A---Dispersion. Direct public ownership is the best way to promote equitable dispersion. Otherwise, any advancement cements inequality

There is a growing movement to address inequality through technological innovation. Some institutions that fund or conduct innovation have established scholarship and mentorship programs to diversify science, engineering, technology, and math, assuming that a more representative technical workforce will lift up historically disadvantaged communities. Others are investing in programs dedicated to innovation “for good,” as the consulting firm McKinsey puts it, or sponsoring researchers who investigate how technology can be made more fair, accountable, and transparent. Meanwhile, governments are striving to incorporate equity considerations into the regulation of new technologies.

All of these initiatives are likely to yield some benefits, but they take for granted that the basic structure of the innovation process should be left alone.

The standard model of innovation proceeds in a more or less linear sequence: it begins with an ideation phase, moves through research, design, and testing, and ends with commercialization. On this view, social benefits arise from the marketplace, so getting a product to market is the goal. The government might invest in early-stage research, but it is up to the private sector to get products to the public, and companies that succeed are rewarded with patents for doing so. According to this picture, the major obstacle to repeating the social good that comes from innovation is the so-called “valley of death”—the arduous phase between concept and market where most ideas fail—and the solution is targeted investment and deregulation. In other words, society should get out of the way, let technologists and engineers do their jobs, and perhaps only regulate after the fact should the need arise.

The standard approach to innovation has contributed to vast and growing inequality.

Without a doubt, this approach to innovation has stimulated macroeconomic growth, produced many valuable products, and created jobs, particularly for highly skilled workers. But it has also contributed to vast and growing inequality, deepening the concentration of wealth among the very few. It has often incentivized the development of technologies that at best ignore and at worst harm marginalized communities. And it has made many crucial innovations inaccessible to those who need them most; the very communities that are sometimes invoked as the beneficiaries of new technologies are often simply priced out of affording them.

Consider treatments for hepatitis C, which afflicts around 2.4 million Americans. Over the last decade, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved remarkably effective drugs produced by companies like Gilead Sciences and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, but they can be prohibitively expensive for the people who need them most. To remedy this, the Biden administration recently suggested a “subscription” model to improve access: the government would pay a lump sum to manufacturers, who would then fill requests from places like prisons or community health centers.

Similar proposals have focused on government-sponsored prizes or patent reform. But even if such efforts could guarantee that crucial technologies were made affordable and available for all who needed them, they would do nothing to dislodge the presumption that the public should largely get out of the way of private companies as they seek to bring a product to market. In reality, access and distribution are only the last link in a chain that must be significantly rethought if innovation is to combat inequality. In short, we need to reimagine the innovation process itself.