Social Innovation: Its Own Animal

                Charity, while often well-meaning, sometimes has the undesired consequence of creating a culture of dependency, especially in instances where a group had previously paid for a good on their own. There’s sometimes an attitude that the first world should give to the bottom of the pyramid countries and that by selling goods to them, they’re profiteering off of the impoverished. These seem to assume that there’s either price-gouging or possibly that these countries are incapable of improving their lot in life on their own. Social innovators would like change to take place, but not to the long-term detriment of the person they help, so concepts that ensure that people in BoP countries are able to raise themselves up with sustainable enterprises are the main focus. When it comes to adequately addressing the challenges of social innovation, this dilemma of how to help and how much to help represents a major hurdle for would-be innovators. This concept, with an emphasis of development and growth of ventures of these organizations, was the theme of week four’s readings. While there are fundamental differences between non-profit organizations and for-profit business ventures, the cases illustrated in this week’s articles demonstrate the hybrid creation that is the socially-innovative business venture. Whereas the focus of business is the delivery of profit and the goal of non-profits is to have a specific and measurable impact, these hybrids seek to use market-based results to create an impact on a social problem or issue.

                These enterprises ultimately need to focus on how to achieve their mission while also providing an opportunity for economic advancement in BoP countries, which makes them similar to any other business endeavor but on a shoestring budget. Products need to be made so they are very cheap but ultimately durable and able to fit well with their market’s way of life. This was seen with the Envirofit case, where much more efficient, cost-effective, and safer cooking stoves saw hurdles due to an initial lack of cultural consideration. This was eventually remedied by relying on an individual who was familiar with the area and was able to utilize television ads to make it more palatable to the public at large, but even then still it faced some resistance due to a lack of penetration amongst males.

                In addition to these goals there is a focus on impact, which causes the attitude towards other enterprises to change from competition to cooperation to ensure that the initial goal is achieved and strategies can be passed to other enterprises to ensure social good to not just that instance but other similar scenarios, as illustrated in the article How to Take a Social Venture to Scale. Perhaps the greatest difference between the typical profit-driven business and a venture focused on social innovation is the focus, social innovation requires the impact to become the focus, but unlike the typical non-profit it uses the market to accomplish that goal and sustain its execution to ensure that it is a long-term solution.

Playing with money and fire

As the distinctions between the nonconventional nonprofit, social enterprise, and conventional business begin to blur, we are starting to see social businesses take on traditional qualities including the infamous initial public offering (IPO). Hiroko Tabuchi’s NY Times article Etsy I.P.O. tests pledge and balance social mission and profit sheds light on a recent example for the online retailer Etsy. Etsy embraces a concept that we’ve studied in the past for social innovation- to empower instead of simply give. In the world of small retail businesses, it helps empower them to grow their own businesses, and the IPO should in theory help increase the scale at which this can be done. 

Etsy belongs to a list of B Corp companies, which pledge to adhere to social and environmental accountability based on a list of guidelines written by a nonprofit organization called B Lab. In its public offering, it made it very clear that it would stick to its value for community over profits. In a traditional sense, once there are shareholders involved, it may harder to be as innovative with external pressure. In the Standard Business article Are IPOs good for innovation (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/are-ipos-good-innovation), Edmund Andrews brings to light a study done by Shai Berstein, and assistant professor of finance at Stanford GSB, that innovation slowed down by 40% at tech companies after they went public. A variety of reasons influenced this result- the main being that top innovators were leaving the company due to the restricted freedom they had for innovation (which would particularly be the case for companies making products). The largest distinction of companies that went public and ones that stayed private was the size of the stock market’s appetite at the time of filing. As such, it would make sense that most of the B Corp companies have chosen to stay private.

