Are patents stifling innovation?

This article brings up several interesting points on how patents may seem to hinder innovation given the increasing number of lawsuits based on patent dispute. While I agree that the ever-growing number of patents require new innovators to tiptoe the line between new innovations and already existent inventions, it is important to remember that not having one's idea protected would likewise prevent someone from spending the time and money to create a new innovation or invention. The author goes on to explain that true innovation shouldn't matter to existing patents because if the new innovation is covered by the patent then it really isn't a new innovation. I agree with this point as well, but the mention of "patent trolls" reminded me of our discussion in class on pharmaceutical companies and the social entrepreneur who made patented medications available to certain populations in third world countries. Certainly, in this instance, the entrepreneur needed the inventions and formulas of the pharmaceutical companies, and therefore was arguably not an innovator in his own right. However, his approach to providing medical help to poor populations was undoubtedly an innovative new means of distribution. While I agree that patents help protect innovators and their investments to their new ideas, I think it is also true that patents and copyright law may inhibit some social innovators and entrepreneurs that aim to find new ways to help society.

So what does it take to be a social innovator?

I have often been intrigued by this question and because the readings for the class consisted of so many sound bites from leading innovators, I thought it would be worthwhile to post my two cents on the common (or commonly identifiable) traits of a social innovator.

First and foremost I believe is the ability to empathize with others. According to Alvin Goldman,

empathy is the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand her emotions and feelings.Being an idealist and having a feeling of justice in an unjust world also helps foster social innovation.

This is the same feeling that led Muhammad Yunus to question the injustice of 42 women slaving for the lack of a paltry sum of 27 dollars.It drove him to find a solution to this socially vexing problem. Though the Grameen story is well known, here are a few stories of the lesser known social innovators who were driven by empathy and compassion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindeshwar_Pathak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSzCv2tXi_E

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30

The second quality could be having a 'lunatic's dream' like Joshua Silver mentions or which Negroponte summarizes as "When engineers tell me something seems impossible, I say let's work on it until it is not .Even Muhammad Yunus started off with the vision of creating a poverty free world and was met with the cynicism of statements like "Are you crazy?"

The third ability i reckon is effective problem solving.

Finally, I believe, some social innovators are driven by a feeling of meaningless in one's life's pursuits. This again is best summarized by Mohammad Yunus in an interview when he says he was "Teaching elegant theroies of economics at a time that the country was hit by famine"

During my research for this post i also came across the following book:

http://debosmita.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/book-review-i-have-a-dream-by-rashmi-bansal/

Does the tool need to be tangible?

In the articles for this week, one of the common threads throughout were the use of different products, or tools by which people were able to create incredible social change and significantly better the lives of many in the world. There were stories about OLPC, the exponential growth of cell phone use, self-adjusting eye glasses, and solar cells. And all of these things are tangible, touchable, and require materials that cost money to create.

But what about the tools that are causing social innovation that are not tangible, that do not require daunting logistic hurdles to their implementation? That can create widespread social change, transform lives, and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people? As simple (or as silly) as it might seem, what about Twitter?

The social network that allows for just a sliver of a sentence to be shared has been causing some big waves lately as an agent for social change. Twitter is free, and with the fast-growing number of people who have carry cell phones now, it is more accessible than ever.

It is a prime tool for something as serious as revolutions, and as commercial as product launches. Twitter has become a major player in the social sphere, and one that cannot be ignored. It has rallied the masses into action during natural disasters, and seriously peaked the interest of multiple governments who took a hard look at its influence during the Iran protests. Whether it is used for play, for politics, for philanthropy, or more, the fact remains that it has revolutionized the way the world communicates in real-time and that is powerful.

Everyone might not have it, or use it now, but all change takes time. As stated in the ‘Power to the People’ article, cell phones took off in about 13 years. Twitter is only 5 years old, and still a relative newbie to many. Could it eventually die off? Maybe. Is it just a fad? Perhaps… or perhaps not. Its use in elections is proof that at the least, it will have a place in history. It is a simple, free tool that has been proven astonishingly capable of creating social action. Whatever might be its fate, one thing is clear. It fundamentally changed the way people in the world are able to talk to one another.

