, will this work? Oh, let's try a different area. Oh, I can see half a lake here. Let's get the next image over. If I had to pay for that, innovation becomes very complicated when you have to pay for mistakes. And I think openness allows us to sort of get away from that. I was doing some research when we were talking about this, and I was looking at, so the World Bank has an open data policy. And the open data policy is, at its heart, very simple that all of our data and work are by default open, and you have to argue to make them not open. And it used to be that they were closed and you had to argue why you were allowed to publish it. That's simple change. And there are lots of reasons why we don't publish data, mostly BII, security, lots of issues like that. But that also started in 2012 when I joined the World Bank. So I think I've been an unwitting catalyst of these open programs. But again, at the World Bank, this has been really, really useful to have this idea that we don't have to argue to make things open. It just happens by default. And I think that that has spurred a lot of the development of not just open data, but a lot of the open tools that I'll get a chance to talk about later when we talk about sort of the work between energy. But I really think that openness allows for both a much wider spread of the information, but then also the ability to innovate and move the work forward. Thank you all. This is, I think a great start. In fact, let me sort of connect between the three. But what I find particularly interesting is the notion that indeed, I think we all believe that a market-driven approach is probably the most promising approach. And I think that's really under discussion. But maybe I cannot share what an axis does in terms of funding. So we have at an axis a relatively simple theory and it says whatever an axis supports in terms of financial support must lead to an open source result. We, in fact, are most motivated by or better, we only accept projects that are or proposals that are in fact driven by a company. And so we want companies to be the innovators. The only bit is, you know, as an axis, because as a nonprofit we believe that everything we do should be public good. Then we say, well, whatever we pay must be publicly available. If in the process we are directly benefiting one company, that's fine. There's no problem. Actually, it's good because as Stephen mentioned, it would be the best way to have a champion for that particular innovation. Someone that really believes in it and needs it in the first place. I think the only thing we do is in fact try to preempt to try to forecast. Will there be others interested in this? And so that's a ranking that we use where we say, look, yeah, okay, this is clearly solving a problem for you. Can you proposing company help us understand how many others have this problem? And how many others will use this solution? I just want to say, and this might sound counterintuitive, we have found ourselves telling some companies, don't open source this. Don't do this. We can't see how else you'll make money. And so you should not be getting, you know, you should not go towards open innovation here unless you and your board really agree on shifting your revenue model so that you can take full advantage of this. Of course, that came with the implication we can't support you because we must buy, but the fact that we want to have always a public good output. That means that we cannot support anybody doing anything else in public good. So with all this big blah, blah, shouldn't government do the same? Are they using taxpayers money? Shouldn't they also always enforce, you know, public good outputs also to why the starting markets? So this is to use Steven, and that's because Benjamin just told us they already do that. Everything is open unless, unless explicitly said otherwise. How do you see that? Yeah. Yeah, so I think what Benjamin said, I think it's very interesting. I have 100% agree with what you said when it comes to data relating to, yeah, things like the energy system or like the geography. I mean, we've put a lot of money into renewable energy resource mapping, for example, through the World Bank, which has then gone on to open the Solar Atlas. And those kind of things, I think they are like information about the world around us is actually, it is a public good. And too many donor reports over the years have ended up kind of being on, it used to be on like CD-ROMs, you know, in people in kind of boot cases. And then, you know, two years later, another donor would commission the same study and that's crazy. You know, and I think that, you know, I'm hoping that that open street map use that kind of thing is really help where it gets a bit trickier. Is when it's to do with like the technologies and business models and investability. And we have, I mean, on our research outputs, it's exactly the same, you know, we research outputs, you know, have to be published. And we've got a whole enormous online document repository of all the stuff we've had to be published. But I think forcing the issue on IP can be really, really problematic. And we've had plenty of instances where we've backed companies who have developed IP and who have gone on to generate, you know, serious investment on that basis. I think I can't see how they would have got it if they had not had some ownership of something, you know, related to back that up. And so and yeah, so in all of our things, we have a quite a finely balanced IP clause, which basically says that the innovator keeps the IP because they're the one that want to develop it. We don't want to develop it, you know, we want it to