Making a decision to stay private or public is a uniquely difficult decision for businesses with a social cause. This idea is explored in a recent TED talk given by Dan Pallotta, in which he encourages the audience to rethink the way we think about the concept of charity. He argues that the deeply rooted Puritan values of using charity as a means for penance for making money has brought on a 400 year outlook that social businesses/nonprofits should limit profit, risk seeking, and marketing (overhead). However, this mentality limits the potential for the social cause to grow, as all of these are needed. In a logical world, overhead is needed to make the “pie” bigger. With this approach, Etsy’s IPO does help increase the size of the market for small retail business owners to reach, as well as how many small businesses Etsy can have an effect upon. Similarly, allowing companies to reach a larger scale and revenue can also allow them to make enough money to scale up smaller companies (examples being Google and Facebook). While there is no clear answer which direction is the obvious front-runner, we can hope that companies continue to ask themselves- how much are we willing to compromise our core vision and purpose?

Innovation Execution

There are so many incredible innovations that are improving lives in the developing world. Many of the innovations presented in the reading could even be used in the developed world, but why aren’t they? Joshua Silver’s simple adjustable eyewear seems to be the ideal alternative to today’s expensive options, and yet they are being marketed solely for the developing world. Yes it is important to recognize the differences in markets and available resources between the developing and developed worlds, but why separate them so starkly? It seems like the developed world could benefit from less expensive eyewear. This eyewear could be sold for more in the developed world, which would probably more than cover the cost of eyewear for the developing world.

Now this comes with its own problems. Often times these innovations are developed with good intentions, but when people have no personal investment in or an ability to repair an innovation it often falls into disrepair. It’s essential to develop distribution methods that emphasize the importance of ownership.

All in all innovating for the developing world is important, but would be more effective by addressing the lifecycle of the innovation. A design thinking method could be employed here to understand how the innovation would be used and at what point a sense of ownership ceases or the innovation requires maintenance. There is so much potential in what has been developed and what will be developed. Execution is the final piece.

Design Thinking in Zimbabwe

I recently returned from an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) assessment trip in Nyadire, Zimbabwe, a United Methodist Mission in the Northeast region. The EWB process requires a community to submit an application for a project that they would like to work on with an EWB Chapter. I had been to Nyadire twice before and already had connections with the community. So when our Carnegie Mellon EWB chapter was looking for a new international project, I jumped at the chance to connect the two communities.

Nyadire identified a need to address issues related to the inconsistent power provided by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA). One of the issues was how dark the community gets after 6pm with or without power. This problem evolved into the lighting project that our EWB chapter is working on currently.

During the assessment trip two students, two mentors, and I started by going around to each department at the mission to understand how their daily lives and jobs are affected by the lack of electricity. We found it very difficult to glean honest answers from the people we met because it was difficult not to prime them with ideas we were already considering. We were able to learn a lot about the community by understanding how each separate department runs, but I think it would have been significantly more valuable to use a design thinking approach for our assessment trip. It may even be valuable for EWB to require this approach for all assessment trips in the future. EWB already requires a lot of paperwork, so the implementation of such an approach may be difficult, but I think the end result will be an increase in successful projects around the world.

If you are familiar with Engineers Without Borders, do you think the implementation of design thinking would be possible and/or valuable for the organization? And if you are not familiar with Engineers Without Borders, it is an organization worth taking a look at as it relates directly to social innovation.

Great Innovations or Good Intentions?

This week’s blog will be geared towards social innovations that are occurring in some developing countries abroad. The readings for this week’s class focused on specific organizations around the world that are looking to help the citizens of a particular country, or have already done so. From the reading, my key takeaway was that in every pocket of the world there are people devoting their lives to helping those less fortunate than themselves. Giving to someone who is less fortunate is something I believe every human should do at some point. But when I stop to think about the amount of time some of these endeavors take, it forces me to rethink my position.