What’s the Point of a Text Message…?

What’s the point of a text message if the person receiving it can’t read it? Because cell phones require less physical infrastructure than typical broadband internet access, people in developing countries are using them as their primary computers. Rural farmers are gaining access to information that would take days to get to them before access to mobile phones was so widespread. So, how can we reach individuals in rural areas of developing countries who can’t read? Sure, technology exists that allows for voice transmission of these messages. Since “mobile phones have leapfrogged past land-line technologies in many parts of the world”, can we use this example to “leapfrog” past a traditional classroom environment to teach the nearly 1 billion illiterate adults in the world how to read? Since the majority of illiterate adults are woman, can we use their sense of community and motherly instincts as a conduit for passing on knowledge by developing small cell phone networks to share information within different rural communities?

Beyond OLPC

In less than nine months I went from knowing little to nothing about OLPC to hearing about it almost on a daily basis and wanting to be a part of it. In fact, I somehow managed to take part of the project by interning for TechBridgeWorld this summer. By being a technical lead for one of the iSTEP 2011 projects, I had to opportunity to explore different aspects of how OLPC had an impact in Uruguay and the problems it was facing.

By reading “The Prophet of Cheap” article and several other articles debating whether the importance of the OLPC initiative came from creating cheap laptops or pressuring the market into doing so, I had a different appreciation for the topic. Nicholas Negroponte clearly states that: “There’s an interesting point in history for us. All we have to do is threaten to build the tablet and that may be enough”[1]. I can say that we have seen the effect of the pressure created in the last couple of years where major firms such as Intel have been competing to come up with cheap netbooks and tablets. However, I think that the real problem with OLPC is the fate of the XO laptops once they reach their destination: students living in developing communities lucky enough to have their government adhere to the OLPC initiative. Sustainability is a big issue in the case of OLPC. Who is responsible for making sure that the laptops distributed to students are used, at least in part, for educational purposes? Who is responsible for maintaining them and making sure they are working properly? These are the real questions I think we, along with the rest of the OLPC fanatic community, should be asking ourselves.

XO laptops were designed to be educational tools that would give students access to information and to a vast global community. Taking this into consideration, it only makes sense that the laptops are integrated into the teaching curricula of the communities using them. In the case of Uruguay, XO laptops are intensely used by students to have access to Facebook. The social media guru appears to be on top of the sites frequented by students. Not to deny the power of social media, I think that the XO laptops would be more beneficial if used as support tools in classrooms. OLPC did a great job explaining that its true value stems from providing not only "computers" but an "education" that eventually "creates food, creates water and creates medicine". This goal would be achieved better by using the computers as educational tools that could support and enhance the educational experience of students living in developing communities. The goal is not to make it optional, but a primordial part of the educational trek. I think OLPC could take a more active role in making sure the computers are being used to achieve education. They could provide a support mechanism for governments and institutions using their XO laptops and guiding them to incorporate them into their curricula. The initiative is great, but I think that it has to go beyond making deals, distributing laptops and having a great open source community develop activities for them. It could be an ongoing journey of collaboration and learning between OLPC and its beneficiaries and "clients”.

Talking about sustainability is also crucial when dealing with computers, students usually under the age of 16 and developing communities. Making sure the equipment is working properly and does not go obsolete is key. One of the goals of OLPC was to build the capacity in the local communities and let them take over the sustainability part. However, should there be a complete disconnection between the two entities over the long run? Should the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" expression be applied in this case? Shouldn't there be some kind of follow up to make sure that the technology is not only working properly but being used properly? Food for thoughts...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/olpcs-negroponte-a-new-constructionist-medium-needed-for-tablets/39861?tag=search-results-rivers;item2

Bookstream: A Wider Reach than Imagined

After reading "The Prophet of Cheap," which describes Negroponte's efforts to build a tablet PC for impoverished school children that uses very little power and is unbreakable, I became curious about what innovative technology has been used to advance education in the United States. In the course of some fun Googling, I came across Bookstream - a new cloud-based library. In sum, students can receive their textbook material, worksheets, and quizzes through computers, iPads, and smartphones.

