Convergent Research Explained

Convergent Research is an incubator for philanthropic ventures founded in 2021 and funded by Eric Schmidt, Wendy Schmidt and Ken Griffin[1] [2] [3] as part of the Schmidt Futures Network.[4] Convergent Research is designed to identifying high-impact scientific or technological R&D fields, then launch companies to address these fields with a structure they call Focused Research Organizations (FROs).[5] As of 2023, there are 7 FROs.[6]

Focused Research Organizations (FROs)

A Focused Research Organization, or FRO, is a type of non-profit organization designed to address technical problems or perform scientific research. They differ from academic research labs in that they have medium-to-large size teams with corporate structures, embrace projects which are unlikely to yield publishable results, and frequently involve scientists and engineers collaborating across disciplines.[7] FRO projects are not profitable enough in their initial stages for them to constitute a startup company, and unlike think tanks or research institutes, tend to pursue specific technical goals rather than general research.[8] Once their technical goals are achieved, FROs may evolve into more traditional non-profits, or become backed by venture capital and transform into startups.[9]

List of FROs

Notes and References

  1. Web site: How a 5-minute phone call between a millennial billionaire and an economist created a $50 million grant program backed by Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg and more tech luminaries. Fortune.
  2. Web site: Schmidt Futures and Ken Griffin Commit $50 Million to Support the Next Big Breakthroughs in Science. Samantha. Cole. March 15, 2023. Schmidt Futures.
  3. Web site: ABC News.
  4. Web site: Why Billionaires Ken Griffin And Eric Schmidt Are Spending $50 Million On A New Kind Of Scientific Research. Alex. Knapp. Forbes.
  5. Web site: Philanthropy News Digest.
  6. Web site: FRO Portfolio. Convergent Research.
  7. Web site: 2023-06-15 . Focused Research Organizations: A New Model for Scientific Research . https://archive.today/20231017035139/https://fas.org/publication/focused-research-organizations-a-new-model-for-scientific-research/ . 2023-10-17 . . en-US.
  8. Web site: 11 January 2022 . Unblock research bottlenecks with non-profit start-ups . https://web.archive.org/web/20231013190229/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00018-5 . 2023-10-13 . . 2023-10-17 . bot: unknown .
  9. Web site: 2022-08-04 . A New Model for Science . https://archive.today/20231017035112/https://www.institute.global/insights/tech-and-digitalisation/new-model-science . 2023-10-17 . Tony Blair Institute.
  10. Web site: E11 Bio Moonshot Neuroscience . 2023-10-17 . E11 Bio . en-US.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Convergent Research".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.