By MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

When the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, the health crisis catalyzed a global effort to accelerate innovation and stop the novel virus’s spread. To help streamline that effort, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative, and MilliporeSigma, the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, together convened more than 180 thought leaders from around the globe to collaborate asynchronously and rapidly identify solutions. A comprehensive report that synthesizes data-driven insights from this expert group, known as the “Pandemic Response Supermind,” has now been published, outlining the most promising solutions for pandemic response.

“We engaged with hundreds of creative minds and leaders of scientific research, public health, industry and beyond in a collective intelligence exercise to generate numerous innovative solutions to the extraordinary challenges posed by the global pandemic,” says David Sun Kong, director of the Community Biotechnology Initiative and primary author of the report. “It was inspiring to see the generative nature of the collective creativity that emerged. I believe both the insights and the methodology we developed can help guide not only our society’s emergence from the pandemic, but also prepare us for future challenges.”