Interestingly, Bookstream evolved in a manner somewhat backward from Negroponte's innovations. Whereas part of Negroponte's genius was placing downward pressure on the market (as he said, "You want to compete with us? Go ahead. Compete with us to save the world"), the idea behind Bookstream is similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive and Apple's iCloud, two products already in existence. The creators of Bookstream did not start out with the goal of placing this product into every student's hands, however.

The product was initially designed to help educators comply with IDEA 2004 (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) which requires schools to provide curriculum to students with disabilities in an accessible format. Bookstream now can offer greater curriculum accessibility to any student and also provides a simpler way for teachers to manage digital content without the worry of violating copyright laws. First year costs for Bookstream are generally $1749 with an annual maintenance fee of $529 per site. Don Johnston Incorporated, Bookstream's developer, is currently offering two years of use for the price of one. For more information about this technology, please click on the title of this blog post.

Reading about Bookstream leads me to the following questions: Do you think that exposing United States' students to even more technology than they already encounter in their day-to-day lives is a good thing? The use of advanced technology in education is often novel and exciting for students (heck, for all of us), but can over-exposure diminish this effect? Is Bookstream a responsible use of school district funds? Can the average school district save money by utilizing Bookstream more than traditional textbooks?

I'm usually checking my Facebook...

I would estimate that I spend about 2 hours of my day doing SOMETHING on my phone. Checking emails, facebook, surfing the web, reading text messages, playing games and finally talking to someone(it's original purpose) and now I feel bad about it. As a young adult in America, going to graduate school and working and attempting to have a social life, my phone finds the balance among all of those things. After reading David Lehr's article "Dialing for Development", I began thinking that this object, that I spend little time thinking about, is legitimately changing someone's life around the world. It's not even the phone I have now. It's the one I started with 11 years ago or an even earlier version.

Was I more efficient with my cell phone 11 years ago? Did I use it for actual important purposes? Why did I want one in the first place?

This article highlighted several uses of mobile phones around the world from checking the cost of crops to tracking high-crime areas and the device itself is simple. When smartphones become inexpensive enough to disperse to these developing countries the effects and outcomes could be astronomical sending the users to efficient and effective solutions that the developed world may have never imagined. I would have never thought a phone I used 10 years ago could be a person's lifeline and business structure. Like Lehr said though, underdeveloped areas of the world have used mobile phone to leapfrog the "traditional" landline system. If they do the same thing to the smartphone, the next "big thing" could be something we can't now imagine.

OLPC and sustainability

I’m fascinated by Negroponte’s candor about his interests in “The Prophet of Cheap.” He sees himself as a visionary, disruptive force goading and threatening existing players to “create downward pressure on the market.”

Yet, he’s operating in a market that has continually experienced really intense downward pressure, arguably since the 1981-82 proliferation of IBM clones. Consumer electronics (CE) is a fast-cycle business where, typically, component hardware is a commodity that does not bring in high margins. Incumbents like IBM and HP have actually exited the hardware side in favor of more profitable service offerings.

The Negroponte quote that I find especially provocative is, “The success of [the XO-3] will be measured by how many people copy it.” According to my corporate strategy professor, “sustainability” in business is a function of complementary assets and isolating mechanisms, the things that keep products from being copied. Once an innovation is readily copied, the product becomes a commodity, and prices compress. Eventually, everyone prices at marginal cost and no one makes an economic profit.

