Pessimist or Realist?

In “What happens next?”, I found the tone of certain “crucibles” to be overwhelmingly negative, particularly in crucibles 3, 4 and 5. The authors speak about the imminent financial collapse of OECD nations, an unstoppable depletion of natural resources, and a weakening middle class due to the increased success of emerging markets. Each of these issues must be balanced against the other. How do we allow for increased wealth in emerging economies while still keeping jobs in the United States? How do we get less people to drive when their bus route to get to work is eliminated? Resolving one issue will always have an adverse effect on resolving another. It is finding the balance in how these issues are presented and solved that will ultimately give people hope. This hope will also inspire innovation.

Although I do not disagree that these issues may not be resolved in as timely a manner as one would hope, the authors contradict themselves in the conclusion of the article by encouraging the readers that “the optimists have it”. The authors effectively make the reader aware of the changes that the world will experience in the upcoming years and successfully highlight where innovative ideas will matter the most. Perhaps these authors are using reverse psychology to convince readers that if they do not come up with a solution soon, the world will undoubtedly collapse around us?

Not By Gadgets Alone

Between my first and second year of teaching fifth grade, my school decided to adopt some of the latest technology (at the time) called Accelerated Reader (AR for short).  Innovative in its approach to leveling books according to students’ reading level and using real-time data to provide feedback to both students and teachers, my school thought that AR was “the best thing since sliced bread” to increase students’ reading comprehension scores school-wide. 

The school’s most valuable resource, its teachers, were not properly trained to use the software.  We did not know the extent of its capabilities or that it would provide us with data we could use to immediately adjust course for our neediest students.  While the school was a big proponent of finding the next best thing to supplement the work of its teachers, it did not take the time to train the teachers to use it.  Their mistake is one that Sanjay Dhande points out in this week’s Scientific American Article “Frugal Innovation: India Plans to Distribute Low-Cost Handheld Computers to Students”.  He says, “Education is not gadget-driven but is more in terms of using the technology for effective teaching and learning”.  I think it’s fairly obvious that this is true but when it comes to innovations in the education world, some schools and districts (like mine) seem to cling to the latest trend alone rather than coupling it with proper training for its implementers.

What Dhande identifies is an issue of human capital, specifically in training teachers to use the technology that will make their work more effective.  Uncommon Schools (www.uncommonschools.org) is a highly successful charter school management organization that surmounts this issue.  Their approach to teaching language arts through the highly interactive and technology-driven Reading Mastery program has resulted in student test scores that exceed statewide numbers (http://www.uncommonschools.org/results).  They devote extensive time to train their teachers to use this curriculum and adjust it to meet the needs of each student.  Their results speak for themselves while their approach to human capital and technology is something for us innovators to learn from. 

Human Centered Design at KIPP

While reading week 2’s Design Thinking for Social Innovation (Brown, and Wyatt, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2010, pgs. 30-35), I wondered whether it is possible to use a human centered design approach to create a service rather than a product?  Reading about the “three I’s” (Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation) and pulling from my background in education, I recognized that the founders of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a system of charter public schools, used this process to create their first school.  In a 60 Minutes report on KIPP, Mike Wallace talks with the founders about the history of the organization (http://www.kipp.org/index.cfm?furl=/press-center/multimedia-archive/kipp-videos/kipp-video-display/&video_id=22).

In 1994, after several years of teaching, Dave Levin and Michael Fienberg recognized that low-income students were performing below grade level (inspiration phase).   They began to study the techniques of highly effective teachers like Harriet Ball (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/harriett-ball-texas-teach_n_748446.html) and started to identify how they might implement those techniques on a larger scale.  They put together a unique business plan of sorts centered on several key tenants to increase students’ success:

·      More Time in School: Longer school days, longer school weeks (6 days per week), and longer school year, such that students have 70% more time in class than students in other public schools)

·      Highly Structured, Disciplined Environment: Students are held accountable for their actions or lack thereof

·      Access to Teachers via Telephone 24/7: As a part of their contract, all teachers must be available via phone to help students with their school work.

·      Student, Parent, and Teacher Accountability: All parties must agree to do whatever it takes to achieve academic excellence and sign a contracting showing this commitment.

