David Edwards

David Edwards is a Harvard professor, creator, and writer. He has founded several innovation organizations in the USA, Europe and Africa, including Le Laboratoire (www.lelaboratoire.org), a cultural center in Paris, and “idea translation labs” in Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cape Town, South Africa.  These labs form the network of ArtScience Labs (www.artsciencelabs.org) and manage the creative educational program, The ArtScience Prize (www.artscience100k.org).

Edwards is the author of Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation (Harvard University Press, 2008), an essay that explores innovation as a creative process that is neither completely aesthetic nor scientific, but a fusion of the two, and the new essay The Lab: Creativity and Culture (Harvard Press 2010), which describes how cultural experimentation can provide a rich setting for socially beneficial innovation and learning, kind of 21^st century Bauhaus. Edwards is also the author of two graphic novels Niche (Beaux-arts de Paris les editions, 2007) and Whiff (Beaux-arts de Paris les éditions, 2008), distributed in English with Harvard Press.

David Edwards is the inventor of several commercial innovations available in stores internationally, including Le Whif (www.lewhif.com), including breathable chocolate, coffee and vitamin supplements, the ecological filter Andrea (www.andreaair.com), and the new water transport product, The Pumpkin (www.lelaboratoire.org/produits-pumpkin.php). His medical science innovations have led to several biopharmaceutical organizations, including Advanced Inhalation Research (purchased by Alkermes in 1999), Pulmatrix (Massachusetts), and Medicine in Need (MEND) in Cambridge, MA, Paris, France, and Pretoria, South Africa.

David Edwards has been a member of the American National Academy of Engineering since 2000. In 2008 he became a member of the French National Academy of Engineering, and in the same year was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

More information on David Edwards’ creative work can be found at davidideas.com