Perspectives

Wealthy technology companies routinely walk past genuinely promising work. They are structurally unable to deliver fundamentally new breakthroughs. The reason is simple: their decisions are governed by one principle — maximizing profit. And as we argued in the previous section, profit alone is too weak a motive for real creative work.

Strong motives move history

The driving force behind Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite was the hope of creating an explosive so destructive that people would refuse to make war. Nobel was not entirely wrong — the same idea was realized at a later stage of development, in the form of nuclear energy.

Today, nuclear weapons remain the most effective deterrent against large-scale military conflict.

Why a foundation

A non-profit, unlike a corporation, can afford to look beyond the next quarterly report. That is exactly why we build an environment where inventors, scientists, and engineers are free to focus on real innovation.