From a strategy standpoint, funding R&D primarily through donations and then giving away the resulting innovation to as many manufacturers as possible is totally unsustainable. It could work for one (technology) generation, but it depletes value from the whole industry. Negroponte may argue that he is merely accelerating natural cycles of innovation, but there’s a limit to what additional pressure can achieve – as evidenced by OLPC’s revenue and cost challenges.

Contrast this situation with the Tata Nano, where R&D expenditures yielded not only a dramatically more affordable car but also a source of competitive advantage and phenomenal branding. If relatively affluent customers buy more Tata products as a result, their cash fuels R&D and a virtuous circle of self-sustaining social innovation develops.

Apparently Negroponte sits on the board of Motorola and is a prominent angel investor in tech companies, so his statements in the Forbes article don’t paint a complete picture. However, it’s surprisingly difficult to discover his real strategy. For example, see how he skirts the topic of financing in this 2011 London Business Forum presentation. In the end, OLPC is a wonderful visionary concept, but there may be better approaches than the “threat” to sustaining social innovation.

Market Pressure to Innovate: A Lesson from Public Charter Schools?

In The Profit of Cheap (Greenberg), Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, defends the work his organization has accomplished. While many look at their results and call them a failure, he believes they have changed the status quo of what's possible. Negroponte says he did not have to meet the target, or build the laptop; just attempting it created enough market pressure to entice other manufacturers to try. He says, "We're at a stage now where we just have to threaten to build it." How brilliant is this? It's the exact opposite of what we all know to be true. It's the epitome of over-promising and under-delivering; and while it does draw some criticism, it brings much, much more- a competitive desire to innovate. The US charter school movement could be an interesting illustration of this theory. Charter schools were created in the early 1990s as an alternative to failing traditional public schools. The concept: charter schools are public schools that receive public money just like any other district, but are not controlled by the same rules and regulations of district schools. While there were and continue to be many reasons why charters schools were created, the reason most related to this conversation is the pressure these schools would apply on the traditional school system. By law charters are designed to be laboratories of innovation. Charters must prove they are doing something unique to achieve (hopefully) better results than district schools. Also, they must do so without any more public money than the school district; in fact, many times, they operate with a lot less. So, like Negroponte, do charter schools even have to meet their goals to apply pressure to districts to innovate? Yes and no. Unfortunately, while the charter movement has really grown over the past 20 years, little systemic change has occurred in public education. Instead of applying real market pressure to districts, too many successful charters have become islands of hope; only a few have risen to national model status (ex. KIPP schools). And unsuccessful charters? Well, unfortunately, they have just created more bad schools, usually filled with our most vulnerable students - those who are poor, those with special needs, and those who are African American, Asian and/or Latino. So should the charter movement be a warning to Negroponte and others like him who want to push people to innovate? Perhaps, but probably not. In the end charters have pushed many districts to innovate and have certainly pushed them to be smarter about the work they do if for no other reason than to keep students in the building. Also, the current Education Secretary's agenda is completely focused on innovation in education and he has publicly pushed schools to be more like charters. Has the social innovation of charters given us the type of systemic change it will take to completely alter education in this country? No. At least not yet. Just as good charters have created avenues to opportunity and success for our young people most in need, the work of Negroponte and other social innovators have done the same. Isn't that really what social innovation is all about? Providing opportunity where it did not exist before and changing someones' life trajectory for the better. Does it have to lead to systemic change or can it just improve the lives of a few? And what is that "few" is the 1.7 million US students in charters. Does that count? This brings up the question of scalability, a key element in innovation, but I believe that question of scale will always be somewhat arbitrary. It is clear that the OLPC work has changed the way education is delivered in some of the most remote places in the world. Achieving that alone is reason to call Negroponte's work a success.

The Balance of Public Good vs. Private Profit

In the Washington Post article, From a Visionary English Physicist, Self-Adjusting Lenses for the Poor, Joshua Silver stated that he rejected significant financial offers by private vision companies to the rights of his technology. Silver's commitment to the public good is inspiring. In thinking about his mission it led me to ponder on more of a macro-level about policy challenges in promoting public good over private profit.