happen. And we think that their leadership is more likely to make it happen than them coming up with something and trying to convince others to do it. But we have a clause in there, which says that we have the right we have a worldwide license to that. In the instance that some kind of horrible monopoly emerges because that's the other thing. Imagine if public funding of R&D created some miracle cure to start to a disease. And then, you know, it was protected by IP and everyone had to overpay for it globally. So there is a balance there. But I think we try not to avoid, we try to avoid taking categorical positions on these kind of things and try to kind of do things which make sense. And I think what makes sense can also change a bit over time. And how we support, for example, household solar sector has changed a lot over time. You know, and I think that is that's where some of the vagueness can be useful. Fabio was mentioning. So a record to you. You guys have been clearly going for innovation with Connect. What's behind it? Did you guys look into other models where you're looking at alternatives to that? And, you know, yeah, what's the story there? Yeah, for me, I don't think it was ever really a decision process to go directly down one path. It was more like the natural choice of that this is what made sense for this initiative. Like Stephen said, it each kind of individual situation might have a different response and need a different approach. So this is, yes, something that kind of seems quite just quite, quite natural. And as Drew mentioned, you know, we had the technology working group that were kind of instrumental in defining the sort of guidelines that go into the Connect initiative and the family of connectors that we're working on. The manufacturers, you know, that are involved. These are the ones with the expertise and they don't just come from one company or another. They're kind of spread out across the industry. And so it's really key that we brought all of that together. And, you know, and also these are going to be the ones that will adopt it eventually and to have that buy in to achieve critical mass of adoption, which is what we want from open resources. I think it's really critical as well. But then we've, you know, also been working alongside verisal to make sure that that what we are doing aligns with the kind of more, more close standards that are already the IEC verisal standards on and testing and certification and that's an ongoing conversation that is happening to make sure that the two align as well. So yeah, so I think, yeah, the natural choice for us and also, you know, Goggler being a membership organization. It's a natural choice for Goggler as well. So I think we're kind of harvesting the expertise from across the sector and really trying to kind of just create something that makes sense for it as many companies as possible. I also appreciate that what we do create, it's not going to be for every company. There's, there's different approaches and some companies will want to adopt it. Others will kind of want to stay within their proprietary model. And I think, yeah, for us, we see that the ecosystem of all those different approaches existing side by side. So actually, let me, let me just follow on that to you, Rebecca. So if you have to just guess the number, how many, let me call it the apples of the energy access they have there, like how many are sticking to their lightning connector and will not let it go until someone really forces it on their throat to go USB-C. And how many instead are like, hey, no, actually, I love this. Somebody's doing this job for me and I just have to commit. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's hard to put a number on. I would say, you know, for the, for the open side of things, we have some leading companies that are really interested, Greenlight Planet, B-Box and for Sarah, all involved and sort of championing that. And then on the other side, maybe two or three that we've spoken to that are sticking with what they've got and they're not so keen to follow this path as well. You know, they've, they've got something that works for them and it's doing well for them. So why change it, I guess, from, from their perspective. Thank you. Ben, I'm going to go back to you just because I, we have touched very briefly with Stephen just a moment ago on the contractual side of this. And, and as, as, as someone has been sort of advising companies on how to open source things, how to, you know, go open. I realize that very often the nuances of which license am I choosing and all of that can, can really be quickly very overwhelming. And so that's also what we try to do. We just like, just like Stephen mentioned, we have a very similar approach. IP stays with the innovator, IP stays with the company, also because we don't want it. But we get a worldwide, you know, non-exclusive license to redistribute under open social licenses. How do you guys do that? Because, you know, we are bunch of people is relatively easy to, to put things in a contract. And I always think that World Bank is slightly more bureaucratic. Yeah, that's a good question. It's, it's funny about us being slightly more bureaucratic. I always think that my wife works for the federal government. So then I get a slice of what it looks the US federal government. So I guess slice of what it looks like even more bureaucratic side. So I'm not sure where we fit in that. It's a really interesting problem. Actually, we had, I think I saw some KTH folks in the chat here. When we first KTH developed the original global electrification platform, which is what I started working on really started leading a