Professional Documents
Culture Documents
innovations
TECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION
Special Edition for Tech4Society: A Celebration of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows
Invention-Led
Development
Lead Essays
President Paul Kagame Entrepreneurship Is the Surest Way
Julia Novy-Hildesley By the Grace of Invention
Matthew Bishop and Michael Green The Capital Curve
Analytic Essays
Paul Polak, Peggy Reid, and Amy Schefer 2.4 Billion Customers
Boru Douthwaite Enabling Innovation
Innovations: Technology | Governance | Globalization is co-hosted by the Center for Science and
Technology Policy, School of Public Policy, George Mason University (Fairfax VA, USA), the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
(Cambridge MA, USA), and the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge MA, USA). Support for the journal is provided in
part by the Lemelson Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the Center for
Global Studies, George Mason University.
Innovations (ISSN 1558-2477, E-ISSN 1558-2485) is published 4 times per year by the MIT Press, 238 Main
Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046.
Subscription Information. An electronic, full-text version of Innovations is available from the MIT Press.
Subscription rates are on a volume-year basis: Electronic only—Students $23.00, Individuals $45.00, Institutions
$160.00. Canadians add 5% GST. Print and Electronic—Students $26.00, Individuals $50.00, Institutions
$185.00. Canadians add 5% GST. Outside the U.S. and Canada add $23.00 for postage and handling.
Single Issues: Current issue $15.00. Back issue rates: Individuals $23.00, Institutions $46.00. Canadians add 5%
GST. Outside the U.S. and Canada add $5.00 per issue for postage and handling.
For subscription information, to purchase single copies, or for address changes, contact MIT Press Journals, 238
Main St., Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046; phone: (617) 253-2889; U.S./Canada: (800) 207-8354; fax:
(617) 577-1545. Claims for missing issues will be honored if made within three months after the publication
date of the issue. Claims may be submitted to: journals-claims@mit.edu. Prices subject to change without notice.
Advertising and Mailing List Information: Contact the Marketing Department, MIT Press Journals, 238 Main St.,
Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046; (617) 253-2866; fax: (617) 258-5028; e-mail: journals-info@mit.edu.
Innovations: Technology | Governance | Globalization is indexed and/or abstracted by AgBiotech News and
Information, CAB Abstracts, Forestry Abstracts, Global Health Abstracts, RePec, PAIS, and World Agricultural
Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts.
website: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/innovations/
© 2010 Tagore LLC.
innovations
TECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION
Lead Essays
Recently, I spoke to a young person on the streets of Kigali. I asked him, “What do
you want to be when you grow up?” He said he wanted to start his own business
and move into the private sector. This is wonderful news. I felt as if I knew this
young man by the height of his ambitions. It is very exciting and interesting that
people are beginning to think like that young man; indeed, it shows the shifting in
mindset away from when people thought the only jobs they could do were with the
government.
In the old Rwanda, everyone looked for a job in government because of the
benefits and the security. But nowadays they are thinking that the private sector
holds the promise of a better life for their families and themselves. More meaning-
fully, I think that it is better if they join the private sector because there are more
opportunities, opportunities that have a higher payback than simply working for
the public sector. I believe that this is a huge step forward for Rwandans, given our
history, given the whole history of Africa.
Rwanda is a nation with high goals and a sense of purpose. Our vision is to cre-
ate prosperity for the average Rwandan citizen. We are attempting to increase our
gross domestic product (GDP) by seven times over a generation, which increases
per capita incomes by almost four times. This, in turn, will create the basis for fur-
ther innovation, creative thinking, and a host of progressive human values: inter-
personal trust, tolerance, and civic-mindedness. All this together will strengthen
our society.
We know that this is a tremendous challenge given our status as a landlocked
nation, emerging from conflict, with few natural resources, little specialized infra-
structure, and low historic investment in education. But, in fact, we have reasons
to be optimistic: we have made a clear and explicit strategy to export based on sus-
tainable competitive advantages. We sell coffee now to the most demanding pur-
chasers in the world for very high price points; our tourism industry attracts the
best customers in the world, and Dubai World invested $230 million to participate
in our tourism vision; and market research reveals that perceptions of Rwanda tea
are improving at a rapid rate. In all three cases, we have learned to integrate a com-
plex customer experience with product development. This has resulted in wages in
key sectors rising at more than 20 percent on a compounded annual basis. While
these developments are encouraging, we believe the road to prosperity is a long
one.
We understand that achiev-
Rwanda is a nation with high ing prosperity requires a meta-
morphosis of our economy. We
goals and a sense of purpose. are fundamentally changing our
Our vision is to create economy to move away from a
dependence on agriculture
prosperity for the average toward a knowledge economy.
The Rwanda of tomorrow will
Rwandan citizen. We are be a regional hub for Eastern
attempting to increase our and Central Africa.
Rwanda must become a
gross domestic product world-class competitor in infor-
(GDP) by seven times over a mation and communication
technology (ICT), logistics,
generation . . . This, in turn, financial services, and educa-
will create the basis for further tion. This metamorphosis will
significantly increase average
innovation, creative thinking, wages and help us graduate into
a middle-income nation.
and a host of progressive How can Rwanda join the
human values: interpersonal ranks of the more successful
developing countries, those that
trust, tolerance, and civic- have transformed themselves in
mindedness. a single generation?
It is increasingly clear to us
that entrepreneurship is the
surest way for a nation to meet those goals and to develop prosperity for the great-
est number of people. In fact, government activities should focus on supporting
entrepreneurship not just to meet these measurable targets, but to unlock people’s
minds, to allow innovation to take place, and to enable people to exercise their tal-
ents.
In all people, you find different kinds of talents, and entrepreneurship is about
harnessing those talents and making sure that it takes people to another level in
their personal development. So, for us in government, it is essential to develop the
private sector and to create an environment that enables entrepreneurs to flourish.
We have much more to do, and it will take time. We are focused on lowering the
costs of electricity, providing access to finance, building roads, and training man-
agers.
4 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Backbone of a New Rwanda
Ultimately, this mindset holds the key to our prosperity, our development, and
our future.
We do appreciate support from the outside, but it should be support for what
we intend to achieve ourselves. And no one can assume that he or she knows bet-
ter than we what is good for us. Our supporters should also start to value the fact
that we really want to be the ones to decide where we go and what we do and that
we are capable of defining what we want to achieve.
One thing we have decided is that competition in an economy is good for poor
people. I think competition is good everywhere. Competition is compelling
because it stimulates people and unleashes people’s capacities and potential.
The most interesting part I see in competition is that it gives people a feeling
that they are valued and have meaning, that they are as capable, as competent, as
gifted, and as talented as anyone else. Asking our citizens to compete is the same as
asking them to go out there into the world on behalf of Rwanda and play their
part.
On the other hand, shielding them is something that travels deep in the mind.
If you allow a process where some people are shielded from the forces of competi-
tion, then it is like saying they are disabled.
Our job in leadership is to provide opportunities. We must use all the means
available institutionally to do the things that will help people develop their capac-
ities, their potential, and their talents and then allow them to compete.
I consider entrepreneurship to be, simply, the backbone of a new Rwanda. It is,
indeed, my hope that others will come to know Rwanda, as I came to know that
young person on a Kigali street, by the height of our ambition for the private sec-
tor and our commitment to achieve it.
6 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Julia Novy-Hildesley
Invention and innovation are critical drivers of prosperity. They hold the potential
to eradicate poverty and support sustainable development, yet their importance is
often overlooked. Currently, we are failing to engage the global community sys-
tematically and inclusively in innovation, and thus are likely missing opportunities
for breakthroughs that could address the most pressing issues facing humankind.
Start with global development. There, the center of gravity of the debate
among experts has been on the effectiveness of international aid, or lack thereof.
Thought leaders such as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia argue that meeting the chal-
lenge of inclusion in global development will only be possible through dramatic
increases in direct foreign assistance. Aid skeptics such as William Easterly of New
York University and Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, point out that there is
virtually no correlation between aid and GDP growth. Nicholas Kristof of the New
York Times recently moved the debate in the right direction when he argued that
we should discuss how best to achieve development, rather than debate whether or
not international aid works.1
In fact, the process of development is not as mysterious as it is often made out
to be. Human development happens whenever people have the skills to invent, the
resources to innovate, and the opportunity to grow their ventures. Unleashing the
creative potential of individuals, in turn, is also not a fundamentally complicated
matter. Give most people some empty space, rudimentary tools of expression, and
the permission to create something new, and they will waste little time filling in the
blank canvas. Inventiveness is an essential human characteristic—fully realized in
few, but available to all.
Human ingenuity is not only our most valuable natural resource, it is also our
most abundant. People are entrepreneurial by nature, particularly when it comes
to helping themselves and their families overcome difficult situations. The entre-
preneurial model of development, driven by humanity’s nearly limitless capacity
for invention and innovation, is the only one that is proven, and it is the only one
that can be scaled to meet the challenge of economic inclusion at a global scale.
Even if aid can be made effective, it cannot be made to scale. The levels advocated
for by Sachs in The End to Poverty, and by others since, are both inadequate and
fundamentally unsustainable. Instead, we must turn our attention to discovering
what government, the private sector, and civil society can do to create an enabling
environment where individual creativ-
ity and entrepreneurship can thrive,
Human ingenuity is not where people are empowered to lift
themselves out of poverty.2
only our most valuable This new approach is not just
natural resource, it is also about growth in developing countries;
it is relevant to the challenge of devel-
our most abundant. opment everywhere. All countries
struggle with social injustice and eco-
nomic volatility. As globalization pro-
ceeds, development challenges become
more interconnected, with difficulties in one region creating instability in anoth-
er. Conversely, creating an environment conducive to invention, innovation, and
entrepreneurship in one location can create positive ripple effects elsewhere, lead-
ing to a virtuous cycle of global development. Recent discussions about global
security have built on this logic, with many arguing that clean energy innovations
will increase energy independence and reduce conflict, or that supporting innova-
tion and opportunities for self-determination in poor countries can lessen the
effects of fundamentalist extremism.
In this essay, I advocate for an approach to development that derives from five
fundamental tenets:
• Shifting our focus to individuals and their potential—thinking of all people as
inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs
• Embracing a bottom-up, demand-driven view of the world, where people
design solutions, and government’s role is to create an enabling environment
for them to do so
• Emphasizing business principles, recognizing that the best ideas must reach
enormous scale in order to combat global poverty and achieve sustainable
development
• Insisting upon linking evaluation criteria with evidence of effectiveness—will a
program or investment enable a larger pool of people to more fully unlock
their potential? And is the focus of their innovation directed toward advancing
sustainable development in a scalable way?