·      Focus on College Readiness:  The focus of all classes and most conversations between teacher and student is on preparing students for college and the “real world”.

·      No Excuses: This speaks for itself.

This was all a part of the ideation phase.  Lastly, they opened just one school to test these techniques and ensure that they perfected them before expanding (implementation).  Today, KIPP operates a network of schools nationwide. 

Knowing that it is possible, to use HCD to create innovative services, I’m curious to know what other such services exist? 

Mobile Technology Transcending Cultures vs. Penetrating Cultures

Developing communities lacking access to information, really? It's the 21st century, and it's unfathomable. The reality is that we are in a technology bubble of sorts. It's intriguing to think how exposed we (in developed communities) are to technology and how intertwined it is in our state of being. To use a pay phone is almost taboo. Our expected response time to phone calls and messages has significantly decreased. 


USAID's grants initiative to support Haiti's 2010 electoral process or One Laptop per Child's aim to encourage exploration and make learning fun are without doubt, moving approaches that stimulate change and ease access to information. But the change is often short-lived, and tends to penetrate cultures. Do women in Haiti really have the inherent "right" to vote or do the teachers in Rwanda truly accept a new technology invading their existing, and quite effective methods of conducting lessons? 


Reading about mobile technology in "Dialing for Development" by David Lehr as well as "Mobile Mandate: UNICEF and frog, Together at Last" by Lauren Serota, makes me believe that there are certainly social innovations that are long-lasting, self-sustainable and self-modifiable for that matter, and can transcend cultures, not penetrate them. The Manobi Development Foundation's mobile phone-based services initiatives directly responds to the needs of the fisherman. Furthermore, I can't help but to compare the log in departure time and estimated time of return features to the log in departure time and estimated time of arrival features of the newly developed Tiramisu iPhone application. The application was developed at Carnegie Mellon University to predict bus arrivals. 


With the progress of these innovations, an open source platform is key and I would agree with the explanation that "These tools must be combined with a deep understanding of the human, social and cultural context and be designed and developed with an open collaboration model. This project is part of frog's Mobile Mandate and is the next step in an ongoing effort towards realizing this vision." 


The hands on, responsive nature of social innovation is ongoing. 

Is a Mobile phone Magic phone or human brings it to alive?(for the third class meeting)

LINKS:

http://www.globalenvision.org/2010/09/14/cell-phones-ultimately-provide-irrigation-answer-indian-farmers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy5is14iakw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQftB6qtqNs

Having innovative ideas is one thing, how to distribute them to the end-users so that the actual problem can be solved as expected is another thing. When ninety percent of world population has access to mobile phone, lots of innovations have found their ways to actual playgrounds.

In India when farmers feel grateful to NPOs for providing them with free price and weather information related to agriculture activities, there is another person I strongly believe needs to be acknowledged with credits. His name is Santosh Ostwal who spent half of his lifetime looking for solutions to better irrigate farmers field to improve production as well as save labor and water resources. The system he created allows farmers to control water pumps in the field to make sure more sufficient and effective irrigation can be conduct during the crops growth cycle.

He and his family suffered from tremendous pressure when all kinds of experiments were in the process before the final solution came out.  However, since he got mental support from his family, coupled with his determination to making Indian farmers better off, he never gave up until the very innovative method is finally found and improved.

In the long journey of identifying and solving problems, there are plenty of obstacles and hurdles, ups and downs, success and failures. Nevertheless it’s those dedicating their lifetime to an issue that is influential to a large population who make the progress promising and the journey full of courage to move on and on.

What does Human-Centered-Design tell me about Innovation?( for second class meeting))

In the reading, there is a story of the internship experience a student from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, had inspiring me a lot.

The student called Kara Pecknold was asked to design a website to connect rural Rwandan weavers with the world. However, she soon realized that in that area actually the weavers had little or no access to computers let alone the internet. So she was pondering there must be some other way to fulfill the function requirement the internet has. Then she started to really understand how local people live a life, how they connect to each other, and how they percept certain things appearing in their daily life. Since this stories mentioned in the reading material, I assume that Kara finally figured out a design that meets local’s needs in their own context very well.