lot of open innovation and energy. And we had a really, really long procurement discussion that got really complicated because of 19th century Swedish law about IP that the person who creates IP owns the IP. The companies don't write it. It's a really interesting law. And we were developing everything in the open like the data was in the open the tool that the onset tool that KTH was implementing was already in the open. And it took six months to get our procurement to negotiate properly with with KTH even though it was about open innovation. So, so yeah, it is complicated. It is something that we it's actually one of the reasons that I think, you know, it's in a lot of projects we have. The openness allows a lot more flexibility, right? Like if we're developing a platform, and it needs user management, our IT departments in OIS will will lose it. Like that's just so complicated. And there's so many extra steps like, well, no, everything's open. Just go and view it. So I think that that that's valuable. I did want to come back to a little bit. I think Stephen mentioned that this idea of sort of openness, the tension between openness and IP, because we've been experiencing that even even in this sort of geography realm where so much of what we're working on feels like public goods. But there's still companies that have IP that they want to protect. And I think actually, it was mentioned earlier that you can sort of you can have black boxes along the production cycle along the line, as long as there are open interfaces between those black boxes. I think that makes sense. So that's where they work on data standards, both in inputs and outputs make the most sense. Right. So, fine, you have a proprietary black box that does the creates really good output. This happens a lot when we work with at the World Bank, we've been doing a little bless couple years really trying to experiment with like Silicon Valley machine learning companies. And it's fascinating we buy data from them and we say, great, can we share this and their responses know of course not. What are you talking about nobody has ever asked if we could share their share this data, because they're generally selling like predictive analytics to hedge funds. So we have sort of really walked into the process of what does it mean, but can we share is it aggregated information is it, is it specific types about, but not all the outputs. I think that that's where really where we get the idea of trying to sort of like, rather than close being this huge thing like really sort of shrink the space that is closed and try to make more of it open whether it's and I like this discussion with hardware actually really like discussions of access because in some cases it's really complicated other cases it's really quite simple. Right, we talked about the issues of clean cooking the technology isn't isn't particularly advanced but it's, but it's really complicated to implement a simple solution on a huge scale. So in that case things like standards become really really important so that's where I think a lot of the when we talk about open innovation it's not always like ArcGIS versus QGIS right licensed versus free. It's, it's a lot about developing standards that allow those programs to interface with each other so that you can have like connectors and solar systems right you have a standard on that then, you know, all of us who have you know, travel internationally the number of plug adapters you have is a good example. Good picture of how the complication can come around. But I do think that that that's where it comes from my perspective is when we can't be completely open trying trying sort of to pick out the pieces where open will allow for dissemination of better information. It's, it's, it's very interesting that they mentioned this and I think there is another interesting aspect we are, we have been supporting a new initiative called directs and essentially it's a renewable energy certificates which are a way to monetize renewable energy generation now what directs is specifically trying to do is in fact bring this from where it already exists. Which is large solar farms large wind farms and the likes actually bring it down to, you know, small mini grades or solar home system very distributed assets and while this has been in fact started by a company, actually a coalition of two or a partnership between two companies. The reality is that we are now getting to a point in which there is some sort of a need to go from, okay, you are the company and indeed you have our own way to monetize this through maybe transaction fees or, you know, enabling the market. But we do believe that there is a very important role for a nonprofit, you know, core standard that they just going to be maintaining a standard making sure that anybody can access that market has been created. And it's interesting it has been a fascinating collaboration for us because from the very onset, it was very clear that we came into this innovation with very different eyes, yet with a common goal. We both wanted this to succeed because it would both enable, you know, that one company to, you know, have a profitable business, but also the entire sector to now have space for more companies to do the same and create a standard that, you know, could really change things. You know how public-private partnerships have been a very hot word a few years ago, everybody has a lot of PPPs. I don't know what is the name of this, if it's like for-profit non-profit partnership. I don't think we have a phrase for that. But the reality is that I also personally see a lot of open innovation opportunities in these particular cases where