8 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
10 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
elevate the stature of this issue and has increased investment by private corpora-
tions in science and engineering education.
Finally, in-school programs that support science, technology, engineering, and
math (STEM) are essential. The Gates Foundation and many other organizations
are striving to improve the quality of, and diversity represented in, STEM fields by
focusing on education strategies validated by research.6 National governments
must complement private-sector efforts by highlighting the importance of STEM
and strengthening education. Consider the impact that Jawaharal Nehru, India’s
first prime minister, had with his vision that the Indian engineer would drive the
development of the newly independent nation, through the design of communica-
tions infrastructure, power systems, roads, dams, and drinking water facilities. In
the decades following his announcement, the government established a national
network of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), now some of the most respect-
ed engineering universities in the world. These IITs, and a host of other regional
engineering universities, collectively graduate over 500,000 new engineers each
year.7
12 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
Dr. Sathya Jeganathan, a doctor from the Chengalpattu hospital in rural India,
provides another example. She invented a low-cost baby warmer and had it built
by local craftsmen. The invention has cut the neonatal mortality rate at her hospi-
tal in half. With help from the Lemelson Recognition and Mentoring Program
(RAMP) in Chennai,13 Dr. Jeganathan intends to refine the design and apply for the
certification she needs to distribute it throughout the Indian government’s health
system and perhaps beyond.
As Mukesh Ambani, CEO of Reliance Industries, India’s largest company, stat-
ed recently, “I am quite clear that 20 years from now, we would not talk about
garages in Silicon Valley. We will talk about projects in the villages and rural areas
in India, which are then scaled all over the world.”14 The Honey Bee Network has
documented over 100,000 grassroots innovations in India alone. The Ashoka-
Lemelson Fellows Program has identified and supported over 100 inventor-entre-
preneurs, largely from developing countries, who have launched successful social
enterprises in the areas of clean energy, mobile technology, and water and sanita-
tion, among others.
While the literature is thin, there is an ever-growing body of evidence on how
to nurture local innovators in developing countries. The Appropriate
Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) provides workshop space and busi-
ness support to rural, uneducated engineers and entrepreneurs in Central
America. In contrast, Stanford-India BioDesign targets professional doctors in
India, leveraging international universities and intensive training to spur the
invention of biomedical technologies that serve Indians. The Lemelson RAMPs in
India, Indonesia and Peru work with national universities and local non-profits to
design mentoring and financing plans for competitively selected local innovators
working on sustainable development. The university partners offer prototyping
facilities, technology validation and access to networks. Non-profit partners pro-
vide business development support and help negotiate intellectual property and
licensing agreements.
A group of these organizations meets annually with incubators from industri-
alized countries to share best practices and replicate successful approaches.
Examples are the Santa Clara University Global Social Benefit Incubator Program,
the Design that Matters Program of MIT, and the National Collegiate Inventors
and Innovators Alliance.
Companies based in developing countries are also working to harness the
potential of in-country engineers to develop new products highly adapted to local
conditions. A recent Wall Street Journal article describes a shift in focus among
Indian firms, from serving Western companies to providing meaningful products
to India’s 1.1 billion people.15 Mumbai’s Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company
(known for a range of products from padlocks to pest management) developed a
low-cost refrigerator called the Little Cool. It sells for $70 and runs on a cooling
chip rather than a noisy, breakable compressor. The unit uses high-end insulation
to stay cool for hours without power, is portable for use by migrant workers, con-
sumes half the power of rival low-end refrigerators, and has only 20 parts (as com-
pared to the usual 200).
The article also notes that the growing awareness of this new market has
sparked new business divisions within established Indian companies. To develop
its tiny $2,200 Nano car, for example, Tata Motors employed a division of nearly
300 engineers over four years. The group rethought all aspects of the development
process, from design, to manufacturing, to distribution and financing.
14 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
build local capability. And then you can start transporting ideas back to the devel-
oped world.”24 Many ideas have already been successfully transferred. For example,
bus rapid transit systems developed in Curitiba, Brazil, were transferred first to
Bogota, Colombia, and more recently to cities in the United States, including Los
Angeles, Cleveland, Boston, and Eugene. Treatments derived from medicinal
plants have been identified in developing countries, and then developed into phar-
maceuticals in the industrialized world.
While these types of experiments are gaining momentum, we must work to
make these collaborations more systematic and scalable. Technology Development
Centers, such as those designed by KickStart in Kenya, and IDE and SELCO in
India, root innovation in local contexts and make use of developing-country facil-
ities and engineers, while providing national and international connections. These
centers are logical hubs for cross-cultural collaboration and hold the potential to
accelerate technological innovation for development. By failing small but learning
big and tapping the “wisdom of the hive,” we can generate the collective learning
necessary to rapidly evolve a range of viable strategies and models.25
PATHWAYS TO SCALE
A robust pipeline of future inventors will take us part way, but in order to eradi-
cate poverty and build sustainable economies, we must create pathways to scale for
key innovations. The innovation engine’s greatest technologies will have the poten-
tial to improve lives and help individuals reach their full potential. They will gen-
erate income by serving as tools that enable people to lift themselves out of pover-
ty, thus increasing self-determination and global participation. Finally, the greatest
innovations will enhance, rather than deplete, the environment and natural
resource base on which we depend.
Twenty-first century sustainable products are needed in both industrialized
and developing countries. Bringing such technologies to scale requires three ele-
ments: (1) creating an enabling environment for their production and adoption;
(2) building appropriate business models for their dissemination; and (3) driving
large-scale investment to those social enterprises. In rich countries, because the
business and investment environment is generally strong, the focus should be on
creating incentives for the design, mass manufacturing, and purchasing of sustain-
able technologies. Where there is political will, scaling such technologies is relative-
ly straightforward. Consider Germany’s success creating jobs and generating clean
energy on a vast scale as a direct result of strategic and consistent investments in
solar technology.
In contrast, in developing countries, all three elements require attention.
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and MIT economist Daron Acemoglu doc-
ument the primary importance of building the rule of law, formalizing land tenure
and intellectual property rights, and creating a “governing system that offers
opportunities to achieve and innovate.”26 In addition to political will and a strong
enabling environment, we need radically different business models to reach the
16 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
five billion people living on less than $10 a day. As these innovative enterprises
emerge and become proven, we must then drive greater investment to them.
Because the literature on strengthening enabling environments is quite rich, this
section describes business model innovations and investment strategies that help
launch and grow successful enterprises.
Design
The Lemelson Foundation has invested in and learned from several pioneers in the
field of affordable design. International Development Enterprises (IDE), a non-
profit working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, focuses on ways to design
around various cost drivers. IDE makes two trade-offs: exchanging capital for
labor (as labor is abundant in most poor countries) and quality for affordability.
For example, during the design process for its drip irrigation kits, IDE reduced the
amount of plastics needed by thinning the pipe. This reduced system pressure by
80%, requiring hands-on management from farmers to run the systems.27
Nonetheless, it brought the IDE product within the price range of farmers with less
than one-sixteenth of an acre of land. IDE’s approach allows customers to “get on
the technology ladder,” make money, and then move on to a superior model once
they can afford it.
In regions with dispersed populations and few shops to provide service and
spare parts, products must be designed with minimal maintenance requirements.
Because of such conditions, Kenya-based KickStart28 has invented a range of irri-
gation pumps that are highly robust. KickStart’s pumps are stronger, but more
expensive, than IDE pumps.
Like the agriculture sector, the health sector tends to generate products that are
beyond the reach of poor consumers. Conversion Sound (CS), a U.S.-based for-
profit social enterprise, worked to rethink hearing aid design. Its prototype costs
one-tenth the industry standard ($77 vs. $800). By drawing on lessons from the
consumer electronics industry, CS has also reduced—by 96%—the cost of equip-
ment for fitting hearing devices. CS employs simple hand-held wireless systems to
measure hearing capabilities, enabling village-trained health workers, who are
much more cost effective than doctors, to provide testing services. CS has also
designed a low-cost device that fits hearing aid molds on the spot, obviating the
need for multiple visits.
Marketing
Once design challenges are overcome, social entrepreneurs must convince cus-
tomers with severely limited resources to invest in their 21st-century sustainable
products. Lemelson Foundation partners have had particular success using prod-
uct demonstrations and public media to engage customers.
In Kenya, KickStart attends agricultural fairs where it sponsors water-pumping
contests among farmers to build awareness of its products. Winning farmers
return home with new treadle pumps. Retailers and distributors use the fairs to
create customer awareness through local language flyers, and potential customers
can provide contact information, enabling retailers to follow up with them after
the event. In rural India, IDE broadcasts local music from traveling vans to attract
potential customers. Staff members then set up demonstrations of IDE’s agricul-
tural technologies, such as micro-drip systems, sprinklers, and treadle pumps.
The most creative organizations use radio, film, and music to promote new
technologies. In India, for example, IDE developed a feature-length Bollywood
film of a couple whose marriage was saved by the income generated from a treadle
pump. Millions of rural Bangladeshis viewed this film, leading to the sale of over
one million treadle pumps in the region.29 In Kenya, the Maasai rap artist, Mr.
Ebbo, recorded a song and video for KickStart to tell the story of treadle pumps
ending the poverty of African farmers. It was broadcast throughout East Africa and
helped KickStart reach hundreds of thousands of new potential customers.30
Distribution
Design and marketing are parts of the puzzle, but distribution is also a major chal-
lenge. The Lemelson Foundation’s partners have developed creative strategies to
diffuse their innovations through community-based partners, the local private sec-
tor, and government.
Distribution through community partners accelerates the diffusion of prod-
ucts, because it enables social enterprises to operate in a highly decentralized way,
informed by local knowledge. Conversion Sound plans to use thousands of com-
munity-based health entrepreneurs to distribute its low-cost hearing aids. This will
enable CS to expand distribution rapidly because it will not be limited by the
shortage of government-run health clinics in remote areas. As CS founder David
Green says, “Our distribution concept is disruptive since the product can be dis-
tributed outside the existing exclusive hearing aid distribution channels, which
have a pricing system and mentality that is often the primary bottleneck for reach-
ing the hard of hearing client in an accessible and affordable manner.”31
SELCO has decentralized distribution by engaging unemployed youth in
Indian villages to market and sell its solar home-lighting systems on commission.
To expand SELCO’s distribution, the Lemelson Foundation supported a partner-
18 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
Finance
For-profit and nonprofit social enterprises must bring their products within reach
of poor customers. Sometimes this requires helping customers access finance.
Other times, it calls for leasing arrangements or innovative pricing strategies.