It encourages me to think about the importance to develop proper climate for people to be innovative so that problems from their local area can be identified and solved. Because believe it or not, innovation has its nametag, either it’s regional, national, or international. It has to grow in certain soil that contains the problem triggering the start of it. If we are looking for someone can be called expert about some area, majority of them must be local to them to certain extent. So I am wondering if there is a proper environment that can foster awareness and innovative thinking, those people who are close to problems will be rather influential for identifying, solving problems for their own community.

We already find showcases in some area in India, China, and other countries, such as the $2000 car, some $60 fridge, $20 Nokia cellphone, and X-ray machine, and etc. People outside the country might never think about this kind of direction of innovation before, not because they aren’t smart enough, but because those who don’t live in India and China don’t suffer from being in crowded and low-income situation all the time. However, where is a problem, there will an opportunity, which is the way innovators view the world.  In this case, it becomes so essential to be able to identify what problem is. 

When there are many trends going on about innovation, there are so many opportunities for each country, and every region within it. So it’s very important to develop certain policy, innovation process, and rewarding recognition system accordingly to catch up with the demands for social innovation at a grass-root base. It’s also necessary to melt down some boundaries between different institutions, such as non-profit organization, for-profit cooperation, and government to encourage more people to participate in an innovation-creating era.

Think Different: Lifesaver Bottle

I'm a big fan of TedTalks and I came across this one. Michael Pritchard invented the Lifesaver Bottle in 2007 after being inspired/enraged by government response to tsunami that hit SE Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the US. The product itself is really impressive and scalable to other sizes for different purposes (military, humanitarian, and "leisure"), but what I got out of the TedTalk was his approach to the issue at hand.

The issue of safe drinking water is often considered a developing world issue. But this is also relevant when responding to natural disasters. Pritchard looks at not just the issue at hand, but how providing drinking water can not only help people have safe water to drink, but also can save money by allowing people to stay put in areas and avoiding refugee camps. By not relocating people, the area's infrastructure can be rebuilt more quickly. Overall, I was impressed by how Pritchard thought about the micro and macro issues at hand.

As obvious as it sounds, it seems like the foundation of innovation-social or not- is epitomized by the phrase: Think Different. Michael Pritchard encouraged people to "think different" in his talk. He says to think different about innovation, implementation of new technologies, and questioning existing processes. Over the summer, I worked at Apple and on the very first day, they ask their employees to do the same as MIchael Pritchard by showing this Apple ad. It's an oldie, but a goodie and completely inspiring. While innovation, and especially social innovation, is easier said than done. It doesn't hurt to think outside the box.

make it right 9

The article by Sarah Murray titled "Living Space: housing solutions for developing nations" talked a lot about innovative ways companies are creating low cost housing around the world. While not directly related, these issues reminded of the Make it Right project based in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward . This project (started by Brad Pitt) aimed to create sustainable, affordable housing to bring New Orleans residents back home to the Lower 9th Ward, one of the worst hit neighborhoods in Hurricane Katrina. The goals of the project are admirable, and it appears that the actual architecture does everything the organization hoped it would. Special focus was put on using "green technologies" and sustainable design that will weather the next storm. They have so far brought 150 families back to the area. The only thing that really seems conflicted about the project is the price tag on the homes. Prices ranges from $150,000-$200,000, which may not be a lot for an American home in the grand scheme of things, but seems quite pricey for homes that are specifically being built to house low-income, displaced families. The organization stresses that families are expected to pay as much of the purchase price from their own resources as possible, with special financing options available. Even with these measure in place, it seems like the neediest families would still be in an odd position in terms of taking advantage of this redevelopment effort. I have to question who exactly is being served, and is it the best use of these resources? I think its very possible that some of the time and money spent on creating such fancy, modern looking houses could have been used to subsidize some of the cost. A similar house with a smaller price tag would have been much more innovative.