we have, and I think Connect is actually coming in as an idea. Another excellent example, you know, we have a core which must be open, must be open so that more and more people can adopt, more and more people can, you know, participate, create innovation around that core. But then, you know, on top of that we can have close or just purely commercial business models that, you know, are just the usual approach. And so that's how the market driven still is respected. This leads to a last topic I wanted to touch about, in fact, and it is the beyond. What happens when we have an open innovation? What happens afterwards? Because we can clearly debate so far has been around what is proper, what is right in terms of how do we create open innovation? What is in terms of what should we open and what shouldn't? Now, let's say we have opened up something. How do we ensure that we maximize adoption? And here, in fact, I'm going to start with Rebecca just because you guys are probably thinking about this right now. Like, how do you now ensure that as many people as possible use Connect? Yeah, so actually, it's timely, you know, we're about to release the technical guidelines and kind of source comments and feedback on that draft publicly. And so, for that, it's, you know, raising awareness, making sure as many people and stakeholders in the sector, you know, are aware of that, which is one thing. And then, you know, actually bring in all of that feedback and to refine and make it usable and suitable by as many as possible. The other thing that we do is, you know, through our working groups, we have the tools, but then we kind of think, okay, we need to then advise, you know, how do you apply these tools? What's the best practice for using these? And I think that that is one key thing, you know, it's no good developing lots of open tools and resources and data. If nobody knows where it is, knows how to use it, or has the skills and resources to implement it. So, yes, I think that that's one of one of sort of Goggler's main roles within the sector as well. Even how can you help? How can you help in this with Connect and with the others? I think I'm looking at you for one reason. I think FCDO, well, one thing I think I really want to say about FCDO. Well, before it was called FCDO, it has been, in my experience, one of the most fervent and avid and strongest supporters of energy access. I think the number of programs that, you know, see FCDO as a core contributor and the different approaches that FCDO has is quite impressive. And that's great. Thank you. But, you know, if now we start having more open innovation, is there a role that FCDO can have in maximizing the adoption of open innovation solutions? How can we work together? Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, as I said, I mean, we've been happy to support, I think all of the ones mentioned earlier, the Solaris, Angaza, Connect, the 12-volt connector, Greenlight Planet stuff. So, I mean, I think we're very interested in this. This is part of our considerations. You know, there's always a, I'm really glad actually that Goggler are leading on the convening. This is where Goggler have a lot of value to offer, because it's not for us to convene that. It really needs to come kind of out of the sector, but we can kind of say, you know, these are the things we think are important. And, you know, this is going to, I think, I think back to one of Rebecca's earlier points. This is in the end, this is about the rising tide of effectiveness and impact in the whole sector, which should lift all the boats, essentially, of these companies, you know, and there's no benefit. If you're going to hold on to something because it's in your company's interest, but it's not in the consumer's interest, in the end you're going to lose, you know. And I think this is what's also the big gurgles and apples, and so they're realising that about their smart home stuff, too. It doesn't actually make sense to have three smart home protocols if consumers can't then do anything. So, I think that's kind of the bigger picture, the kind of signal amongst the noise here. And that's also in the funder's interest, because we want to see those impacts. I think, you know, in terms of, like, what more we could do, you know, obviously, as funders, that's one of the things we can do, encourage other funders to take part. You know, I think, obviously, with IKEA, we already fund, you know, in this kind of area together, but I think other donors should be thinking about it as well. I think I'm always cautious about the idea of, like, mandates, you know, on things. We do have the mandate on sharing, you know, that public good research, but yeah, hopefully, I think it is about, I think, as Rebecca was saying, it's about getting that word out. On the bigger picture that we're all part of, the STG7 story. And I think also, I think a lot of people, I think, are really, also really realising more and more the importance of the local businesses and the local businesses driving this forward. And it's just not reasonable or realistic to expect them to develop their own technologies in all these different areas that all the work has been done in. And I think where you see, and we need, I think the AFTB think we need 200 MCOPAs or something, you know, maybe that, maybe MCOPA aren't thrilled about that. But I think they can still be a leader in a sector in which there are lots of people benefit. And I think we've seen, like, easy solar and Sierra Leone, as an example, I always like to use, because, you know, they were able to start up on the back of the different technologies that they could pull together to then start making