Enablers of Social Innovation & their Impact

In one the of the week three readings (Lehr: 2008), the article provides a two-by-two table in which the impact of product innovations on social and economic benefits, are determined by a composite of factors that collectively describe the feasibility of projects linked to social ventures. The composite of factors of feasibility, are compiled by Thomas Associates, and made up of the following components:

1. Financial
2. Technical,
3. Cultural,
4. Political and regulatory constraints.

In terms of the latter two factors listed in the composite, Ken Banks, who is the founder of Kiwanja.net which is in the business of developing IT solutions for NGO’s operating in less developed countries, advocates the importance of anthropology in driving socially innovative solutions for communities positioned at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

His position is informed by the belief that, if first world inventions are to be adapted and applied in innovative ways for resolving social problems within different contextual environments, the cultural relationships between countries where initial ideas are sourced and where they are to implemented need to be considered when formulating the design of the socially innovative solutions. Banks maintains that anthropologists should come to the mainstream of the “technology driven renaissance” of the information age, particularly when cultural contexts determine and create differences in how basic needs are satisfied within developing countries, as opposed to, the high spec and high utility product design paradigm of developed country product markets.

Banks truly makes one ponder on how an archaic subject like anthropology which once was central to colonialism, could now be the answer to freeing the most poor communities from underdevelopment.