dataroom

We the people have always been helplessly drawn to the concept of magic: the notion that you can will something to happen by wiggling your nose, speaking special words or waving your hands a certain way. We've spent billions of dollars for the opportunity to see what real magic might look like, in the form of  Harry Potter  movies, superhero films and TV shows, from  Bewitched  on down. It should follow, then, that any time you can offer  real  magical powers for sale, the public will buy it. That's exactly what's been going on in consumer technology. Remember Arthur C. Clarke's most famous line? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well, I've got a corollary: “Any sufficiently magical  product  will be a ginormous hit.” Anything invisible and wireless, anything that we control with our hands or our voices, anything we can operate over impossible distances—those are the hits because they most resemble magic....

IN 2015 Kiddyum, a small company from Manchester that provides frozen ready-meals for children, won a contract from Sainsbury’s, a big British supermarket chain. Jayne Hynes, the founder, was delighted. But sudden success might have choked Kiddyum’s cashflow. Sainsbury’s pays its suppliers in 60 days; Ms Hynes must pay hers in only 30. In fact Kiddyum gets its cash within a few days. Once approved by Sainsbury’s, its invoices are loaded onto the supermarket’s supply-chain finance platform, run by PrimeRevenue, an American company. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) picks up the bills, paying Kiddyum early. Kiddyum pays a fee which, Ms Hynes says, is a small fraction of the cost of a normal loan. Sainsbury’s pays RBS when the invoice falls due. Suppliers, of course, have always needed finance for the gap between production and payment. Traditionally, they could borrow on their own account, or sell their receivables—unpaid invoices—at a discount to businesses known as factors. Moder...

Today, about 80% of infants living in the world’s 73 poorest countries receive routine immunizations, a measure currently assessed by whether they have been given a full course of a vaccine regime to prevent diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. In 2000, only about 60% received such protection. That progress is great, but achieving 100% coverage will require better insight into which children are missing out.  For that, we need a new approach: the global health community must move to digital systems. My organization, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, spends an average of nearly US$2 billion a year on getting vaccines to children in the poorest countries. It has also invested tens of millions of dollars in innovations to monitor immunization. Current methods for measuring immunization coverage are based on how many vaccine doses are distributed — not how many children are fully immunized. Doses delivered are much easier to count, but knowing which children are covered is much more impor...