Pre-Requisites of Technological and Social Innovation In The developing World.

                   Technology is going to play a major role in bringing social innovation in the world. The present trend of technological innovation is centered around the developed world or the firms owned by them in the low income countries. Most of the innovation we see today has been developed by the west and provided to the countries in need .  The low income countries do know have the resources and finances to come up with a technological innovation. The building block for technological innovation is education and most importantly in fields like math, physics etc. because if a country has a high literacy rate and has a great number of scientist and engineers then it can come up with some good innovations.

                The less developed countries should be encouraged to improve the quality of their education and the west should help them in achieving their goals. It will be very economical and more suitable for a low income country to introduce an indigenous technological innovation because those introducing a social innovation are also part of the same society and they have a better idea of what kind of innovation is workable and most desired. This will no doubt be much economical as compared to an imported technological innovation.

                During the outbreak of Dengue Fever last year in Pakistan, a large number of people died not because they were unaware of the virus but they didn’t have the resources to buy mosquitoes killing sprays and continuously spraying them over a number of times which was very costly. Children of young age and the elderly were most prone to be bitten by the Dengue Mosquitoes. Some local innovators came up with a low cost technological invention to kill the mosquitoes. It was called a “ Tennis Racquet “. It was a small tennis racquet shaped gadget and in place of the strings they had installed wires with some magnetic field which attracted mosquitoes. It was very light just like a toy ,the cost was around 2 dollars and it could be used for months. All one had to do was just swing the racquet when  some mosquitoes buzzed nearby and it would just kill them instantly. The children of course loved this new game and the elderly who could not move around found it simple to have this gadget around. The point I wanted to make here was that it was a very simple technological innovation which helped in reducing the risk of the disease. If some outside help had been sought they might have come up with a more expensive solution.

Should we encourage indigenous technological innovation ?