When you come from a lower class family, or even lower middle class family, and you are suddenly put in a position to migrate to the next level it is hard to turn down. Should someone who is capable of helping the greater good put their family before everyone else, or society first? Some of the social innovations introduced in these articles are innovations that I would not consider time demanding. By time demanding, I mean over a decade to bring to the market. But when you look at something like the Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Research and the self-adjusting glasses, the time it takes for the product to be brought to market is much longer. These innovators are the people that are truly making the world for everyone – not just the rich or privileged – a better place, but their return on investment is not coming from a place of certainty. This is especially the case the SCD research center. They are looking to fight a problem that has been around for decades, and even if they are able to find a cure or a way to decrease the number of children born each year with the disease, the people they are targeting are not very wealthy.

If you juxtapose something such the SCD research center against social innovations such as the Voto, the Gravity Light, or the Window Socket, there seems to be a major difference. The latter products are tangible objects that have a potential to make a profit if cost to manufacture can be reduced, or the object is placed in the right market. With the SCD research, they are targeting a very specific market with no end goal in sight. Even the innovations that target water purification have a higher chance of adding value to the creator. I think all of the innovations are taking daunting task that add value to globe, but I do think some are more commendable than others, based purely on the difficulty of the goal and the time spent to bring any findings to market. In all, I think highly of those who set out to with the aspirations to become social innovators.

I believe that all great innovations take time. More importantly I believe that giving to others is part of what makes us human. I say this because the amount of time is not the primary reason for me rethinking my position. The primary reason is the time that it takes away from what you are able to provide for your loved ones. Those born into privilege homes and give back are great humanitarians - but those born into poverty and forgo the opportunity to ascend socioeconomic levels to help the greater good are truly selfless. I added this portion because after reading these articles, I wanted to get a better sense of the people leading these social initiatives. I want to do a job that I love... It is not about the money, but the money does matter. I commend those that choose this path where success of successful implementation is low and reaping tangible rewards for their hard work is even lower. 

Fun, Frugal and the Perfect Storm

If “necessity is the mother of invention,”[1] I would posit that fun is its father. While reading about ‘Solutions and Enablers to Deliver Basic Human Needs’ and learning of the backstories to the innovations themselves, I repeatedly came across solutions that were the results of one man’s hobby. Joshua Silver, physicist and the inventor of self-adjusting lenses for children in the developing world, was quoted saying that he worked on the revolutionary glasses because he ‘was curious’ and ‘did it for fun.’ [2] Salman Khan, who developed the revolutionary online education platform, Khan Academy, viewed developing hundreds of educational videos in the earlier years as “largely a hobby.” [3] A hobby, by definition, is something someone does in his or her leisure time for pleasure. My first key takeaway from my reading was that those interested in being social innovators should start with what brings them joy.

            I consider myself a MacGyver-like problem solver. In a previous reading I learned of “frugal engineering” [4] thus giving me a name for what I’ve been doing all along personally and professionally—being resourceful, working with what I have, and doing much with little. I love the MacGyver reference because he is an action-hero and I get this image of a high-pressure situation where MacGyver pans his head to the left, then pans his head to the right to assess what he my use in the room to save the day. Being television he always manages to pull odds and ends together and develop a solution. This week’s readings affirm the value of frugal engineering but it also presents two great points: 1) what’s frugal for me may not be frugal for you (or the target population) and 2) what I see to my left and my right which I may involve in the solutions is likely very different from what the target population may see when then look left and look right. The article “Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World” highlight a few innovations that leveraged what people already had or what people were already doing. [5] The VOTO device converts the heat from a fire into readily useable electricity. The invention appreciates that millions of people around the world use charcoal and wood-fueled stoves on a daily basis. The article also highlighted the Soccket which sought to take advantage of the fact soccer is the most popular sport in the world and millions of people play the game. [5] A key enabler to delivering basic human needs is working with what that human already has.

