All innovations have a common objective, to bring about a favorable change, even if it is a small one, and hopefully, a big one. A change in the way we communicate, the way we consume or use products & services, and essentially, in the way we live.
But only so many innovations are able to achieve this goal in any substantial way. This does not imply that we don’t have innovations, infact, we have a plethora of them. But it does call upon the fact that we need far more than that, over and above them, in terms of an adaptable design, the right implementation methodology, the right support system w.r.t. funding & distribution mechanisms and so on, to make them “successful innovations”.
And this in most cases, takes a lot of time. “Adaptive Lenses”, the technology which was made popular by Dr. Joshua Silver, an atomic physicist at Oxford, was first developed in 1880 by Dr. Cusco, a Parisian physician.
Dr. Silver started working on the initial idea developed by Dr. Cusco about 100 years later in 1985 and was able to successfully come up with a design which was much better than the original one and could be implemented as an alternative to the expensive optician visits for the large developing world. The impact he wanted to bring about was tremendous, with approximately 90% of school-leavers estimated to be suffering from myopia in East Asia vs about 10-20% in the developed part of the world. He tested the utilization of silicon gel which was much more effective & practical than using “water” suggested by Dr. Cusco, to make lenses which can be adjusted by the user themselves to bring about different prescriptions on their own. This was indeed revolutionary, and his work was recognized & applauded across the world. In 2009, after nearly 3 decades of his research, he gave his first Ted Talk on this iconic technology which had the ability to bring about significant educational & economic outcomes for more than 100 million children in the age bracket of 12-18 years who could not afford a visit to the “eye-doctor”.
Come 2011, and he was not only recognized at European Union and European Patent Office, he also partnered with a number of international organizations apart from founding one of his own to invite more attention & funding to his “vision for a better vision for all”. His organization got a 3mln philanthropic contribution by Dow Corning corporation, the manufacturer of silicon gel employed in the glasses. Within a few months, they tested the technology on students in as distinct geographies as China & Boston and got promising results. The task ahead of them was to make the pieces more affordable than the 2011 price point of 15pounds. At present, in 2015, Dr. Silver claims he can produce a piece of these iconic glasses at $8 but needs more funding for the project to touch its goals.
Ironically, another firm, Adlens, with its roots in the same geography of UK, is seeing much more credibility & popularity in the same product segment. However, their objectives are largely commercial with a social impact only so much existent as in potential at present. The company’s cheapest glasses using essentially the same technology as Dr. Silver’s, are priced at $20. This is roughly the same price at which Dr. Silver first sold his glasses as a part of an initial commercial start-up, and much higher than the $8 he currently claims he can sell them for.
What is however noticeable is the speed at which the technology found takers in the market. The “claim to fame” for Adlens was their ability to promote their glasses as a one-up on the bifocal lenses nike the “social aim” propagated by Dr. Silver. Both are however, identical technologies, with identical potential. But why is the “Developing world” still far away from reaping the benefits of this technology. Is it only the funding which is lacking or is there more to what we require for success in this arena. Why, at $8 a piece, is the technology still not convincing enough for a World Bank or UN to divert their funds towards itself remains a huge question.
Sadly, this is not an isolated case. For a technology to seam in the developing part of the world, an innovation is not the only thing required in most of the cases. And though, it is almost certain that at one point, we will certainly find Dr. Silver’s vision of reaching a 100 million people, it does not seem likely by 2020, his original time-frame.
A different case in point is however, the success of the Khan Academy. A one-man revolution of sorts is what it can be aptly called for the way it has made “free education” reach millions of students, teachers & parents alike, with “time & internet” as the main source of funding. While there are criticisms to his style of pedagogy, the reactions to those criticisms by students themselves steer away any doubt on how useful the idea of free-accessible education is, an idea which is free & away from the “limits” of a building or an institution.
But it is necessary to understand that even this idea of “free-education” has one hindrance in reaching its ultimate potential. And that is “the access to internet”. We are still distant from reaching a universal access to internet and the infinite possibilities it offers in terms of education & employability to people across the world. Again, steep technological advances have been successful in bringing the user costs down in the last decade. There are however challenges in terms of investment costs & basic infrastructure which hinders its reach within the developing parts of the world. Not to forget, that even with internet’s presence somewhere in the “air”, it is only so much as useful as the access to a PC, a product which is not exactly affordable for a lot many.
And here, we see the development of products like, “Raspberry Pi Microcomputers”. Too good to be true, they are the cheapest learning-focused computing platform currently in place. They are actually cheaper than a lot of storage drives but their permeability in the developing world is still limited. With the production company slowly shifting its objective to explore possibilities of the product's usage in the developing world, we can be hopeful of seeing much more developers in the coming years.
The pertinent question, however, is how the governments, policy makers, & powerful organizations can make a difference in the way these innovations are targeted to the developing parts of the world. With the world’s centre of development & economic power increasingly moving towards the east, it is only practical for the international organizations to be working towards exploring the benefits of these technologies in the Asian & African nations. In the end, an innovation's success largely depend on its ability to diffuse, beyond geographical and income levels, with the initial objective/target-market of the maker just a stepping stone.
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