SELCO brought its $400 solar home lighting solutions within reach of cus-
tomers by working with banks and microfinance institutions. SELCO encouraged
them to lend to poor customers by working with bank loan officers to help them
understand the productivity that often follows the adoption of solar products. The
training helped unlock loans, but interest rates were still high. To jumpstart the
market, SELCO bought down the rates and covered a portion of the downpay-
ments for early adopters.
20 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
These businesses also need funds for inventory and capital equipment. In
tough economic climates, banks are particularly hesitant to offer credit lines to
new businesses or small companies. The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have
successfully used loan guarantees to create incentives for local banks to make such
funds available.
The Lemelson Foundation employs a similar technique: “first-loss” capital. It
used this tool to facilitate access to inventory financing for D.light Design, a pro-
ducer of affordable, solar-powered LED lanterns. While D.light had raised signifi-
cant equity and had orders on its books, it couldn’t access a credit line because it
was perceived as a high-risk start-up. After the Lemelson Foundation provided a
first-loss loan to the Calvert Social Investment Fund (CSIF), CSIF financed D.light,
offering twice the amount of the Foundation’s loan because of the risk reduction
provided by the Foundation. The relationship with Calvert enables D.light to
establish a credit history with a lender (rather than a foundation), potentially
enabling the company to secure a larger line of credit from banks in the future.
With continued efforts from governments, foundations, and nonprofit organ-
izations to “buy down” the risk for banks, private capital flows to start-ups and
small businesses are likely to increase. There is a new world on the horizon, in
which local banks open dialogue with small enterprises and individual loan offi-
cers become less risk averse. We are seeing the emergence of local financial inter-
mediaries in developing countries that are helping small businesses develop the
financial controls and systems required by the banks, so they are more likely to
qualify for loans and other investments. Eventually, we may even see a new, more
patient form of venture capital emerge. This will be necessary to reach the kind of
scale we need to support social enterprise models. Government and foundation
investment will be dwarfed by the resources of the private sector, should we be able
to harness it in the direction of small business experiments.
CONCLUSION
We find ourselves at a turning point in human history. We know that development
is driven by technological progress. Rich countries have experienced substantial
benefits since the Industrial Revolution—electricity and vaccines, computers and
the Internet, to name a few. But we are also living with unsustainable practices. Five
billion people are not participating in the global economy. Some of the technolo-
gies that drove development in the rich world have had negative environmental
and social consequences.
Two primary obstacles impede our progress. We have failed to build an effi-
cient and inclusive innovation engine focused on the triple bottom line. And we
have failed to create pathways to scale for the sustainable breakthroughs that are
generated. All sectors must play their part in overcoming these barriers.
Governments must invest in education and build enabling environments that fos-
ter invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Social enterprises must increase
their efforts to innovate ways to serve the more than five billion people excluded
from participation in the global economy. The private sector must harness its
design, marketing, distribution, and financing capacity toward this same end. And
foundations must continue to take risks, backing new ideas with great potential.
We have had a glimpse of this opportunity through leapfrogging mobile tech-
nologies, clean energy innovations, and child and maternal health products. Now
we must extend this vision globally, and to every individual. Thomas Friedman of
the New York Times recently described the need to incubate 10,000 inventors in
10,000 garages to fuel American economic recovery. Stuart Hart of Cornell
University echoes Friedman in his article “The Green Leap.” He advocates incubat-
ing “thousands of small-scale, yet radical business experiments aimed at leapfrog-
ging today’s unsustainable practices, each with the opportunity to grow and
become one of tomorrow’s sustainable corporations.” 40 By focusing explicitly on
cultivating human ingenuity, we have an opportunity to transform development.
With a strong innovation engine and all actors focused on enabling and support-
ing pathways to scale, we will unleash the power of invention and entrepreneurship
to create sustainable solutions to the great challenges ahead.
Acknowledgments
This essay stems from the wisdom of Jerome Lemelson, founder of the Lemelson Foundation and
one of the most prolific inventors in U.S. history (with over 600 patents). Jerome Lemelson articu-
lated the need to focus on invention and entrepreneurship to advance development more than thir-
ty years ago, long before the global community embraced such ideas. It also emerges from the lead-
ership of Dorothy, Eric, and Robert Lemelson, Susan Morse and Jennifer Bruml, the family of
Jerome Lemelson and the Board members of the Lemelson Foundation. Their clear vision and
whole-hearted embrace of creativity has given life to the many experiments I have described here. I
am grateful to my bright, creative, and committed colleagues at the Foundation. Without them and
the brilliant and inspiring funded partners (“grantees”) with whom we have the privilege to work
and learn from, I would not have written this essay.
Peggy Reid served as a great brainstorming partner as the article was taking shape. She helped
frame different outlines, developed content and brought her gift of strategic clarity to the various
ideas. Bob Kennedy was very generous with his time and exceptional writing skills, reviewing sever-
al drafts and providing cogent feedback at each opportunity. Phil Auerswald offered ways to frame
the article to strengthen its message. Helen Snively was a great editor.
I am grateful to Art Molella, Phil Weilerstein, David Coronado and Thea Sahr who crunched
numbers, provided content, and found references. I thank many wonderful colleagues who also con-
tributed: Jill Tucker, Patrick Maloney, Anand Krishnaswamy, Rosa Wang, Joshua Schuler, Timothy
Prestero, Geoff Groesbeck, Paul Polak, Matthew Bishop, Angela Shartrand, Tricia Edwards, Jane
Wales, Teofilo Tijerina, Tom Kalil, Gordon Conway, Stu Hart, and Michael Free. Thanks to Abby
Sarmac and Roswitha Swensen for keeping me on track. Will Novy-Hildesley reviewed drafts and
offered great feedback. Many thanks especially to Will, who was very supportive as I escaped family
duties to work on this essay.
1. Nicholas Kristof, “How can we help.” The New York Times Book Review, November 22, 2009, p. BR-
27. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/Kristof-t.html
2. Paul Polak, Out of Poverty. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008. Julia Novy-Hildesley, “Funding
Invention for Sustainability,” Innovations, Winter 2006, 31–42.
3. United States National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics
22 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
By the Grace of Invention
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ ACT, http://www.act.org/aap/index.html
4. Lucy N. Friedman and Jane Quinn, “Science by Stealth.” Education Week, February 22, 2006.
Robert Tai, Christine Liu, Adam Maltese, and Xitao Fan, “Planning Early for Careers in Science.”
Science Vol. 312, no. 5777, 26 May 2006, 1143–1144. DOI: 10.1126
5. Lemelson Center website, http://invention.smithsonian.org/home/.
6. http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/blogpost/5861012/
Jacquelyn F. Sullivan, Lawrence E. Carlson and Denise W. Carlson, “Developing Aspiring
Engineers into Budding Entrepreneurs: An Invention and Innovation Course.” Journal of
Engineering Education, Oct 2001, 571–576. Jacob Blickenstaff, “Women and science careers: Leaky
pipeline or gender filter?” Gender and Education, vol. 17, no. 4, October 2005, 369–386.
7. Lav R. Varshney, Private Engineering Education in India: Market Failures and Regulatory
Solutions. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November, 2006.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20418543/Private-Engineering-Education-in-India
8. In the United States, women represent approximately 20% of the students at engineering schools.
Minority women represent approximately 5% of those employed in a science and engineering
occupation. Asians, African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians together make up only
18%.
9. Allison Druin and Carina Fast, “The Child as Learner, Critic, Inventor, and Technology Design
Partner: An Analysis of Three Years of Swedish Student Journals.” International Journal of
Technology and Design Education, vol. 12, 2002, 189–213.
10. Noah Finkelstein and Laurel Mayhew, “Acting in Our Own Self-Interests: Blending University
and Community in Informal Science Education.” Paper presented at Physics Education
Research Conference 2008, Edmonton, Canada, July 23–24, 2008.
http://www.compadre.org/PER/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=7957&DocID=6
11. Personal communication with David Coronado, Director, MESA Oregon. Statistics from:
http://www.nchems.org,
http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=63&year=2006&level=nation&
mode=data&state=0
http://www.pathwaystocollege.net/StateLibraries/ListArticlesByCategory.aspx?cat=IN&key-
word=Access%20and%20Participation
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/enroll.cfm
http://www.act.org/news/releases/2002/11-15-02.html
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_318.asp
12. The Strategy Symposium, held in December, 2007, included thought leaders in science, technol-
ogy and invention education from around the United States. For a symposium report, please
visit www.lemelson.org.
13. www.l-ramp.org
14. Jeffrey Immelt and Mukesh Ambani, “An Indian Cure for Global Ills.” Dialogue in New Delhi,
October 5, 2009. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Interviews/The-Immelt-
Ambani-dialogue-Indian-cure-for-global-ills/articleshow/5087831.cms
15. “Indian Firms Shift Focus to the Poor,” Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2009.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125598988906795035.html
16. Carl Smith, Tameka Douglas, and Monica Cox, “Supportive Teaching and Learning Strategies in
STEM Education.” Chapter 2 (pp. 19-32) in Climate for Undergraduate Teaching and Learning in
STEM Fields. New York: Wiley Periodicals, 2009. No. 117 in series New Directions for Teaching
and Learning. DOI: 10.1002/tl.341.
17. The NIC illustrated the potential of amateur and independent inventors by “crowd sourcing”
ideas from the general public to solve pressing war challenges. By 1957, scientists and inventors
on the NIC board had reviewed more than 250,000 inventions from amateur and independent
inventors. Many solutions were adopted by the US armed services, including the tropical cell
battery, the signal mirror, and the mine detector by Charles Heddon. Science News-Letter, April
6, 1957, p. 218.
18. For example, data from the Association of University and Technology Transfer Officers (AUTM)
24 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Matthew Bishop and Michael Green
Matthew Bishop and Michael Green are the authors of Philanthrocapitalism: How
Giving Can Save the World. Bishop is American Business Editor of The Economist.
On Twitter he is @mattbish. Green is a writer and consultant.
26 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Capital Curve for a Better World
Yet improving management and nonprofit governance is only part of the rev-
olution that is needed. The next frontier in raising the efficiency of social innova-
tion has to be the capital markets for good.
28 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Capital Curve for a Better World
that is the essence of a well-functioning capital curve. These barriers urgently need
to be broken down.
Describing the capital curve for social innovation can help, not least by
addressing the widespread misunderstandings that the different sectors have of
each other. Government, for example, often tends to view the philanthropic/non-
profit sector more as a source of cheap funds and other resources than a source of
socially entrepreneurial innovation. For-profit companies often look at partner-
ships with non-profits as a public relations activity rather than as an opportunity
to improve their long-term profits through win-win collaborations that combine
the financial clout and organizational reach of the corporation with the deep
insight into social change of the non-profit. Non-profits are too often happy to
take the money from either or both and chug along.