Dynamic Innovation

It is striking how much innovation drives innovation. It almost seems that great innovations can only come when multiple sources are attacking the same issues. The 100 dollar laptop is a perfect example. Negroponte created the idea for the 100 dollar laptop as a way to improve the educational opportunities from poor children. He generally failed to meet his goal, but there was an additional consequence to his actions; the for-profit computer industry then began to make cheaper and cheaper laptops. Now for his next endeavor Negroponte does not necessarily plan on the success, merely driving the market in the right direction is enough. Power problems in rural areas show another way in which innovation begets more innovation. The “Lighting Africa” conference in Nairobi shows how small innovations can energize a field. Only a handful of companies attended one year and after only a year the number was up to 50. There has been an explosion of innovation attempting to get power to rural areas. Companies and non-profit organizations have explored everything from LED lights to local generator grids. Innovation strikes me as “wow look at that solution, what can we do?” Originally, I viewed innovation I assume like most people, that it is a single creation for a single problem, but it is so much more than that. Innovation, particularly social innovation, is a constantly evolving process. Social innovators do not merely come up with an innovation then call it quits. When they reach a point of completion, they look around and say “what can I do now, how can I make it better?” The result in social innovation is one of the most dynamic fields out there.

Exponential Growth and Change, Led By Social Innovators

It may be different for others, but when I think of America as a brand I tend to associate the words "corporate" and "business" along with things like "freedom" and "liberty".  In my personal experience, I grew up with the negative connotation of "corporate", and pieces of that identification stick with me today. While doing this week's reading, I couldn't help but to recognize the larger-picture role that social innovators are playing.

It's assumed that they are inventing, designing, and implementing for the greater good.  However, every action has a reaction, and I am inspired to see an incidental reaction to social innovation.  It always starts with a need, and someone steps in to fill it.  Social innovators strive to do it cheaply, effectively, and on whatever scale they see fit.  Corporations generally are guided by their shareholders and the need for a profit.  Since social innovators came on the market, they drive down prices and corporations are expected to follow.  Basically they are acting as an accelerant for the curve that was previously guided by time.  No longer do we have to wait until large corporations see fit to release the next model, or use that green technology they actually have in their possession but will not use for fear of low returns.  Social Innovators solving issues that rank low on the 'hierarchy of need' have huge effects on corporations that had previously focused on needs met at the top of said hierarchy.  Thus the word "important" takes on multiple, and variable meanings.

The ripple-effect of this change also reaches into the realm of civic duty for corporations, as well as competitive hiring to try and stay on the forefront of change.  Multi-skilled and multi-talented people are now at the top of the desired hiring pool and the days of one-skill, one-job workers is over.  I believe that social innovation had something to do with that, for the idea of social innovation would never have worked without cross-disciplines working together, or people capitalizing on their various interests and skills.

Corporations are striving to align themselves with these types of people, as well as those in the community.  In a time of inspiration through innovation, corporations can no longer afford to have the "corporate" feel.  They need to be versatile, understand their role in the larger picture of society, and foster a community presence - whether their community is a suburb or the world.

Are We Forgetting Someone?

My mother teaches at an inner city school in Las Vegas. The population is predominantly Latino and has the highest number of homeless students in the Clark County School District. Her school has been the beneficiary of federal Title I funding for the last 5 years but has not been able to meet its mandated "adequate yearly progress". These kids have nothing and if they continue to fall behind the government's enforced benchmarks, they stand to lose even more.

The Title I funding has provided them with specialized classes to bring students up to grade level in reading; they have a full-time science teacher with an expansive lab space and because they haven't been able to improve their scores on the battery of tests they're given day-after-day, they're going to lose the privileges federal funding has provided.

I first read about "One Child Per Laptop" over the summer and I couldn't help but imagine the possibilities that the students in my mother's classes could have if they had access to such a luxury. But while these students are low-income, deprived of resources, often without food and occasionally shelter, programs like OCPL have not been created for American children. I understand Nicholas Negroponte's intention to have his laptops purchased by ministries of education. And I understand that his work led to the development of netbooks and more efficient and economic computers. But the more and more I read about these amazing social ventures for the children in developing countries, the more I feel like we're doing a tremendous disservice to the children in our own country.