faster progress. And I think that's in the end what we want to see. So I do think, you know, we need to be part of a story if we were trying to reduce the barriers to entry, essentially, and kind of make it easier for initiatives to start delivering results. And there are tensions there. And I don't think we should sort of brush those under the carpet, but I think that is the signal that we need to transcend. Thank you for that. And just a note on that. In fact, I think one essential point, and not something we had the chance to touch about, one essential point of open innovation is, as you said, reducing the barriers and removing the barriers. I think we have today an energy access sector, which is very much centered around relatively large VC backed companies. And again, if we want to go towards SDG7, the only way to actually achieve that is to parallelize the effort to an extent, which is, you know, probably two or three other magnitudes higher than today. Meaning we will need to have a lot more companies that can do distribution, can do innovation without having the same level of, you know, investment support and financial support that the early stage companies have had so far. So I think that's also where open innovation can really play an important role, unlocking access to this market, to new players, to local companies in these developed countries as well. Ben, let me close with you. How did you guys maximize open data access? And how do you see open tools? And I know you guys are working on GIS a lot. How do you see the adoption going there? What's your plan there? Yeah, I think the biggest aspect from our side is the sort of the renewed focus on capacity building. I think 10, you know, 10, 15 years ago, the bank that our knowledge side was sort of the big glossy report. And I've never seen stacks of women in the break room back when they used to go to the office. And they're still around. And I think sort of over the last 10 years, we've transitioned from report to report and data. The data is being published alongside the report. And that's part of the deliverable. And I think what we're going now is it's like, okay, the report's actually secondary. Primary is the data and tools. Right. So it's not just the data, it's the code and the tools used to produce it are hopefully made open, if not made open, at least documented well. And that's recently that the final step is then, okay, now we have this data and tools, what do we do with it? Well, we actually teach people how to use it in our client countries. And that's where I've seen that the biggest innovation with and that's what we're doing a lot and a lot of our energy work. It's not enough to generate at least cost electrification plan. It's to then hand over the tools to the client government so that they can rerun with their own information, right? Like the distribution network we're using in our model is pretty garbage. It's a combination of old data and predicted data. We know that we also know it's the most important factor in determining the success of the model. So we're never going to get the best distribution data from, well, maybe never say never, but allowing the companies to do this themselves. It really sort of allows us gets us better plans and allows them to keep things up to date, right? As soon as every model or math we generate is outdated the second we press send because there's changes in the terrain. So I think that that's really it. It's used to be reports that report some data that data encode with report on the back end. And now it's like data encode capacity building it and there are some reports generated as it's as it's necessary and required in the process. Thank you Ben. That's that's fascinating. And what I find particularly fascinating is that World Bank is clearly sort of in a sense some steps ahead and I think we can pick a lot of learnings from that. And so thank you for that. I will pass it back to Drew from some closing remarks, but I just want to take the opportunity to thank you all because this has been very interesting. Thank you. I was really hoping for that. Drew, to you. Yeah, thank you very much Fabio and thank you to all of the past panelists. Indeed, it was it was fascinating to take it through a journey through the difference eras of innovation and the philosophies around it. And I think it's clear to see that we're in a period where open innovation is recognized for its benefits and opportunities. Like what Stephen said about the rising tide lifts all boats, you know, I think it's about creating a, you know, a bigger markets and there's an expression I heard that this should be about open innovation as a foundation for growth, not as a basis for commoditization. We want it to enable new business models, new partnerships, specialization, you know, kind of a whole new foundation in which we can create opportunity and innovation. And I think there's tons of interesting examples happening along the hardware, the data, the firmware and how donors and the sector support players catalyze the market. Yeah, thank you very much for all for sharing all of these insights and experiences. It was, it was fascinating. We've, we've seen that you can continue this discussion in the access open innovation community. Please check that out. You can submit your idea now. We have a few clicks already. But yeah, with that, I think we can close and wrap up. So thank you very much to everybody. Thank you very much to access FCDO and World Bank. It was a, it was a pleasure. And let's continue this discussion in the community and through the links and events. Have a great day everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.