The result is so many missed opportunities for the sectors to work together
and add value to each other. Cultural norms and legal restrictions have often held
back institutional investors (including philanthropic endowments) from urging
the companies they invest in to focus more on long-term value creation and prof-
it maximization. Philanthropic endowments have only slowly started to see the
potential to achieve their missions by investing in securities that help the organi-
zations they back to achieve social goals while offering below market but above
zero financial returns. Governments have often denied the private sector, both for-
profit and philanthropic/non-profit, a meaningful seat at the table at high-level
discussions of how to solve the biggest problems facing the world (while often
allowing the for-profit sector to “buy” access to governmental processes through
lobbyists and campaign finance).
due to the personal risk-aversion of foundation trustees and elected politicians and
the fact that a lack of data makes it easy to settle for business as usual rather than
the hurly-burly of innovation.
There has been much work done over the years to try to measure more rigor-
ously social impact and social returns on investment, through triple bottom lines,
blended value etc, much of it pioneered by Jed Emerson (who has given valuable
intellectual input to this article). It may never be possible to design data for social
investment that are even as rigorous as profit is as a measure of success for the
business world (nor, indeed, is profit the perfect measure of successful capitalism,
as the financial crisis demonstrated). Yet there are plenty of reasons to believe that
considerable improvement can be made on what passes today for measuring social
impact to turn it into a genuinely useful tool for allocating social capital.
The most important first step will be to get agreement, as far as is possible,
among those who are already committed to social innovation to start using some
common definitions. At the moment, relatively trivial differences in, say, the meas-
urement of environmental impact are frustrating any meaningful comparative
analysis.
It may only be a baby step but there was an extremely encouraging develop-
ment in September 2009, when a group of prominent investors committed to
social innovation launched the Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN).
Among GIIN’s founding members were giant philanthropies such as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, mainstream financial
firms such as J. P. Morgan, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, Generation Investment
Management (a green-tinged fund management firm co-founded by Al Gore) and
innovative philanthrocapitalistic hybrids such as Acumen Fund, which invests
philanthropic dollars in for-profit firms in developing countries. The GIIN’s goals
include sharing information on what works and what does not, and agreeing on
common language and measures of performance. One way it will do this is
through the PULSE performance measurement system developed by Acumen,
Rockefeller and the philanthropic arm of Google.
If GIIN can build a consensus among some of the big hitters in the social
investment world about how to measure what works, we can hope that this will
help to dispel much of the muddle and confusion that holds back social impact
measurement today.
30 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Capital Curve for a Better World
Bloomberg, is probably the best example so far of putting this idea into practice—
and the eyes of the world will be on this promising American experiment to see if
it can be replicated elsewhere.
Another useful development is the rapid increase in the number of “partner-
ship offices” to work with at all levels of government—from multilaterals such as
the United Nations, which established an Office of Partnerships in 1999, to the
national level, such as the office created by the President of Liberia to coordinate
NGO activities in the country, to local mayors such as Cory Booker in Newark,
New Jersey, who established a philanthropy office in City Hall. Maybe politicians
and bureaucrats are starting to see the potential in partnerships.
Another opportunity is the use of financial innovation to provide market
incentives for social innovation using government capital. Measuring social impact
better allows those who care about social impact to put their money where their-
mouth is, creating an incentive for innovators to deliver novel solutions by paying
them when they deliver. Traditionally, governments have been the main source of
this sort of funding for social outcomes, but often they have spent their money
inefficiently, delivering services themselves in ways that are closed to innovation—
a tendency that has only somewhat been reduced by the global privatization wave
of the past 30 years. For government, how much it spends on a problem has too
often taken precedence over what the money achieves.
More recently, however, governments and multilaterals have started to offer
forms of financing that incentivize innovation. One example is the advance mar-
ket commitments made by governments to buy certain drugs for the poor in the
event that pharmaceutical companies develop them. This greatly reduces the risk
to drugs firms of doing research with a high potential social impact but, before the
advance market commitment, a potentially low or uncertain financial return.
Another interesting new idea is the social impact bond being developed by
Britain’s Social Finance, another new social investment bank. The idea is to attract
private capital into solving a deep-rooted problem that is soaking up public
money. Take, for example, re-offending by released prisoners, which costs the
British government millions of pounds a year. A social-impact bond could raise
money to pay for the expansion of organizations with the expertise to reduce re-
offense rates. The more money the organizations save the government, the higher
the return the bond would pay investors. This goes beyond a standard public-pri-
vate partnership, which is expected to provide the same service as the state, but
more cheaply. The social-impact bond would reward better social outcomes and
not merely cut costs.
Social Finance thinks that the social-impact bond could be tried out in sever-
al public services. Besides being used to tackle reoffending, it could reduce the need
for children to be put in residential care or improve community-based health care,
easing the strain on hospitals. The key is to measure performance clearly, so that
contracts can be enforced.
A fourth need is to improve the legal and fiscal context in which social inno-
vation takes place. This agenda ranges from the tax treatment of charitable giving
32 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Capital Curve for a Better World
The poor results shown for German students in international studies that com-
pared student achievement in various fields came as a shock to the different con-
stituent groups in Germany, such as parents, educational professionals, and politi-
cians. The German government has generally considered its education system
superior to those of other countries, but German students’ results in the 2000
Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, were significantly lower
than the mean of all participating countries in all three areas that were tested: lit-
eracy, mathematics, and science (Weiss et al., 2001). Immediately afterward,
lengthy and emotional discussions started about the reasons for the poor results.
One problem was the late start of science teaching in the German education sys-
tem. In 2002, there was no science program in German preschools or kinder-
gartens (henceforth referred to as kindergartens, since in Germany almost all chil-
dren attend kindergarten from age three to six). In primary schools, science was
only a small part of the curriculum and focused mainly on biological topics, like
plants and animals, but also touched briefly on subjects like water, air, tempera-
ture, and even electricity. However, even countries with science programs and cur-
ricula in place for this age group face the challenge that science teaching for young
children must be different from the higher education approach. It should be far
Dr. Heike Schettler is Founder and Managing Partner of Science-Lab, and a social
entrepreneur focused on natural science education for children aged 4 to 10. After
studying Chemistry and receiving her Ph.D. in Science, she moved to Texas (UTA) for
her postdoc. After returning to Germany, Schettler worked for BMW, Kabel New
Media, and her own enterprise, Highserve, a technology consulting firm. Inspired by
her own children, she went back to her scientific roots in 2002 and founded Science-
Lab. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in education at the University of Bath.
more phenomena driven in order to help children understand their world and life
experiences. This means, for instance, that the chosen topics connect with every-
day life situations of children, that phenomena are looked at from different angles
and not pressed into one science field (like physics or chemistry or biology), that
the children are the owners of the learning process, and that the teacher takes the
role of the facilitator in this process rather than being the source of knowledge and
information. To be successful, professionals delivering science education to the
young need a particular set of skills. Germany had neither an explicit science pro-
gram nor the skilled professionals available when my partner Sonja and I started
Science-Lab in spring 2002.
THE ACTORS
I was born and raised in East Germany and had a solid science education in the
East German school system. Biology started in fifth grade, physics in sixth grade,
and chemistry in seventh. The East German education system had many short-
comings, but when it came to science education its approach was very good.
Teaching science to students in fifth grade for two hours per week, gradually
increasing it to six hours for those in seventh through tenth grade and through
twelfth grade for those who were university bound, gave students enough time to
acquire science content and lab skills. At the same time, West Germany had a sys-
tem in which students could select their subjects and thus could get away in the
extreme with as little as two years of science education.
After finishing high school and working at a chemical company, I earned my
master’s and doctoral degrees in physical chemistry. After one year as a postdoc-
toral student at the University of Texas at Arlington, I started my industrial career
at BMW in Munich. Before I founded Science-Lab, I had started a successful high-
tech consulting company. Through my two children I got to know Sonja Stuchtey,
who also had two children at that time and now has five. As we became friends, we
shared many discussions about the education of children within this ever-chang-
ing and technology-driven time. Her background was in strategic management,
and she had her own customer relations management company. When we started
Science-Lab, we had a mutual understanding about quality and professionalism,
and that everything we would do had to fulfill one purpose: it had to be for the
benefit and the well-being of children. We agreed that our goal would be to do any-
thing we could to support children in understanding their world, to broaden their
horizons, and to offer them opportunities they might otherwise not have. Now,
seven years later, our aim is as true as it was in 2002.
36 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
tion in Germany and expose children at a fairly young age to science phenomena
that they could grasp and think about according to their own level of understand-
ing. But who were we, two women with science and economic backgrounds and
four young children, that we could tell professionals how they should do their job?
Nevertheless, we immersed ourselves in the literature on education in general and
science education in particular and started to develop a concept for how to explore
a variety of science phenomena with kindergarten children. Through our previous
professional work, we knew from the beginning what our most important criteria
would be: the highest quality in science teaching, sustainability for the children
involved, and for all the people who lived and worked with them. A one-time visit
to a kindergarten wouldn’t be enough; in order to change children’s thinking and
understanding, we would need to offer regular sessions to explore science phe-
nomena that the children experienced in their worlds. That led us to develop our
first science course for children four to six years old.
38 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
German parents were dissatisfied with the programs kindergartens offered, which
banned children from learning to read or write, even when the children were ready
for it. Furthermore, the kindergarten teachers were not trained or ready to explore
the children’s world through a scientist’s glasses, thus only a few teachers were able
to support the children adequately. By now this has changed in many kinder-
gartens, and we can proudly say that our work certainly provided the spark to
bring about this change. However, many German kindergarten teachers still think
the same as the one who told me back in 2002, “Don’t make the kids get their high
school degree in kindergarten. Let them have their freedom. They will experience
the seriousness of life early enough when they go into first grade.” This attitude
makes me sad, since it implies that learning only starts at school and that learning
is no fun. What we experience with the children is so different: they are hungry to
get to know and understand their world, and they have such joy in learning. They
feel so proud when they figure out something themselves and they come to the
classes eagerly, since they sense the high respect we have for them and for their
learning process. The children brought us such great rewards that we wanted to
give up our careers and concentrate 100 percent on science education for young
children.
During our initial research, we had looked into other science programs avail-
able for young children. We found a variety of smaller and very local initiatives,
and international initiatives like Hands-On Science in the U.S. or La Main à la Pâte
in France. However, none of those initiatives was suitable for broader implemen-
tation in Germany, since they either lacked the quality standards we wanted or they
were clearly linked to a specific state education or cultural background. In spring
2003, we had successfully completed a number of Science-Lab courses for a small
number of children. We knew that the way we were doing it was different from
anything that had been done in Germany and other countries before, and we saw
rising demand from parents in other areas in Germany who had heard about
Science-Lab through friends or articles in German newspapers and journals (e.g.,
Der Spiegel). We realized that we had to make a decision on how to proceed.
engineering or science. That is how we recruited our first three Science-Lab teach-
ers. Using the knowledge and skills of highly qualified parents proved to be a very
successful idea. Only later we found out that other models use that resource as well;
for instance, the Parents as Teachers program in the U.S.
