Agent of change

Dave Welch on how entrepreneurial problem-solving skills can tackle some of society's biggest challenges

Dave Welch is best known for being the founder and chief innovation officer at Infinera, the optical equipment specialist. But he has a history of involvement in social causes.

In 2012, Welch went to court to fight for the educational rights of children in schools in California, a story covered by newspapers in the US and abroad and featured on the front cover of Time magazine.

"Ultimately, we lost," says Welch. "But the facts of these [school] practices and their link to a poor educational outcome were confirmed and never disputed."

Welch recently co-founded NosTerra Ventures, a non-profit organisation tackling challenging social issues. These Grand Challenges, as NosTerra calls them, cover housing, energy and environment, access to healthcare, public education, democracy, and information security, issues more suited to a presidential debate.

"NosTerra aims to identify key societal issues to contribute to, identify differentiated strategies and appropriate entrepreneurs, and help get those launched," explains Welch. Nosterra has added partners, equivalent to a board of directors, to guide the organisation and ensure its strategies make sense. "We are not a Bill Gates or a Michael Bloomberg, but the object, frankly, is to make an organisation that can have the same influence on how we address these problems," says Welch.

Welch says his involvement stems from being gifted with various opportunities, creating a responsibility to the greater society. Moreover, these issues define the quality of a society, so it is crucial to address them. "It's also personally very rewarding to figure out what you can do to help," says Welch.

Strategy for change

NosTerra works to identify what it must do to contribute to a solution and do it in a differentiated fashion, to make a structural change that improves things over time.

Welch returns to the example of public education and establishing the right to a quality education. "That's a doable task, and trust me, we will reach out to the Bloombergs and the Gates to ask them for their help," says Welch.

Energy and the environment is another example. Welch says there is much debate about the topic, which is only right given its impact. But less is discussed about the future direction of energy.

Welch sits on the Natural Resources Defense Council board, an important non-profit organisation, and is involved in setting strategies. He believes NosTerra can pursue various activities, including investing in technologies or creating the opportunity for its partners to invest directly. "In this case, the vehicles of change are that we absolutely need new technologies," he says, citing the extreme example of fusion to shorter-term battery technologies.

NosTerra also believes it can use politics and influence what Welch calls factual prioritisation Developing solutions to significant problems by 2035 results in a markedly different approach to a 2060 timeframe. "If I'm a government or organisation, where do I want to spend my next pile of money?" says Welch. "What is shocking is that there isn't a go-to validated model to run such scenarios on."

Some organisations, such as the US Department of Energy, do have detailed models, but there is no open-source trusted model to see what impact short-term and longer-term investments will have. NosTerra is looking to address this with an open-source energy model so that if the Government is willing to invest $100 billion, it can identify what will give it the best return.

"I applaud the financial attack on the system to convert our energy sources, but I'm also a little appalled at the prioritisation of some of where we spend our money," says Welch. "We can do some things to help there."

NosTerra is busy creating a community around these areas to develop solutions to get 'some of these things done'. Any NosTerra success will not be evident in one or two years but more likely five or ten years.

Welch stresses such ventures is not new to Silicon Valley. "David Packard and Bill Hewlett, those guys not only ran an incredible company [Hewlett-Packard or HP], but they were plugged into their community and sat on school boards," he says. "I still find Silicon Valley is made up of people that care and work with the community."

Welch is still fully involved at Infinera. "My added value [at Infinera] is the 40 years of watching telecom technologies develop and watching markets change," he says. He provides creative thought, a perspective on technologies and why customers and markets will adopt specific directions. He also helps with prioritising what technologies Infinera should develop that will make a difference.

"I love that area," he says.