Some of the key, emerging themes of our approach:

• Integrity, Task-focus, & Performance — We will find a way or make one, and hold ourselves accountable on every front. We take this to include not only a commitment to equal opportunity and non-discrimination as required by law, but the obligation to seek out people with the broadest possible range of backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints, including among groups currently under-represented in science, technology, and innovation. We will demand of ourselves excellence in strategy development and an unwavering focus on execution. The latter includes not only a drive for results, but foremost, an attention to process.

• Urgency & Competition — Whether on questions of development, climate, the balance between democracies and non-democracies, or the advance of technologies with anti-human possibilities, there is no more time to waste; the next 20 years are likely to be the most decisive for the future of freedom in the world since the 1930s. Democracies must act with much greater urgency, ambition, boldness, and decisiveness. Competition (internal & external) is a proven spur to action, and we will use competition productively.

• Creativity & A-conventionality — We will not seek out novelty for its own sake; neither will we be bound by past practices, or by conventionally accepted standards or limits.

• Cooperation — New and difficult things call for cooperation, often of a kind that goes beyond transactional or contractual thinking. Conversely, people, groups, and organizations that (voluntarily) do (difficult) things together forge new realities. We aim to give advanced cooperation where it is called for, and will not hesitate to ask for it. The principles of cooperation being valid at every scale, we will work to help foster a new pulse of cooperation among democratic countries of all sizes, ages, and income levels, one that respects at once the sovereign equality of peoples and states, and the differences among them.

• Continuous Innovation & Improvement — A person, group, or organization can always do better; almost always far better. We will keep trying.

• Dual-use Innovation — Innovation for development almost always implies a degree of innovation beyond what markets demand. In order to accomplish this at speed, we will exploit every opportunity for dual-use innovation, along two distinct axes:

  • Developmental / commercial

  • Civil / military

• Green & Democratic Preference — In so far as possible, but with increasing rigor, Auxso, its subsidiaries, and any entities substantially funded by them will

  • source all goods and services from suppliers meeting the highest standards for environmental and social sustainability, including strong roots in democratic states;

  • offset their own emissions;

  • perform all manufacturing in democratic states;

  • confine corporate debt or equity investments to entities that meet sourcing requirements, and confine investments in currencies or sovereign debt to those issued by democratic states.

• Co-innovation & Co-manufacturing — To succeed at continuous innovation and dual-use innovation; to bring innovation and manufacturing close to end-users; to foster advanced manufacturing capacity and employment in countries of all income levels; and to help draw democratic states more closely together, covered entities will seek to distribute innovation, manufacturing, and their benefits in a balanced way across borders.

• Employee Ownership — The requirements of innovating for development; a commitment to democratic practice; the constitution and expectations of the most talented workers of the next generation; and a concern for the long-term bottom line call for all employees to share in the rights and responsibilities of ownership. At Auxso, its subsidiaries, and related entities, not all owners will be employees, but all employees will be owners.

• Forward-payment — The specific challenges of innovation for development, and the growth of new or renewed innovation and manufacturing, call for ownership in the innovation-for-development sector to be self-limited — voluntarily, and up-front. The owners of Auxso, its subsidiaries, and related entities, will, at their individual discretion, donate a substantial share of their holdings now, and pledge progressively higher shares over the next 20 years (or in the case of entities established after 2023, over the 20 years after their establishment) to a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering in perpetuity the work of democratic societies in developing, manufacturing, and disseminating innovation useful for human and economic development. All owners will donate something, and some owners almost everything.