This is a guest blog written by Shain Shapiro, PhD, Founder and Executive Director of the global nonprofit Center for Music Ecosystems, and Founder of the economic consultancy Sound Diplomacy. A partnership between the Center for Music Ecosystems and the UNDP Accelerator Labs explored the intersection of grassroots and household innovation with intellectual property (IP) in the context of the UNDP Accelerator Labs’ work unearthing bottom-up solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. 

Part 1 of this series outlined how the key defining features of the Labs, such as surfacing grassroots innovations, partnering with unusual actors to learn from the edge and working out loud, require rethinking the way UNDP approaches intellectual property rights. In part 2, Shain delves into the thinking behind the partnership and how UNDP can learn from the music industry to address the pain points associated with the question of IP.

After a decade of running an economic consulting company that works with cities and governments to help them understand and invest in culture, I felt that no matter how many places we worked in, there were thousands more who didn’t realize the value that music and culture could have on their communities if proper time and research were put into understanding it. This is why I launched the Center for Music Ecosystems – to develop and commission research and evidence to demonstrate how music can be used in any community to solve problems. After meeting Lorena Sander, then part of the Accelerator Labs Global Team, through work I was doing at the time with Arup, we realized that music could form a unique case study to help understand the challenges Lorena was facing to explore and hopefully improve how UNDP engages with intellectual property through its Accelerator Lab Network. This convergence – music providing a window to potential solutions in other fields – framed this project's foundation.

Music as a problem solver

Fast forward two years and my team and I have completed a comprehensive assessment of how UNDP engages with intellectual property, specifically focusing on its Accelerator Labs. The Standard Basic Assistance Agreements (SBAAs) – which set up and frame UNDP’s role as a development partner to governments – include a clause through which all patent rights deriving from activities under UNDP’s programs vest in UNDP, which makes it readily available to whichever government UNDP is working with. While the intent here was to enable public funds to create tools usable for many government partners, the current practice is to provide a license to ensure access to the intellectual property (IP) whenever it was generated. With the growth of innovations as part of development work, this became unwieldy.

In this project, we wanted to explore a more collaborative, equitable and manageable paradigm. So we turned to music.

The UNDP Accelerator Labs presented an incredible case study to understand the problem better and outline a potential solution. Every day, 91 Solution Mappers in over 115 countries across the Network find grassroots innovators on the ground who have designed a solution to solve problems they face. Some wish to monetize it, others don’t, but regardless, those decisions are not in the hands of creators – or as we often call them, solution holders – once they are subject to the UN’s terms and conditions. Whatever IP is created is governed by the SBAA, meaning the UN holds it and its partner governments have access to it in certain circumstances. The creator is supported on the ground to develop the solution, but when the rubber hits the road to establish it as its own piece of intellectual property, if required, this is where roadblocks emerge. When the creator is a large-scale organization, such as a university or private firm, this becomes even more complex. Sometimes, those ideas lead to a product or service being developed with the help of UNDP.

“When mapping solutions within communities, we often encounter ideas that offer creative paths to address development challenges, yet don't fit into local or international frameworks for protecting intellectual property,” said Jorge Munguia, Head of Solutions Mapping at UNDP Mexico. “These solutions may result from collective processes or appear simultaneously in different places. Additionally, the creators of these solutions may not be familiar with the concepts and institutions associated with intellectual property.”

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Accelerator Lab utilized UNDP's Innovation Challenge modality for various innovation challenges through its Open Innovation Platform. The approach required participants to agree that any idea or solution contributed would become the common good, as stipulated by the platform's terms and conditions. Consequently, these ideas and solutions could be freely used and further developed by anyone interested. “Although this strategy generated opportunities for innovators to design and sometimes implement their solutions, it also revealed certain constraints,” said Arijana Drinic, Head of Exploration at UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Sometimes the realization that creators would not retain intellectual property rights over their solutions led many to reconsider and often decide against participating in the challenge.”

Music and its complexity opened a window to explore how this process – identifying, registering, partnering, disseminating and ultimately, if context dictates, monetizing the IP – could be better governed. This is what this research partnership set out to change.  

Music is a complex intellectual property asset, much like what is being developed, day in and day out, on the ground by the Labs. A single song may be owned by multiple entities and disseminated worldwide. For example, there are dozens of writers on Beyonce’s Lemonade and Cowboy Carter albums, with each agreeing to a specific percentage of revenues when songs are broadcast, streamed, sold, or used in some way. When properly registered and managed, this happens: a complex web of tracking systems manages the journey of the track – and the IP it is made from – and a framework to account for who owns what and how, functions to distribute the money earned from the ownership of the rights. But it starts with understanding the needs of the song, that piece of IP, and ensuring its creator is given the right to control it, give it away or allow it to be used.