The Better Worlds Conference was born in the summer of 2008. A confluence of the shaky economy and recent college graduations led to conversations about the future on the campus of the California Institute of Technology.
These discussions revolved around what became the conference prompt: “If resources were no object, how would you change the world?” In just a few days, the newly minted scientists and engineers in these discussions came up with handfuls of answers. However, educated in a culture of collaboration, we knew that any answer we came up with could be augmented others’ thoughts across our fields. With that, the group decided on the best answer to this question: We would change the world by helping those with unlimited vision share their ideas with an audience who possessed the resources to realize these ideas. In the process, both parties could profit and produce a beneficial gain for the whole of humanity.
As we saw it at the time, the Better Worlds Conference could help established businesses see around the corner of their established innovation gap by connecting with young visionaries without delays or middlemen. Over the next year and a half, we developed this from a concept into a plan and set a date for May 2010.