What Good Is Innovation If We Can't Share

If you are working to innovate, for whom are you innovating? The question of for whom a product, service or venture is being designed is a very basic one in the development process, maybe even the first one addressed. In any case of innovation, what good is this new and exciting development if there is no one on the other end of the transaction to benefit? The question becomes pertinent in any instance of innovation you can imagine, but all the more so in the realm of social innovation. That’s where the “social” aspect comes in, after all. But even with an intended market or societal group in mind as the eventual beneficiary in the beginning stages of development, it is not always easy to predict or control how an innovation will interact with the world once it is made available. But one of the most integral aspects of a social venture, one that needs to be most maintained, is the access and availability of the product or venture, specifically to those disadvantaged that would a larger margin of benefit than other more developed markets.

Access to new innovations is sometimes a foundational aspect of the product or venture’s development, wherein the very focus of the innovation or entrepreneurial venture is to bring the power that innovation can bring to those that might not otherwise experience such power. Take for example, this article about innovative inventions pertaining to clean water. Access to an otherwise unavailable resource is something embedded in the core of these inventions and the focus of their burgeoning momentum in the market is to get them to countries in the Global South where cleaner water is scarcer. Orthis article, for example, which takes a similar approach with innovations inenergy technology. These innovations and their organizations take a pointed approach to distribute them where needed such as the Darfur-Berkeley Stove which has “distributed more than 25,000 of their Berkeley-Darfur Stoves across Darfur and Ethiopia”, or the SOKKET, who make a point to make their product easy to integrate into the everyday lives of the people by making a soccer ball which will produce light for hours.

But while access may be important to an organization which specializes in a certain type of innovation, it may not always be an optimal frame of access. This is an issue that has come up with the Raspberry Picompany, who despite selling a product that would be affordable and greatly beneficial to a large segment of the population of less developed countries, has mainly been distributing their product in the Western world. The root of this problem is not exactly identifiable as of yet, but plans to market the product, which could serve as a more optimal option than netbooks or smartphones, is being pushed for in coming years.