My daughter, Lorelei, lost the use of her arm after a rare illness. After learning, there were no treatments we could afford, and only a 2% chance of recovery, we decided to use Open Social Innovation and build our own solution. A year later, leveraging the collective intelligence of experts around the world we built a brain-controlled exoskeleton, 100X cheaper, 10X lighter, and one that enabled Lorelei’s motor neurons to repair themselves! Today she can move, unassisted and has recovered 60% of her strength :)

And the plans to build it are completely open too!

How it came together

This is a guest lecture I gave to a few universities that explains how Open innovation, 10 years of my work, and the collective intelligence of a group of strangers came together to help us.