            Khan and Khan Academy is an example of both working with what you have (a lesson plan and YouTube) and benefiting from a “perfect storm” of things you don’t have (but may need particularly to make an impact on a larger scale). My last key takeaway was the recognition that sometimes what you need to be successful hasn’t been invented yet or the combination of things you need to increase your impact has yet to be conceived. In the case of Khan Academy his “perfect storm” consisted of widespread broadband, low content costs (both creation and distribution), rapidly proliferating mobile devices, shifting social norms, and a generation of online education adopters. [3] In the case of the innovative canvas tent, Ikea innovators developed for refugees, scientists had to create a perfect storm of technology in one thread—a new type of polymer called Rhulite that is insulated, allows light to pass through a textile but prohibits shadows from casting out. [6]

            Three key enablers to delivering basic human needs are fun, frugal engineering, and a perfect storm.

[1] English proverb

[2] “British inventor’s spectacles revolution for Africa” (The Guardian, May 21, 2011)

[3] “One Man, One Computer, 10 Milion Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education.” (Forbes, November 19, 2012)

[4] “The Importance of Frugal Engineering” (Sehgal, Dehoff, and Panneer, Strategy+Business, Summer 2010)

[5] “Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World.” (Smithsonian, May 2, 2013)

[6] “A New Ingeniously Designed Shelter For Refugees—Made by Ikea” (Fast Company CoExist, June 26, 2013)

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. 

Social vs "Successful Innovations"

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. 

Information & Ideas borrowed from:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/adjustable-spectacles

http://www.cvdw.org/resources/cv_faqs.pdf

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3036298/an-atomic-physicists-plan-to-bring-adjustable-eyeglasses-to-developing-world-classrooms

https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/13633840.Hi_spec_glasses_created_in_city_to_revolutionise_sight/

https://adlens.com/about/social-soul/

http://www.allaboutvision.com/lenses/variable-focus.htmhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/12/raspberry-pi-global-sales-spread/

Social Innovation through Distributed Energy Resources (DER)

Almost 1.3 billion people are without access to electricity globally and another 1 billion people don’t have access to stable electricity resources. Out of all of them nearly 97 percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. This has a trickle down effect on other areas of social development such as education, manufacturing and even retail. [1] Hence energy is fundamental to the wide array of issues that contemporary social innovation is concerned with including health, education, women’s empowerment and poverty [2]

Some of the examples of the use of energy on basic concerns of people belonging to the bottom of the pyramid are given below for understanding the far reaching impacts of energy of basic human needs:

Health: Refrigeration of vaccines and other medicines

Education: Electricity for reading and doing assignments at night, access to internet

Women’s Empowerment: Liberating women from difficult time-consuming labor such as washing clothes.

Poverty: Needs of the businesses to generate electricity for economic activity[2]

The key to providing access to cheap energy for the said benefits is to have a distributed energy systems, also call the distributed energy resources (DER). Typically the sources of energy used in this case are renewables including biomass, hydro and solar in the most part. DER can be used to address the most pressing situation in the energy sector especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where centralised system of energy access is insufficient to provide adequate energy for basic needs. Also, autonomous distribution of energy can breed a lot of other innovations in the social sector including microfinance for energy.

The greatest barriers to distributed renewable energy systems are not technical obstacles, but financial, political, and social hurdles.[3] Installers of such energy system (technical personnel) often face city and rural planners with little renewable energy experience and no formal education to ensure system security and reliability in the long run. Hence it breeds a lot of skepticism from people who are in need of such solutions to energy innovation. Some of the policy and design issues that such systems face are as follows:

·      Consistency of costs to ensure equitable cost sharing between consumers and system providers

·      Appropriate mechanism to inform developers of sites more suitable for distributed energy sources

To read about more in depth about the effects of reaching the poor neighbourhoods through micro wind farms in India please read the article “Are distributed Energy Systems Optimal in India” published by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The article is available for free on the following link

Link to article: http://www.adl.gatech.edu/archives/adlp06070601.pdf

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[1] Five innovations that will electrify Africa http://ssir.org/articles/entry/five_innovations_that_will_electrify_africa

[2] Energy philanthropy is high impact philanthropy – Rachel Pritzker

[3] Distributed Renewable Energy Systems – Introduction (http://www.gracelinks.org/2687/distributed-renewable-energy-systems-introduction)