I recently read about a case in India that highlights this struggle. When India joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) they had to create patent laws on medicines. They wrote the laws in a way that gave the government power “to reject patents on new forms of old medicines that show little improved therapeutic efficacy” thereby preventing drug companies from gaining unnecessary 20-year monopolies on medicines that could be created generically and sold more cheaply to improve the health of people in developing nations¹. However, this law enraged drug companies and led to a, now, seven-year lawsuit from the multinational Swiss drug company Novartis. The drug company seeks to tighten the law so that they can patent a specific salt used in a cancer-fighting drug. Despite a petition signed by over 1 million people to drop the lawsuit, Novartis refuses and the battle continues. Is Novartis at fault in suing India? Should they be allowed to patent their salt in India even if that comes at the cost of limiting accessibility to a lifesaving drug in developing countries? On the other hand, the patent law benefits India's economy since producing and selling generic drugs generates a lot of profit so, is the law justifiable as a means of improving public health?

This conflict calls to attention the challenges governments and businesses will increasingly confront if they continue to work against one another at advancing their own agendas. The ability of policy makers to strike a balance between public good and private profit will be critical moving forward.

¹“Drug Company Novartis Tries to Weaken Indian Patent Law that Protects Patients” published 9/6/11. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=5514. Last retrieved on 9/15/11.

Week 1: Questions on Innovation

As new innovators the definition of innovation is key to understanding the field that we are attempting to enter. Even among leaders in the field the definition is in a state of flux, changing and evolving as this area of study expands. The question becomes what is real innovation? It seems that every company out there claims to be innovative. Everyone from consulting firms to education developers to government leaders all claim to have an innovative approach to their respective fields. It is so prevalent that the word “innovation” has become a requirement for good marketing, because after all who would hire a company that was not innovative? Entire websites are devoted to the exploration of innovation and helping the average internet user create their own innovations (ex http://www.innovationtools.com/). However, even a cursory examination reveals that many of the ideas are not necessarily that innovative. For example one project simply had users create their own picture of Jonny Cash and then they were all combined into one photo. Also Lego was praised for their innovative approach to development; is their approach innovative or merely good R&D practices? What does this dissolution of the integrity of innovation result in? Do true innovators get lost in the age of too much information and marketing? As new innovators how can we obtain our “innovator badge” if anyone with a web site can claim to be innovators? The more important question is does it matter? Should we care that people claim to innovative even if they are not? At the very least it is an interesting debate.

Not getting carried away with personal ambition

As someone who used to design objects (Ceramic dinnerware and sculpture) and as a fan of new technology, design of products that push the boundaries of current design and technology have always excited me. The latest thing, the newest gadget, the best industrially designed solution; I always get a little rush every time one comes along and I can get my hands on it.
In last week's class when we were given a chance to see OLPC's laptop, I marveled at all of the design quirks that made it an expertly designed machine. Likewise in this week's readings I was equally excited by the prospect of OLPC's tablet PC design. It's fun to try and stretch ideas about technology to the point that you believe they can solve any issue. In the middle of my excitement this past week brainstorming little technological solutions to issues faced by the BOP population, my friend sent me this video about a low-tech solution from those very individuals:

This video is a wonderful reality check. The man in this video took some very basic and available chemistry, materials that were readily accessible, and created a fast, easily implemented solution. Now I'm not saying that we need to immediately start finding solutions that build from trash, but that those solutions need to fit the problem at hand in the best way possible.
Both OLCP's laptop and "Solar Demi"'s solutions work in their own way and both are appropriate for different reasons. The nice thing about comparing the two is that it serves as a reminder to balance personal ambition of wanting to wear the badge of "Next Big Thing" with designing the most appropriate and implementable solution to the problem.