After consulting with a lawyer and a tax consultant, we realized that German
law would make it difficult and risky for us to employ people far away, so we decid-
ed to license the Science-Lab concept and make it a franchise; we learned only
much later that we were probably the first social franchise in Germany. We want-
ed to reach people who committed themselves for a certain period of time, who
had the fire burning inside them to do this kind of work with children, who were
able to contribute to the training cost but whose priority was not to make money
off this work. Since being selected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2006, I have shared our
approach in multiple public discussions and with other German fellows, like
Meinrad Armbruster (Eltern-AG), Rose Volz-Schmidt (wellcome), or Judy Korn
(Violence Prevention Network), since they faced challenges similar to ours. By
using a social franchise approach, we reached the most committed people who
were able to work independently, while giving us the chance to ensure the quality
and sustainability we consider most important for that kind of work. What start-
ed out with three people in spring 2003 has now become a group of more than 60
highly dedicated and committed science teachers for kindergarten and primary
school children. All the teachers have a strong relationship with us, which goes far
beyond the realm of contracts. We have a process in place that helps us find and
retain these important agents for our children. If someone is interested in becom-
ing a teacher with us, we usually talk to them on the phone to explain what we are
doing and how we are doing it. To get a personal impression, we encourage the
candidate to visit a session with one of our teachers close to where the candidate
lives. If the candidate and the teacher both have a positive impression, we engage
in more specific talks and, if successful, greet her or him as a new member of our
Science-Lab community.
The candidate chooses the first science course she or he will train for and meets
with other teachers at one of the training weekends. We have no more than four
training weekends per year in order to get as many people together as possible.
Because we are all working on a local basis, we need to provide opportunities to
exchange experiences and ideas and for personal contact. Therefore we teach sev-
eral of our courses on one weekend. Those weekend trainings are extremely
intense and at the same time stimulating, motivating, and fun. We always have a
mixed group of beginning teachers and teachers who are attending in order to
expand their repertoire to include other age groups or topics. One of our teaching
techniques is to use role-play to emulate real-life situations with the children. Each
teacher has to present a trial session that simulates parts of a lesson with the chil-
dren, which is treated like an exam. Every participant receives feedback and coach-
ing from the trainer and from the other participants, and they leave the session
with clear knowledge about their strengths and challenges. Even after the training,
nobody is left alone. Regular contact with the teachers identifies challenges and
40 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
opportunities and gives them the chance to get better every day. In the beginning,
Sonja and I were coaching all of our teachers ourselves. As the organization grew,
we identified teachers with the necessary skills to take care of the teachers in their
local region. We currently have leaders in six German regions: in Berlin, and in
northern, western, central, eastern, and southern Germany. We also have one per-
son responsible for Austria, one for Switzerland, and one for non-German-speak-
ing countries, with Spain being our main focus at present. The number of Science-
Lab teachers has grown steadily since we started to license our program, especial-
ly in highly populated areas such as Berlin, Frankfurt, and the Rhein-Main area,
Munich, and the Ruhr valley. We are currently working on reaching other areas in
Germany while maintaining our high quality standards.
We have established a variety of important tools that help us monitor the qual-
ity of and support for our teachers. Every teacher has to give feedback about each
session taught. The regional leaders look at this feedback and take action if neces-
sary. For example, if a teacher reports having difficulty taking the children’s ques-
tions in a particular session and developing a meaningful learning experience out
of it, the regional leader calls the teacher to discuss how we can assist them.
Sometimes we have to strengthen content skills, sometimes a different method-
ological focus is needed, and sometimes a teacher needs help in understanding the
children better. By supporting Science-Lab teachers in their daily work, all of them
grow in experience and the quality of our work improves constantly.
The feedback is also used to update every course we have developed once a
year. That gives us the chance to incorporate comments, ideas, new experiments,
and educational games that our teachers and their children have developed into
the Science-Lab curriculum and make them available to all of our teachers. Every
teacher receives a yearly update so that she or he can implement all the other teach-
ers’ ideas and improvements. The next pillar of our quality system is parents’ and
children’s feedback. After a teacher runs a course, parents and children are asked
for their feedback on a short questionnaire, which gives us important information
about how to make our courses and activities better. The third pillar of our quali-
ty system is that we see every teacher personally at least once a year. If they don’t
attend a training weekend, they are required to participate in one of the seminars
we offer about twice a year. This allows us to ensure that all Science-Lab teachers
maintain the highest standards in teaching science to young children.
Over the last seven years, we have reached about 17,000 children through these
extracurricular science courses. This seems to be an impressive figure, looking at it
as a program started from scratch. But do we reach all kids? By no means. We are
not even able to fulfill the current demand, as we don’t have enough Science-Lab
teachers to cover all of Germany, as the map shows. Parents will not drive a child
longer than 30 minutes to attend a 45- to 90-minute class. Therefore, in order to
reach children where they are educated, we need to train kindergarten and primary
school teachers how to teach science to young children in a fun yet sustainable way.
In doing so, we can give our children a foundation of basic science knowledge
through kindergartens and primary schools. Ideally, children who discover their
interest in science through their school or kindergarten would be offered extracur-
ricular courses. Science-Lab teachers giving these courses could identify young sci-
ence talents and give them the chance to pursue their interest even further, togeth-
er with other children that were selected because of their special interest in natu-
ral science. Basically, this early vision is what we have been working on for the last
five years, and still are.
42 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
kindergarten curriculum. Today, all German states have a written science curricu-
lum for both kindergarten and primary schools. I mention both institutions
because they are quite different in Germany. While primary schools are adminis-
tered by state education ministries, kindergartens are usually administered by the
state ministries of family, health, and seniors. This means that the transition from
kindergarten to primary school often isn’t as smooth as it should be. Furthermore,
merely putting a science curriculum in place is not sufficient; if we want to imple-
ment this curriculum in the classroom, we need to support the teachers in doing
so.
mula-driven applied mathematics course and had hardly any understanding of the
phenomena that were the basis for the mathematical interpretation. When we
asked them about their science experience and associations, we got far more neg-
ative than positive comments. Therefore, one of our main goals was to change the
teachers’ perception of natural science into something exciting, fun, and worth
exploring. Moreover, rather than pushing our experiences and knowledge into
kindergartens and primary schools, we wanted teachers to ask us for support. We
also knew that the amount of time and commitment we expected from our
Science-Lab teachers was far too much to expect from teachers in kindergartens
and schools, as they had other engagements and targets to meet. Therefore, we
developed a specific teacher training, first for kindergarten teachers and later for
primary school teachers. We focused on phenomena that were as close as possible
to the work of kindergarten teachers that they used almost every day, such as col-
ors. Another example is sound, since music plays such a vital role in every kinder-
garten child’s life. Although teachers and children make a lot of music in kinder-
gartens, they didn’t look at it from a scientific point of view. Starting with just a
few phenomena, we helped them little by little to put on their “science glasses” and
look at (feel, hear, and smell) their world with a young scientist’s eye (hand, ear,
and nose). We worked with kindergarten teachers in our vicinity and were able to
monitor their implementation of our activities on a day-to-day basis. This helped
us refine our offerings and convince other kindergartens to send their staff to our
training sessions.
At first there were only a few, but we treated every teacher as a valuable
resource and someone who could influence the life of children significantly. We
44 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
were happy about every child who was inspired by his or her teacher to explore
science even further. Amazingly, we were able to turn around teachers’ attitude
toward science with only one day of training. Kindergarten teachers in particular
were enthusiastic and thankful after the training. One said, “Had I learned science
that way, my life would have unfolded quite differently.” One age 50+ teacher com-
mented, “That was the very first time I thoroughly enjoyed a training day.” We have
now trained close to 8,000 kindergarten teachers in our one-day basic session, and
almost all of them left our training convinced that science isn’t as difficult as they
always thought it to be. Furthermore, they find fun in exploring science phenom-
ena through the eyes of the children and are keen to try their new knowledge and
skills with their students. Many of the teachers come back after 12 or 18 months to
reflect on their work and explore new topics. Many of them also use our training
as a starting point for exploring the world of science phenomena with their chil-
dren, even in areas previously unknown to them. Those results are the most
rewarding for us, since we reach the children and their teachers, and are able to
change their attitude toward science and their understanding of it.
We maintain contact with the teachers attending our trainings to make sure
they have what they need to put on the “science glasses” in their daily work. It is
also essential for our quality assurance. All participants are asked for feedback
immediately after the training and are sent a questionnaire approximately 18
months later to find out how well the implementation of science content went in
their kindergarten classes.
The Science-Lab teachers who train other professionals have to qualify for the
job by having extensive experience working with children of the relevant age
group. They also have to be able to work with adults. We train them specifically for
that kind of work, again followed by an exam and a coaching process while they
first attend teacher-training sessions and gradually lead one themselves. They are
monitored and required to give feedback after each teacher training, and they meet
with all other teacher trainers ones a year to discuss new developments, challenges,
and ideas.
Basically everything I described for kindergarten teacher training is true for
the training of primary school teachers. However, primary school teachers are
much more restricted by their state curricula. Primary schools in Germany have
educational targets to meet or certain areas to cover in their teaching, including
science. Even though Germany is a small country, it has 16 states. All schools are
under the control of the state governments rather than the central German gov-
ernment, which leads to 13 different primary school curricula (some northern
German states have a joint curriculum). When we looked at those primary school
curricula, we found that all demand teaching of more or less the same science phe-
nomena. Therefore, we developed our primary school teacher program with a
focus on the phenomena rather than the 13 different curricular demands.
However, when we teach teachers in a particular German state, we have to consid-
er where the teachers come from and specify our training to the curriculum they
know in order to offer them optimal support. Apart from that, the situation in a
46 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
Figure 4. Starting at the top, the talent support is 100 percent financed through
private donors.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Naturally we had and always have obstacles to overcome in building up a venture
like Science-Lab. There are basically three major challenges we have faced or are
still facing. One comes from some professionals in the field of education.
