If Coke and Marlboro Can Sell

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/st_essay_pennies/

I came across this Wired article that talks about how companies and governments are embracing social innovation. And the tools they begin with? Design Thinking and Frugal Engineering.

Quote: "if Coke and Marlboro can sell to the world’s poor, companies whose products are actually useful should be able to do it, too."

What are the world's poor willing to pay for useful products? Not much. However, we have seen numerous examples in the recent decade that it is indeed possible, and maybe even becoming easy, to serve the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) and still run a successful business. While we might find very few instances of large enterprises that ventured into social innovation, like Tata, this new field is more conducive to startups who have the *privilege* of frugality. This is precisely what puts every startup at an advantage, because today's governmental and philanthropic organizations are stepping up to fund companies that are producing goods at negligible costs to solve the world's problems.

Drawing from the article, consider D.Light whose founder decided to put $20 solar-powered LED lamps in every home and Tata's $22 water purifiers that work without electricity or running water. Going beyond the low selling price and what profits they bring, these are things that save those parts of the world that would otherwise still be dark or suffer from unclean water and related diseases.

Increasingly acknowledging social problems as something to worry about, educational institutions have become a sort of cradle for ideas. To name a few highly driven ones, we have Institute for Social Innovation at our very own CMU, and the Institute of Design (d.School) at Stanford is another hotbed of human-centered design thinking. History has proven beyond question that when all the major institutions of society come hand in hand for the social good, we are headed in the right direction.