Designing With, Not For: A shared ownership of design

The day I was sure I wanted to be a designer was the the day my dad handed me a modern furniture design book he got from Barnes & Noble. Each glossy page had a full-bleed, color photo of some of the sleekest and sexiest chairs and chaise lounges I had ever seen. I spent two solid hours pouring over each artfully designed piece, wondering how I could ever be as talented as the designers who conceptualized and constructed these sensuous artifacts. Six years after being given this shiny design book, and four years since my first day of design school, my reasons for wanting to pursue a design career have changed dramatically. The appeal I initially found in gazing at custom-made $5,000 furniture piece is no longer there. Now when I think of design, I imagine products and systems that improve people's lives not just the appearance of their living rooms. This developed perspective on design is one of the reasons I chose to take this Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship course. However, over the past two weeks of readings, we have not yet reviewed a product or system that has been truly designed WITH the end-user, rather than FOR the end-user. This is a key difference for us to understand if we want to have a lasting impact with the social innovations we create. It is easy and tempting for designers to assume they know how to best design for their end-users. Designers may gather a base of knowledge about their user group through surveys, economic data, demographic data, and literature reviews. While they can complete this research with the goal of gaining insights, true understanding of a users' attitudes, education, goals, and cultural context, cannot be found without full immersion into the environment of that user. OLPC, for example, was developed largely away from the very communities and individuals it was being designed to serve. In the case of OLPC, there were no serious consequences from this lack of immersion. However, what if the OLPC team HAD fully immersed themselves in the African and Indian villages the laptops were meant to serve? Would there have been an even better solution? Emily Pilloton, Founder of Project H, believes this type of immersion for the sake of lasting, impacting, design is essential. She also believes this immersion will result in a shared ownership of the design process. Her work in Project H is a direct reflection of this philosophy. Stationed in Bertie County, NC, Pilloton is using design thinking as a way to transform methods of community improvement and public school education. She and her partner follow these rules in their design process and also share these rules with the high school students they teach design to: 1) There is no design without (critical) action 2) We design WITH, not FOR 3) We document, share and measure 4) We start locally and scale globally 5) We design systems, not stuff 6) We build Pilloton and many others believe that following this list of tenants results in empowered communities and a growth of creative capital. When you can give end-users and stakeholders a highly participatory role in the design process they become invested in a way that would never have been possible had you just handed them the newly designed product. As we navigate our way through the field of design for social innovation, we should remember the importance of designing WITH rather than FOR. The user knows best and it is our job to fully understand their needs.

L3Cs - Redundant or Relevant?

I was fortunate enough to get off the wait list right before last week's class; this is my post for last week.

"The Next 4 Billion" mentioned legal hurdles that can arise when trying to work with basic utilities in developing countries. But what about legal hurdles for social entrepreneurs in the United States? After a little bit of sleuthing, I learned about a legal issue that is not so new, but quickly gaining in popularity... identifying companies with social missions as L3Cs. If you'd like to learn more about L3Cs (and milk farms, oddly enough), check out an article posted on CNN.money in February 2010 by clicking on the title of this post.

As described by Malika Zouhali-Warrell in the aforementioned CNN article, an L3C legal status is "intended to make it easier for companies with a social mission to receive investments, including loans and grants, from charitable foundations." Sounds great, huh? Not so fast. There's some concern that this model provides access to nonprofit funding with too few restrictions, and it's uncertain that the IRS will recognize L3Cs as automatically eligible for PRIs (Program-Related Investments, also known as the main reason for a L3C status).

So, how prevalent are L3Cs? Since April 2008, five states and two Indian tribes have signed legislation enabling companies to incorporate as an L3C; at least five other states are considering similar legislation. Do L3Cs sound like a good idea to you? Should Pennsylvania pass legislation allowing companies to incorporate as L3Cs?

-Whitney Coble

Are patents stifling innovation?

This article brings up several interesting points on how patents may seem to hinder innovation given the increasing number of lawsuits based on patent dispute. While I agree that the ever-growing number of patents require new innovators to tiptoe the line between new innovations and already existent inventions, it is important to remember that not having one's idea protected would likewise prevent someone from spending the time and money to create a new innovation or invention. The author goes on to explain that true innovation shouldn't matter to existing patents because if the new innovation is covered by the patent then it really isn't a new innovation. I agree with this point as well, but the mention of "patent trolls" reminded me of our discussion in class on pharmaceutical companies and the social entrepreneur who made patented medications available to certain populations in third world countries. Certainly, in this instance, the entrepreneur needed the inventions and formulas of the pharmaceutical companies, and therefore was arguably not an innovator in his own right. However, his approach to providing medical help to poor populations was undoubtedly an innovative new means of distribution. While I agree that patents help protect innovators and their investments to their new ideas, I think it is also true that patents and copyright law may inhibit some social innovators and entrepreneurs that aim to find new ways to help society.