Educating the young is a task that a society has to fulfill. In Germany, however, the
explosive number of private schools being founded recently (Oelkers, 2007) and
the PISA results show that parents are not completely satisfied with the way this
task is being carried out, particular as Germany’s test results fall behind those of
other countries. The fact that education issues are the responsibility of 16 different
state education ministries causes many institutions to work on the same tasks in
each state. This requires more financial and personnel resources than would a
national education policy and fewer institutions. By dispersing these resources, less
money and manpower is available to transfer good ideas and research results into
practice. Furthermore, entrepreneurial solutions like ours are often looked at sus-
piciously by people working in the state system because it didn’t come out of that
system. For example, state decision-makers sometimes reject our approach
because they didn’t invent it, even if we partner with someone who would fully
finance the project within a school district. The only way we can overcome such
prejudice is to work with people in the state education system who are more open
to new approaches and prove to them, through our high-quality work with teach-
ers, that their decision to trust us was right. In our experience, the pull comes from
teachers who know our work, thus we are changing the system from the bottom
up.
Our second major challenge is the constant fight to get our work paid for in
order to keep Science-Lab up and running. Coming back to the pyramid I
described earlier, we have three ways to finance our work. The middle part of
extracurricular courses is financed by the parents who send their children to our
afterschool program. In some cases, companies pay for courses for their employ-
ees’ children, or schools spend some of the money the state allocates to them for
afterschool activities for a Science-Lab course. We would like to achieve a financ-
ing model in which a child’s participation in an extracurricular Science-Lab course
depends on the child’s interest and not on the parents’ financial situation.
The greatest financial resources are needed for the teacher-training program.
This is a real struggle for us, as we lack access to influential decision-makers in the
16 German states and the federal government. Developing our venture in an entre-
preneurial way, we turned to businesspeople for help. We especially approached
companies that produce technology-driven products and that are searching the job
market for well-trained graduates in the fields of engineering and science. Those
graduates are hard to find in Germany these days (Reinberg & Hummel, 2003). We
were able to convince some of the managers to take a rather long-term perspective
and donate some of their revenues to the educational development of kinder-
gartens and primary schools within their vicinity. By now, about 90 percent of our
teacher trainings are financed by companies or their spin-off foundations. It may
sometimes be tedious, but this grassroots approach, in conjunction with our
exceeding expectations, has brought us the respect and the pull of people working
with us. Eventually we will have a strong enough anchor within the educational
practice so that the state system cannot ignore us.
The third challenge is the most severe and it has to do with copying our work.
Any successful concept will be copied; there is no doubt about it. A successful con-
cept should be copied in order to improve or overhaul the system. However, the
copying that has occurred so far in Germany has not met the appropriate stan-
dards and thus undermines both the reputation of the original and the wider goal.
We already addressed the reluctance and fear professionals have with regard to the
natural sciences. If teachers attend trainings that reinforce all the stereotypes of sci-
ence teaching, they will turn their backs on science and feel confirmed in their
sense that they never understood anything in that field, that they don’t understand
it now, and that they will never understand it. At that point a person is lost. The
problem is that we most often have only one chance to reach these teachers. If a
person has a bad training experience, they won’t likely give it another try. However,
if someone can adopt our approach successfully without plagiarizing it, we are
more than happy to join forces with them in the quest to change science education
48 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
FUTURE VENUES
The last seven years were extraordinarily eventful and busy. Science-Lab is current-
ly in a consolidation phase, working to ensure that the method and the quality of
science teaching for young children become established throughout the German
education system. We are regularly developing new formats as demand arises, such
as joint workshops for parents and children or teacher trainings for special needs
teachers. We also started to go international and trained teachers from German
schools in Italy and Spain, as well as teachers from international schools in
Germany. The lack of implementation of science teaching in the way we do it is not
a problem unique to Germany. As we have learned at international conferences,
other countries encounter the same difficulties. Therefore, we believe that we can
contribute to the process of establishing science curricula for kindergartners and
preschoolers on an international level as well.
References
Oelkers, J. (2007). Schule und Wettbewerb: Neue Perspektiven für Leistung und Qualität. In Vortrag
vor den Arbeitskreisen Schule-Wirtschaft Südhessen. Biblis, accessed at
http://www.elternlobby.ch/deutsch/argumente/pdf/oelkers_schule_wettbewerb.pdf on
September, 3rd 2009
Reinberg, A., & Hummel, M. (2003). Steuert Deutschland langfristig auf einen Fachkräftemangel zu?
IAB Kurzbericht, 9, 1-8.
Weiss, M., et al. (2001). PISA 2000 Zusammenfassung zentraler Befunde. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut
für Bildungsforschung.
Who would not want their young child to be in a Science-Lab afterschool program
with Dr. Heike Schettler and her colleagues? The vision offered is a compelling one
that we crave for all children—a program that sparks deep curiosity in the natural
world through the encouragement of skilled teachers, cheered on by a chorus of
engaged parents. The flourishing of Science-Lab over a short number of years tes-
tifies to the original designers’ alchemy, converting the zeitgeist of anxiety around
globalization and its consequences into a positive force for educational change on
a potentially broad scale within and beyond Germany. The effort is earnest and the
response enthusiastic, converting skeptical educators, inspiring anxious parents,
and attracting a swath of support from teachers and corporate sponsors.
Of greatest interest to me is what this case says about building knowledge for
educational change. My comments elaborate three spheres of such knowledge-
building. The first is the most obvious and has to do with what Dr. Schettler por-
trays as Science-Lab’s “recipe for success.” The ingredients of that recipe comprise
what Richard Elmore, a scholar of school reform, has called the “core” of teaching
and learning: the reciprocal relationships among student, teacher, and subject mat-
ter.1 The second sphere embraces this core, but adds an encompassing shell—the
relationship between the innovation’s designers and those who would carry for-
ward their design. This comes in two parts with Science-Lab: the relationship with
the parents who started the Science-Lab afterschool activities, and that with the
teachers in state primary schools with whom Science-Lab sought to work to reach
more diverse students. The third sphere is yet more encompassing, enveloping the
first two. It concerns knowledge-building around change in the broader system of
schooling, touching on the recent engagement Science-Lab has had with state deci-
sion-makers and corporate sponsors.
52 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Ingenuity Gap Revisited
closer look at the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, the
assessment sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) that initially inspired Dr. Schettler and her colleague Sonja
Stuchtey to launch Science-Lab. PISA provides a basis for cross-national compar-
isons of education systems in economically developed countries, based on data
collected every three years from a random sample of 15-year-olds within a repre-
sentative selection of schools. PISA has several characteristics that distinguish it
from other kinds of large-scale summative assessments of students’ capabilities.
Foremost is that sampled students complete performance assessments in reading,
mathematics, and problem-solving, as well as in science. In the terms I have used
above, performance assessments are meant to provide some indication of the
capacity for Homer-Dixon’s notion of ingenuity, in that they require students to
use what they know, not just to demonstrate the knowledge they have acquired. In
addition to measuring students’ performance, PISA collects a wide range of socio-
logical data about socioeconomic status, family structure, and the organization of
schooling.
A recent working paper analyzing 2006 PISA results for Germany, the admin-
istration of the assessment most recently analyzed, showed achievement in science
above the OECD average, placing Germany eighth highest among OECD coun-
tries.5 On that scale, Germany appears to be doing well on its prospects for address-
ing at least the original definition of the ingenuity gap, just ahead of the United
Kingdom (9th) and far ahead of the United States (21st).
This hardly means that Science-Lab should pack up its kits and head home.
Parsing these results reveals wide variation within the country. Students with
immigrant parents have much lower science scores than students with at least one
parent born in Germany. The disparity in achievement between students who are
the children of immigrants and those with German roots is among the largest
across the OECD countries. Moreover, the analysis shows the gap widening for
more recent immigrants who, unlike the post-1989 wave of immigrants from
countries in the former Eastern Bloc, are not exposed to German at home from
older family members likely to be fluent. The children of more recent immigrants,
largely from Turkey, enter a radically different linguistic and cultural environment
at school than what they are accustomed to at home. Moreover, these students and
their families confront greater social and economic disparities than earlier immi-
grants.6 Thus, the achievement gap revealed in assessment results reveals an equi-
ty gap when analyzed in more detail. The combination of gaps in achievement and
equity are what I mean to evoke with the term “ingenuity gap” in its fullest sense.
Early childhood education is crucial for redressing the ingenuity gap, a point
highlighted in the recent OECD report and a vital premise of the work of Science-
Lab. While the details of waves of immigration may be unique to Germany, dispar-
ities in achievement and equity and the role of early childhood education are cer-
tainly not. A wide range of studies from the United States and other countries
shows how early achievement gaps in science have consequences for enrollment in
science courses, decisions about college majors, and pursuit of career choices.7
THE CORE
Up to this point, I have been talking about the ingenuity gap at its broadest sweep.
Now I want to zoom in on where building knowledge to redress that gap first takes
shape. In the core of teaching and learning, knowledge-building has to do with the
everyday interactions of teacher, student, and subject matter. Just as at the broad-
est level, knowledge-building about such interactions concerns both the social and
the substantive. We often take for granted the social and underestimate the sub-
stantive. Children, even very young children, do not lack the ability to reason; they
lack knowledge and experience. Developing the ability to assemble and examine
evidence and to test propositions is central to the eight factors that comprise
Science-Lab’s “recipe for success.” The ingredients of that recipe comprise knowl-
edge-seeking inquiry—an approach to teaching and learning science that has
gained broad acceptance as best practice. One scholar characterizes the shift in a
manner reminiscent of the “ingenious” side of the ingenuity gap. The shift toward
inquiry is a movement from the traditional approach that asks “what do we want
students to know?” to one that asks “what do we want students to be able to do and
what do they need to do it?”8 The National Research Council’s National Scientific
Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science have been lauded as vision statements
for promoting broad shifts in the “core” toward inquiry in the United States.9
Articulation of exemplary science education in many countries has taken similar
aim.10 The National Research Council summarizes the main tenets:11
• Learner engages in scientifically oriented questions.
• Learner gives priority to evidence in responding to questions.
• Learner formulates explanations from evidence.
• Learner connects explanations to scientific knowledge.
• Learner communicates and justifies explanations.
The shorthand list above masks a crucial ingredient of classroom inquiry that
Science-Lab’s “recipe” highlights. Science-Lab’s recipe is written in the first-person
plural, an important acknowledgement of the role that peers and adults have in the
process of learning. The relationship with adults in particular is where the social
and substantive come together, at least initially. As John Bransford and colleagues
write in their synthesis of contemporary research, How People Learn, “Children’s
curiosity and persistence are supported by adults who direct their attention, struc-
ture their experiences, support their learning attempts, and regulate the complex-
ity and difficulty levels of information for them.”12 Such systematic inquiry facili-
tated by knowledgeable adults, referred to as guided inquiry, is well-established
through research and in policy as best practice for sustaining interest in science
54 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Ingenuity Gap Revisited
THE MANTLE
Knowledge-building in this sphere has to do with the dynamics of scaling-up, tak-
ing an innovation such as the Science-Lab afterschool program out of the hot-
house (or the backyard and kitchen, in this case) in which it was developed and
training others in its use. To do so requires enveloping a solid “core” with a vibrant
mantle. Dr. Schettler describes a two-stage process for Science-Lab in this realm.
