What if markets could solve some of the world’s most pressing global development challenges? Incentivizing innovation through pull financing can do just that by driving the private sector to develop, test, and scale innovations to save lives and change the world. Pull financing uses the promise of future sales or other revenue to “pull” new solutions to seemingly intractable social problems to market. It can take several different forms, including advance market commitments (AMCs), advanced purchase agreements, volume guarantees, milestone payments, market entry prizes, and others.
The initial AMC concept was refined, tested, and incubated at CGD, in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Michael Kremer, targeting the development of pneumococcal vaccines. As a result of this policy proposal, five countries (Canada, Italy, Norway, UK, and Russia) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $1.5 billion to a pilot program for a vaccine to prevent the strains of pneumococcal disease common in developing countries. Just over 10 years later, Operation Warp Speed helped bring COVID-19 vaccines to market at record speed, resulting in the fastest vaccine rollout in history and showing the world how effective pull financing can be.
There’s now an explosion of interest in using similar approaches to tackle other intractable problems, from vaccine R&D, to the development of new antimicrobials, to climate resilience and beyond. A new AMC is already working to accelerate carbon capture, and CGD experts are also exploring new use cases to improve climate outcomes and to develop resilient, low-cost infrastructure. CGD’s deep expertise and policy research offer a valuable resource to policymakers and advocates looking to scale and accelerate innovation for our shared future.
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