So what does it take to be a social innovator?

I have often been intrigued by this question and because the readings for the class consisted of so many sound bites from leading innovators, I thought it would be worthwhile to post my two cents on the common (or commonly identifiable) traits of a social innovator.

First and foremost I believe is the ability to empathize with others. According to Alvin Goldman,

empathy is the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand her emotions and feelings.Being an idealist and having a feeling of justice in an unjust world also helps foster social innovation.

This is the same feeling that led Muhammad Yunus to question the injustice of 42 women slaving for the lack of a paltry sum of 27 dollars.It drove him to find a solution to this socially vexing problem. Though the Grameen story is well known, here are a few stories of the lesser known social innovators who were driven by empathy and compassion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindeshwar_Pathak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSzCv2tXi_E

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30

The second quality could be having a 'lunatic's dream' like Joshua Silver mentions or which Negroponte summarizes as "When engineers tell me something seems impossible, I say let's work on it until it is not .Even Muhammad Yunus started off with the vision of creating a poverty free world and was met with the cynicism of statements like "Are you crazy?"

The third ability i reckon is effective problem solving.

Finally, I believe, some social innovators are driven by a feeling of meaningless in one's life's pursuits. This again is best summarized by Mohammad Yunus in an interview when he says he was "Teaching elegant theroies of economics at a time that the country was hit by famine"

During my research for this post i also came across the following book:

http://debosmita.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/book-review-i-have-a-dream-by-rashmi-bansal/

Does the tool need to be tangible?

In the articles for this week, one of the common threads throughout were the use of different products, or tools by which people were able to create incredible social change and significantly better the lives of many in the world. There were stories about OLPC, the exponential growth of cell phone use, self-adjusting eye glasses, and solar cells. And all of these things are tangible, touchable, and require materials that cost money to create.

But what about the tools that are causing social innovation that are not tangible, that do not require daunting logistic hurdles to their implementation? That can create widespread social change, transform lives, and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people? As simple (or as silly) as it might seem, what about Twitter?

The social network that allows for just a sliver of a sentence to be shared has been causing some big waves lately as an agent for social change. Twitter is free, and with the fast-growing number of people who have carry cell phones now, it is more accessible than ever.

It is a prime tool for something as serious as revolutions, and as commercial as product launches. Twitter has become a major player in the social sphere, and one that cannot be ignored. It has rallied the masses into action during natural disasters, and seriously peaked the interest of multiple governments who took a hard look at its influence during the Iran protests. Whether it is used for play, for politics, for philanthropy, or more, the fact remains that it has revolutionized the way the world communicates in real-time and that is powerful.

Everyone might not have it, or use it now, but all change takes time. As stated in the ‘Power to the People’ article, cell phones took off in about 13 years. Twitter is only 5 years old, and still a relative newbie to many. Could it eventually die off? Maybe. Is it just a fad? Perhaps… or perhaps not. Its use in elections is proof that at the least, it will have a place in history. It is a simple, free tool that has been proven astonishingly capable of creating social action. Whatever might be its fate, one thing is clear. It fundamentally changed the way people in the world are able to talk to one another.

What’s the Point of a Text Message…?

What’s the point of a text message if the person receiving it can’t read it? Because cell phones require less physical infrastructure than typical broadband internet access, people in developing countries are using them as their primary computers. Rural farmers are gaining access to information that would take days to get to them before access to mobile phones was so widespread. So, how can we reach individuals in rural areas of developing countries who can’t read? Sure, technology exists that allows for voice transmission of these messages. Since “mobile phones have leapfrogged past land-line technologies in many parts of the world”, can we use this example to “leapfrog” past a traditional classroom environment to teach the nearly 1 billion illiterate adults in the world how to read? Since the majority of illiterate adults are woman, can we use their sense of community and motherly instincts as a conduit for passing on knowledge by developing small cell phone networks to share information within different rural communities?