The first had to do with developing a network of science and engineering profes-
sionals who, like Dr. Schettler and her colleague, were committed to active engage-
ment with their children’s education. When Dr. Schettler discovered that Science-
Lab was not reaching out to all, she and her colleague adapted the original design
and began working with teachers in state primary schools to ignite their interest in
science.
Scaling-up educational innovation entails a fundamental contradiction
between fidelity and adaptability. Fidelity requires the articulation of essence; how-
ever, essence does not appear on command, like a genie from a lamp. Essential ele-
ments emerge as the innovation comes into contact with the real world. Joseph P.
McDonald, an acclaimed scholar of innovative educational change, and his col-
leagues point to the importance of clarifying “distinguishers” in their study of a
groundbreaking effort to re-envision schooling through social entrepreneurship
known as Big Picture Learning.17 Distinguishers are what the staff of Big Picture
Learning came to see as aspects that set their initiative apart from all others.
Science-Lab has clarified its distinguishers in relation to the core—a focus on early
childhood, close attention to inquiry. At the mantle, the program appears to be in
the midst of identifying its distinguishers.
The key to clarifying distinguishers at the level of the mantle lies in organiza-
tional knowledge building around teacher learning. This entails both developing
an approach to teacher development that remains true to the distinguishers of the
core and continuously learning from teachers’ efforts to implement desired
change. Research into teacher learning in the midst of their work broadly points to
the components of substance, process, and context as fundamental to ensuring
fidelity and nurturing adaptability. Science-Lab appears to have solid foundations
in the first two areas. Its work with teachers integrates two important areas of con-
tent—the substance of science and the substance of teaching science. Teachers
learn science as they learn to teach it. The process of teacher learning models the
same inquiry process teachers are expected to carry out in their classrooms.
In relation to the three aspects of content, process, and context, Science-Lab
does not yet appear to have tackled context, and this aspect is the key to adaptabil-
ity. Studies of sustained change in teaching practice point to the need to develop
supports for innovative practice within and across schools, and to provide ongo-
ing feedback around teacher and student learning over long periods of time. Shifts
in individual teaching practice may entail years of trial and error. Success is far
more likely when school leaders and staff are involved and most of the learning
takes place in the midst of ongoing work, building local capacity to sustain sys-
temwide improvement.18 The kind of workshops that Dr. Schettler describes may
well energize and engage teachers initially, but, at least based on others’ experi-
ences, workshops organized externally have had only limited long-term success.
In the United States, research into teacher learning and the enactment of
inquiry has a long history. The comments of education researcher Fouad Abd-El-
Khalick in an international review of inquiry science education tersely sum up
what has been learned:
The history of science education reforms in the United States has taught
us that when envisioned conceptions of inquiry meet the reality of
56 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Ingenuity Gap Revisited
schools and classroom teaching, and the associated social, political, eco-
nomic, and cultural spheres, these more philosophical conceptions [of
inquiry] are often transformed into incommensurate (practical) curric-
ula and then translated into incongruent enactments or classroom prac-
tices.19
Both fidelity and adaptability are crucial to the vitality of the mantle, the orga-
nizational knowledge required to flourish. For Science-Lab, adaptability may
require reexamining assumptions about its distinguishers, especially as it becomes
more entwined with the existing system of schooling, which it must necessarily do.
Building knowledge about mutually beneficial adaptation will come from the
experiences of the teachers who try to put into practice the distinguishers that
Science-Lab preaches, which may require change. Such cycles of refinement and
adaptation are particularly needed to create learning conditions for students who
face large disparities between their school and home environments. Igniting teach-
ers’ enthusiasm for science and science teaching is an important place to start, but
on its own it will not reveal effective approaches that engage all students, especial-
ly those on the social margins.
THE ATMOSPHERE
As intimated above, larger forces are at play that are well beyond the control of
individual teachers, their schools, or Science-Lab as an organization. The
researchers who studied the scaling-up of Big Picture Learning in the United States
point to an overarching challenge that brings us to the outermost layers of our
spheres of knowledge-building for educational innovation. This is what they call
“the mindset challenge,” which consists of confronting our built-in assumptions
about schools and schooling.20 Science-Lab has confronted the mindset challenge
through decision-makers in state education ministries who have rebuffed their
approach because of its lack of alignment with the existing system. On the other
hand, Science-Lab has made inroads in one German state, gaining influence that
has begun to shift that alignment.
I set out two dimensions to the ingenuity gap at the start, that of creativity
built atop deep understanding, and that of expanding the social franchise by open-
ing up what society has to offer to those excluded. If the full dimensions of the
ingenuity gap are to be grasped, Science-Lab and innovations like it that are
attempting to improve teaching and learning need to confront the mindset chal-
lenge. Avoiding the challenge risks becoming either an outlier, a “boutique” pro-
gram that privileges those already privileged, or an insider absorbed by the very
system the innovation sought to change. Franchise must come to mean more than
just an entrepreneurial arrangement among the like-minded. In the words of
Ciaran Sugrue, in summing up an account of the future of educational change, the
search for true social franchise entails “new forms of engagement that are populat-
ed by ‘coalitions of the willing’ rather than the serried phalanx of the coerced.”21
Science-Lab has had a remarkable run over the past several years, assembling
1. Richard F. Elmore, Penelope L. Peterson, and Sarah J. McCarthey, Restructuring in the Classroom:
Teaching, Learning, and School Organization, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996).
2. Some examples include Lea Hubbard, Hugh Mehan, and Mary Kay Stein, Reform as Learning:
School Reform, Organizational Culture, and Community Politics in San Diego (New York:
Routledge, 2006); Joseph P. McDonald, Emily J. Klein, and Meg Riordan, Going to Scale with New
School Designs: Reinventing High School (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009); Mike Wallace
and Keith Pocklington, Managing Complex Educational Change: Large-Scale Reorganisation of
Schools (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002).
3. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (New York: Knopf, 2000).
4. “Ingenuity,” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989). 2 Sep. 2009 http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/display/50116722
5. David Carey, “Improving Education Outcomes in Germany,” in Economics Department Working
Paper No. 611 (Paris: OECD, 2008).
6. Ibid., 6.
7. Susan T. Hill and Jean M. Johnson, Science and Engineering Degrees, by Race/Ethnicity of
Recipients: 1992-2001 (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2004).
8. Richard Grandy and Richard Duschl, “Reconsidering the Character and Role of Inquiry in School
Science: Analysis of a Conference,” Science & Education 16, no. 2 (2007): 143.
9. National Research Council, National Science Education Standards (Washington, DC: National
Academy of Sciences, 1996); American Association for the Advancement of Science, Benchmarks
for Science Literacy, ed. Project 2061 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
10. Fouad Abd-El-Khalick et al., “Inquiry in Science Education: International Perspectives,” Science
Education 88, no. 3 (2004).
11 National Research Council, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for
Teaching and Learning (Washington, DC: National Acadamies Press, 2000), 29.
12. National Research Council, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington,
DC: National Academies Press, 2000), 112.
13. David N. Perkins, Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform
Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 9.
14. Ibid.
15. See also Seth Chaiklin, “A Developmental Teaching Approach to Schooling,” in Learning for Life
in the 21st Century, ed. Gordon Wells and Guy Claxton (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers,
2002); Carl Bereiter, “Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society,” in Liberal Education in a
Knowledge Society, ed. Barry Smith and Carl Bereiter (Chicago: Open Court, 2002).
16. Ruqaiya Hasan, “Semiotic Mediation and Mental Development in Pluralistic Societies: Some
Implications for Tomorrow’s Schooling,” in Wells and Claxton, Learning for Life in the 21st
Century; Shirley B. Heath, Ways with Words Language, Life, and Work in Communities and
Classrooms (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
17. McDonald, Klein, and Riordan, Going to Scale with New School Designs.
18. Richard F. Elmore, “Bridging the Gap between Standards and Achievement: The Imperative for
58 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Ingenuity Gap Revisited
Professional Development in Education,” Albert Shanker Institute,
http://www.ashankerinst.org/Downloads/Bridging_Gap.pdf; Philip Adey, The Professional
Development of Teachers: Practice and Theory (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2004); Laura
Desimone et al., “Improving Teachers’ In-Service Professional Development in Mathematics and
Science: The Role of Postsecondary Institutions,” Educational Policy 17, no. 5 (2003); Eleanor
Drago-Severson, “Helping Teachers Learn: Principals as Professional Development Leaders,”
Teachers College Record 107, no. 1 (2007); David Eddy Spicer, “Collective Inquiry in the Context
of School-Wide Reform: Exploring Science Curriculum and Instruction through Team-Based
Professional Development,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2006;
Thomas R. Guskey, “Professional Development and Teacher Change,” Teachers and Teaching:
Theory and Practice 8, nos. 3/4 (2002); Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller, eds., Teachers Caught
in the Action: Professional Development That Matters, The Series on School Reform (New York:
Teachers College Press, 2001).
19. Abd-El-Khalick et al., “Inquiry in Science Education: International Perspectives.”
20. McDonald, Klein, and Riordan, Going to Scale with New School Designs, 94-119.
21. Ciaran Sugrue, The Future of Educational Change: International Perspectives (New York:
Routledge, 2008), 223.
Seven years ago, a simple incident not only impacted me personally, but also led
me to completely change my profession. I am trained as a veterinary doctor, and
have a well-established practice in the city of Guwahati, Assam, in northeastern
India. As an outcome of my deep interest in animal husbandry and agribusiness, I
established and ran the Centre for Rural Development (CRD), a not–for-profit
organization.
To attend to work outside the office, I usually took a cycle rickshaw, a tricycle
commonly used on Indian roads to carry people or goods for short distances; this
transport would cost me five rupees one way. I often wondered how much the rick-
shaw “pullers” were earning. One day, while taking a ride, I asked one of them
“Who owns your rickshaw?” He gave a name that was clearly not his own. He said
he had been working for 16 years as a puller and was paying 25 rupees a day in
rental, about 65 U.S. cents. As he talked, I began to understand more about the
overall suffering and precarious living conditions of the rickshaw-pulling commu-
nity. As I got out of the rickshaw and moved on to my own work, I forgot about it,
but when I went to bed that evening, his words came back to me. So, I got up and
took out my calculator. I could quickly see that the driver paid nearly half his earn-
ings to rent his vehicle and had paid out, many times over, the cost of a rickshaw,
roughly6,500 rupees. For me this was a call to action.
