Discussion session: 
(D) Biometrics as a trigger for innovations
 

(BP-A1)	G.Gennvi: ”The ’World Café’-Approach to Creative Thinking”.
	Göran Gennvi is the Founder of the NatureAcademy which notes that a combination of a physical café with cyberworld-participation can be a step towards strategic learning through webs of informal conversations and networks of relationships. However, the usefulness of our knowledge depends on the quality of the questions we ask. If those questions are formulated in the right setting the answers might well be social innovations rather than quick fixes that have their roots in our attachmnent to black/white, either/or-thinking. After all, ”it was in cafes and sewing circles that the French and American revolutions got started”.
(BP-A2)	B.Zimmerman: ”BT-challenges to Privacy and Personal Integrity”.
	Burke Zimmerman (FWAAS) lives in California after a very active period as President of a finnish biotech company. He is a long-time member of the Biofocus Foundation Council, and he will outline the topics selected for the round-table discussions
(BP-B1)	S.Nilsson, ”A quarter century search for social innovations aimed at supporting inventors”.
	Sam Nilsson was head of the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS) when this body organized the conferense ”Social Inventions for Development” in 1979. He is a physicist with an academic background from CERN and Chalmers, administrative experience from the Roy.Swed.Acad. Eng.Sciences and as technical director of the instrument maker Incentive AB. He is head of the Innovation Institute, vice chairman of the Inventors’ Council and was instrumental in getting Sweden’s first fully transparent innovation stock market started.
(BP-B2)	B.-A.Vedin:. ”Nine vistas to design-driven innovation”.
	Bengt-Arne Vedin is professor at the MälarValley University. He points out that conventionally industrial design has been called for at the end of a development process, adding mostly stylistic elements to a finalized product. More and more, industrial designers are employed to take a very active part at the formative stage of innovation projects. Sometimes innovation is their very brief, sometimes they are trusted with taking over the entire innovation and development process on the client’s behalf, sometimes their brief goes outside the product range to encompass strategy or ’designing the company image’ including new product families. Nine different ways in which designers are instrumental in effecting innovation have been distinguished.
(BP-B3)	Maria Strömme,“Nature as a model for inventors and designers”
	Maria Strömme is a physicist from Uppsala University where she works in the field of Pharmaceutical Material Science. She has demonstrated the usefulness of dielectricity spectroscopy for the measurment of the adhesion of various drug-preparations to mucous membranes. Her interests in fractal geometry has opened inspiring insights about Nature’s molecular architecture and about ways to avoid injections in controlled delivery of drugs.
(BP-C1)	W.T.Anderson: “Frontiers of Education”
	Walter Truett Anderson is President of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) and lives near San Francisco. In his essays, books, poetry and journalism he has explored many different facets of contemporary life and evolutionary change. His recent books include “The Future of the Self”, “Evolution isn’t What it Used to Be” and “All Connected Now”. In his most recent book: ”The Next Enlightenment – Integrating East and West in a New Vision of Human Evolution” he sketches the exciting challenges and prospects for the next stage in human evolution.
(BP-C2)	A.Vlavianos-Arvanitis. “Biopolicy and Environmental Values: a Vision for Social Innovation”.
	Dr Agni Vlavianos-Arvanitis dedicated 20 years to research and training in biology before founding the Biopolitics International Organization (B.I.O) in 1985. With its headquarters in Athens, Greece, B.I.O. promotes international cooperation and education in environmental protection and has grown to include eminent representatives in 124 countries around the world. In 1990 Dr. Arvanitis launched the Internaqtional University for the Bio-Environment to infuse education with environmental thinking and, in 1992, campaigns for a World Referendum, and for environmental Olympics and cease-fire during the Olympic Games. Prolific author and poet, she has published over 40 volumes on environmental education, diplomacy, economics and policy. She holds several honorary doctorates and professorships, is a fellow of many academies worldwide and has received prizes and high distinctions for her pioneering efforts related to sustainable development, ethics, environmental issues and biopolicy.

Discussion session: BIOMETRICS AS A TRIGGER FOR INNOVATIONS.

Discussion chaired by Dr.Olof Tandberg (FWAAS) from the ”Standing Committee on Freedom in the Conduct of Science, SCFCS” of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). He starts the discussion by adrsssing the question: Who is a bona-fide scientist? Participants in the discussion include: C.-G. Hedén, S. Nilsson, B. Zimmerman and G. Hamer.

Since biometric data, on October 1st 2005, are expected to be added both to EC identity cards and to passports for international travel, there is now every reason to ask if biometrics and radiofrequency tagging might help us keep track of dangerous people, knowledge and materials.

Biometrics is one of the young areas one finds at the interphase between IT and biotechnology. It has a wide range of policy-implication that emerge from innovations based on ”smart card” and “radio frequency identification (RFID)” –technologies. Biometrics has two main uses, for identification of an individual through database matching, and for verification of a document (card or passport etc,) which contains characteristics of the bearer. In some swedish schools the students’ computer access for instance is controlled by their fingerprints. It will not be long before we have machine-readable smart cards with built-in biometrics that will help us bypass many bottlenecks for instance at airports. Like video screening this invasion of privacy will certainly be tolerated. However, when we find RFID-devices, small as a grain of rice, embedded in all the everyday objects around us, a negative reaction may well spill over on our attitude both to environmental management , DNA-profiles as health monitors etc.etc.

The Sept. 11th ”Two Years Later”- biopolicy discussion of bioterrorism at the Academy, and the assasination of foreign minister Anna Lindh underline the need for better techniques to keep track of potentially dangerous individuals and knowledge sources. However, there is already a lot of concern about the invasion of privacy and personal integrity, for instance by excessive video-surveillance, and also about limits to scientific progress when the publication of certain data is supressed.