The struggle to sustainability

This week’s readings highlighted some highly successful socially innovative products and services that use the models and approaches we’ve discussed in previous weeks. I think one of the most interesting elements of social entrepreneurship is the “creation of new business models that can meet the needs of underserved populations more efficiently, effectively, and if not profitably, at least sustainably.”[1] This weeks articles showed many examples of socially innovative ideas meeting the lower purchasing power of their new consumers through “frugal engineering.” I was especially struck by the technologies and business plans utilized by Husk Power Systems and the ones that are in development by Emergence BioEnergy presented in this week’s Economist article.[2] The fact that Husk Power Systems pilot plants were profitable speaks to the boundary spanning approach of social innovation and that sustainable—even profitable—products and services can sprout from a “social value” bottom line.

Yet the Economist article points out that these “social business” successes are trumped by failures. A couple months ago Tina Rosenberg of The New York Time’s “Fixes” blog[3] wrote about the challenges of starting and sustaining innovative “social businesses.”[4] She illustrates the problems of social businesses with KeBal, a healthy food cart business growing out of the NGO Mercy Corps other projects.

Mercy Corps had been running nutrition and other health workshops with mothers in Indonesia, primarily Jakarta slums, for many years. The workshops weren’t changing the ways mothers fed their children. The slum housing did not have kitchens and in order to cook, families had to go through extensive and expensive processes of cooking in alleys. So instead, most families lived off of street food, which tended to be fried, consisting of few nutrients, and sometimes even contaminated with formaldehyde by vendors to keep up fresh appearances. Mercy Corps started a social business—KeBal—that puts a flock of healthy food carts onto the streets.

The article discusses the difficulty the NGO had making the structural transition from NGO to a business, one that had to have a stricter bottom line in order to be sustainable. KeBal struggles to keep its prices competitive with the other carts. Otherwise they have no chance of reaching the mothers and children they are trying to help access nutritional choices. Rosenberg discusses how most small businesses fail, even when they are not social businesses. The odds are stacked pretty high against initiatives like KeBal at the moment. In Rosenberg’s article, a Duke Professor points out that the mark of a good social enterprise is the noun without the adjective. Social businesses face higher challenges. Just as many start-ups take awhile to turn profitable, it can take even longer for social business. The article claims that Grameen bank had to accept donations for 18 years before becoming sustainable.

We’ve certainly seen some promising developments in self-sustaining initiatives, especially with micro financing, but even more adaptive financing models will be needed. As Rosenberg points out “KeBal has the double challenge of serving people who can’t pay very much while having to change their eating habits. If this were easy to do profitably, social businesses wouldn’t be necessary.”

---

[1] Rediscovering Social Innovation (Phills, Deiglmeier, and Miller, Stanford Social

Innovation Review, Fall 2008, p41

[2] Power to the People (The Economist, September 2, 2010)

[3] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/fixes/

[4] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/in-food-deserts-oases-of-nutrition/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/the-path-from-charity-to-profit/

How should we measure the "success" of social innovations?

This week’s readings showed a number of ways to view Negroponte’s work with the One Laptop Per Child project. In the Forbes article “The Prophet of Cheap”, Negroponte describes two camps of how people see his work; “those who will say we promised to build a $100 laptop and didn’t” and “those who will say we put a stake in the ground and created a bloody netbook industry”. Two additional views were described in the Scientific American article “Frugal Innovation: India Plans to Distribute Low-Cost Handheld Computers to Students”; there are those who believe that “even if Negroponte had been successful in meeting the $100 target, the Indian government could not have afforded OLPC laptops for the huge student population”, and others believe “a new device by itself will not help overcome more fundamental challenges such as lack of resources and inadequate teaching”.

With such varied opinions about the true impact of the OLPC project, I was led to question what would make this project successful, and how we should measure the amount of “social good” created by social innovations. Should we measure the success of social innovations by whether or not they meet their pre-stated goals, the extent to which they create something radically different and challenge the status quo, or the real impact it has on those in need?

Vested Interest:Enemy of Growth

Many years ago a British theologian by the name Thomas Malthus wrote that the world's capacity to feed itself was been supplanted by the rate of population growth. Not long ago, a Harvard geologist Dr. Kirtley Mather countered this proposition that mankind has the capacity to feed the world and according to him what has been deficient is the lack of the willingness to direct resources in food production and the sciences thereof.

The best of brains are not devoted to social progress but rather chauvinistic tendencies. The total defense budget of all the developed nations including that of developing world if summed up together can be used to reduce poverty to the extent that the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin can have three square meal a day dotted by snack at every interval, access to education, clean drinking water and access to primary and secondary health care. This has not been our priority because the vested interest are making money whenever there is war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Kosovo.

Who are the vested interests in this world? It is not easy to pinpoint a single person. Vested interest is not restricted to the military industrial complex but almost the giant companies in the world which feels that their monopoly or domination in the market would suffer should there be an efficient ways and means of doing things.

Take for instance, the invention of fully fledged electric car is belated yet we are told by the so-called conglomerate that the technology is not yet available. If men could go to the moon more than fifty years ago then it is possible for such invention to be made.

Vested interest in the pharmaceutical world have not allowed life saving drugs to reach millions of people in Africa and Asia who need them most. Vested interest in the area of communication make it expensive for international calls to developing countries to be unreasonably higher than the media rate for developed world.

I still believe that if vested interest would invest in clean water, safe transportation and sound education in developing world we can bring happiness to lives of people who have never drunk clean water before, or those who have not been to the classroom before.

Appiah Adomako

OLPC evaluation

I found a discussion about OLPC at Educational Technology Debate, in which people discuss ICT4E (Information Communication Technology for Education). http://edutechdebate.org/one-laptop-per-child-impact/olpc-how-not-to-run-a-laptop-program/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EducationalTechnologyDebate+%28Educational+Technology+Debate%29&utm_content=Google+International#IDComment66569425 It is quite obvious that successful ICT4E needs not only devices to learn but also things like curriculum development, technical infrastructure, peripherals, support, etc. Also they need to involve all the stakeholders such as teachers, parents and community leaders. With the result of pilot program (trial), they can expand to wider area. But the purpose of the OLPC was basically, distributing PCs to kids. So it should be quite obvious that they needed other things at the same time from the beginning. Like Clayton R. Write says in the board, "It was not expected that the OLPC project would provide everything. Other groups, including national governments, were suppose to play their role - some did, others did not." So I think the real problem here was "no coordinators" or "no governance". There should be a role to manage all the things and run PDCA cycle from holistic point of view. For each of social innovation, we tend to focus on some specific factors to evaluate things. However, we also need to know how the system is working as a whole.

Energy Efficient Stoves Part 2

Award winning chef joins the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative started by Secretary Clinton.

The Infant Incubator: Embrace

Last week's class discussion on product design, heightened my awareness to the how human oriented design not only appeals to the functionality of devices (and often their lower price point) but also to the marketing that is often necessary to gain momentum for new products. The first thing that I noticed about the Embrace is how well the baby is swaddled making him appear like an eskimo (and absolutely adorable). You also notice that envelopes the baby allowing it to be situated in several positions without allowing for unwrapping and potentially allowing the caretaker to do other tasks while keeping an eye on the propped up baby. The material is durable and hypoallergenic which makes it feasible in regions where regular washing is unaccessible and prevents the transfer of disease. But the most important part of this hypothermic blanket is the fact that the temperature can be monitored and is guaranteed to keep the baby warm for at least four hours at 98.6 F. This is the difference between life and death for underweight infants that are often born in rural areas of developing countries that are often hours away from hospitals and medical facilities. It is available in two versions, one that is able to be heated with hot water at home and the other through electricity. Available at 1% of the price point of US infant incubators, at $20 and able to be used by the average layperson, without the need for trained technicians. What was simply a blanket has now evolved into an incubator solely because its new design expands its uses while fulfilling a social need contributing to infant mortality.