After doing some research among pullers, I founded the Rickshaw Bank (RB)
as one of the flagship programs of CRD on the philosophy that income-producing
assets are critical if individuals are to break the vicious cycle of poverty. The pro-
gram is designed to provide a means of self-employment for members of the poor
and marginalized rickshaw community who live in urban slums. The central idea
A veterinarian by profession, Pradip Kumar Sarmah is founder of the Centre for Rural
Development (CRD) in Assam, in the northeastern region of India. He is currently
focused on scaling up the Rickshaw Bank Project, one of CRD’s flagship programs. Dr.
Sarmah became an Ashoka Fellow in 2001.
is to issue an asset-based loan to the rickshaw puller, who can repay the debt in
daily installments over 18 months. Full and timely repayment leads to ownership
of the rickshaw being handed over to the puller.
This concept contradicts the existing practice, in which a puller pays an equiv-
alent daily fee to rent the vehicle, possibly for a lifetime, with no possibility of own-
ership. The innovation lies in its unique style of service delivery and a design that
addresses underlying causes of poverty through asset-based entrepreneurship
development. To comprehensively meet the needs of the rickshaw puller and his
family, the daily repayment is a “one-window repayment,” a simple transaction at
the same place each day. This system provides convenient and efficient service and
creates the opportunity for the pullers to gain security through more of our loan
products. The repayment goes towards their eventual ownership of the rickshaw,
and the program provides accident insurance, a uniform and shoes, licenses, a
photo identity card, and related training. All these forms of “social security” help
protect the driver from the various threats connected with poverty, old age, disabil-
ity, and unemployment.
The Rickshaw Bank provides pullers with a technologically superior income-
generating asset: a vehicle we have dubbed the Dip-Bahan. Dip means light and
bahan means vehicle; thus this improved rickshaw gives light to the people. The
bank also provides allied services that promote micro-entrepreneurship among
urban poor and rural migrants. The bank has started programs in many parts of
62 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
and support, agreed to sponsor a project called the Vet-Aid Center, which CRD
operated in Guwahati and Mirza in the Kamrup district, and in Jagiroad in the
Morigaon district. The center focuses on providing artificial insemination for cat-
tle, deworming calves, vaccinating domestic animals and poultry, and insuring a
timely supply of quality feeds.
The CRD began humbly in 1994, aiming to create social entrepreneurs who
could reach the thousands of poor people in the region. On the basis of this work,
in 2001, Ashoka Innovators for the Public identified and selected me as one of their
Fellows. The three-year stipend that came with the recognition greatly helped me
to concentrate on my work.
November 20, 2004 was an important and happy night for me: the opening of
the Rickshaw Bank at Guwahati, the turning point of the project and also one of
the biggest challenges I faced with this innovative idea. As a vet I had very limited
knowledge about the mechanical and technical aspects of the rickshaw, so I
approached the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Guwahati. I needed not
only to understand the mechanics of the rickshaw but also to have a better design
for the vehicle, including adequate space for advertisements that could help defray
the project’s costs. The prototype was manufactured, and 80 rickshaws were
assembled according to the same dimensions.
To inaugurate the project, the rickshaws were distributed to 80 pullers, but the
next day—November 21, 2004—they came to our office and created chaos. Their
major complaint was that the chain constantly fell off in spite of multiple repairs.
My team started to lose hope; with everyone staring at me, even I became
depressed—I had not expected this outcome on the first day of my dream project.
But I did find a way through this challenge; I motivated my team and assured the
pullers that all the rickshaws would be rectified based on their feedback. Then I
contacted the IIT Guwahati people, and the technical team came to our workshop.
But even after several examinations the solution was not apparent.
We then invited in a group of rickshaw pullers to get their feedback. One sug-
gested that the problem was occurring because the rickshaw chassis had been made
of hollow pipe to reduce the overall weight of the vehicle. After a puller took on
passengers, the pipe tended to bend slightly on the bumpy roads, leading the chain
to constantly fall off. The whole team saw his logic immediately and the hollow
pipe chassis was replaced with one made of solid iron bars; this increased the over-
all strength of the rickshaw and eliminated the problem with the chain. Within 10
days, all the rickshaws had been reconstructed, to the delight of the pullers.
64 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
cal incomes of 50 to 80 rupees per day (US$1 to US$1.60), well within the target
demographic of the first UN Millennium Development Goal. Many have migrat-
ed to the cities, where they have no support networks and limited options for shel-
ter. They regularly spend the night on the pavement, or on their vehicles. Some
migrants drive rickshaws seasonally, during the off season for agriculture, to help
sustain their families, for example, but a large proportion are year-round drivers.
The work is extremely taxing physically, but requires no formal education.
Thus many pullers are attracted to the prospect of earnings slightly above those of
their unskilled peers. Such an income, however, rarely provides a driver with com-
pensation for an injury, or allows him to save for his family’s current needs, let
alone for the future, when he no longer has the physical ability to move passengers
or goods.
The millions of Indian rickshaw pullers are providing critical last-mile trans-
portation services to people in many cities. But, like me, riders rarely realize that
the pullers actually do not own their vehicles. They do not even lease them. They
hire them, one day at a time, paying high rents and bearing all the risks of doing
such work, including the need for repairs and the pain and loss from accidents.
The decision whether to rent or buy would be a no-brainer for any of us. Daily
rental costs Rs. 25; most pullers stay at the work for over 10 years. A quick back-
of-the-envelope calculation shows that they spend over Rs. 90,000 on rental over
10 years, a little less if the calculation involves net present value. Since a new rick-
shaw costs about Rs. 6,500, the average driver could have bought over 15 of them
in his 10 working years. There is something amiss in this picture, isn’t there?
A key issue is that the rickshaw-pulling community is one of the most margin-
alized sectors of Indian society. Because they have usually migrated from rural
areas to search for work, they lack identity cards or an official residential address.
Earning the equivalent of just over a dollar a day, they are not considered worthy
of credit and would not dream of approaching a bank for credit. Informal money-
lenders charge usurious rates that put them in cycles of debt. Hiring the vehicle for
Rs. 25 per day (20% of their earnings) for a lifetime of activity seems the most fea-
sible option.
With my colleagues at the Centre for Rural Development (CRD), I conducted
sample surveys that highlighted the problems this community faces. In addition to
lack of financing, we heard about the harassment they face in obtaining licenses,
the high costs for repairs and maintenance, the social exclusion they face and the
daily health hazards from pulling over 200 kilograms of weight, in all kinds of
urban terrains.
As migrants, these drivers usually cannot dream of owning a rickshaw in their
lifetimes, since they cannot access credit schemes through the formal banking sys-
tem. With little disposable income, they cannot access basic utilities for themselves
or their families, nor do they have a safe way to save their daily earnings.
Limited savings leave them vulnerable to even minor setbacks, a problem com-
pounded by a lack of insurance and access to fairly-priced emergency loans.
Without any property insurance, they must bear the cost of any accidental damage
to their vehicles. If they get sick and cannot drive, they generate no income to pro-
vide for their own care, nor do they have health insurance. When family members
encounter emergencies, they have no savings upon which to fall back. With no
access to formal sources of credit, they are forced to rely on informal moneylend-
ers, who charge usurious interest. Those who get into serious debt are often
harassed to the point that they have no choice but to flee to another locality.
66 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
leverage greater financial access to bank loans and to build internal capacity.
Meanwhile, we sell the ad space on the back of the vehicles to generate additional
revenue. The ad revenue also helps to reduce risk in case pullers cannot manage
their repayments on time.
5. Provide additional loans to the puller community to address other community
needs. Pullers own their rickshaws after a maximum of 15 to 18 months; most
manage to buy them within 10 to 12 months. Their links with the Rickshaw Bank
continue as they seek further loans, negotiate better advertisement rates with busi-
nesses, and access insurance services.
The RB’s innovative response follows three core social-business principles.
First, remove the constraints that prevent drivers from accessing capital and insur-
ance and owning their rickshaws. The RB works to release drivers from the con-
straints that restrict their access to basic financial services, including providing
proof of identify and licensing to protect them from harassment and associated
social stigmas. The RB has negotiated low-cost insurance, covering damage to the
rickshaw, as well as injury to the driver and his passengers. Finally, the RB provides
cash loans to drivers who have established a credit history with it.
Second, increase the community’s capacity to earn and save. The RB’s unique
rickshaw design is more comfortable for passengers and less taxing on drivers,
allowing a single driver to carry more passengers in a single day. Furthermore, after
68 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
he owns his vehicle, a driver may gain access to a stream of advertising revenues
negotiated by the Rickshaw Bank. By collaborating with local institutions, the
Rickshaw Bank has been able to reduce the costs of basic necessities: it arranges
free health care and affordable clothing, and procures cooking gas licenses.
The roughly 25 drivers who are assigned to a given garage or meeting point use
it as a place to make payments, keep records, manage their savings, repair their
rickshaws, etc. Sometimes the meeting point is a pan shop or tea shop. When it is,
the owner of the meeting point provides another point of entrepreneurship and
benefits from the increased earning potential of the driver community. Frequently,
loans from the RB support these entrepreneurs. After a driver gains ownership of
his rickshaw, all future income goes into his own pocket, to his family, and eventu-
ally back into the local economy.
Third, ensure that the program is sustainable and scalable. In the four and a half
years it has been operating, the RB has benefited 4696 rickshaw drivers directly and
23,480 people (dependent family members) indirectly. The project is now ready to
move forward on a much greater scale. The RB sees the driver community as an
underserved market and believes that offering market-oriented solutions will
enable it to reach the most drivers, while preserving the dignity of the population
it seeks to serve.
Uniforms
The RB provides two uniforms to each driver along with his new vehicle. The bank
believes that attractive uniforms help passengers to identify drivers affiliated with
the Rickshaw Bank; they also reduce harassment and further increase the dignity
of the rickshaw-driver community.
70 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Determination Shapes Destiny
A dignified livelihood was his dream. He hankered after work that could provide
him a handsome income and respect. Twenty years earlier, when he first migrat-
ed to Guwahati city in search of a job from a flood-affected village in Nalbari
District, Madhab Kalita, then at age 56, tried to earn money as a daily laborer.
But uncertainty dogged him, and his earnings could not support his family of
five. After a year, he started pulling a rickshaw, which he leased from a trader for
Rs. 20 per day. After paying the owner, he was left with around Rs. 30 to Rs. 50,
hardly enough to buy food. In his 18 years pulling a rickshaw, he could not think
of having one of his own. Instead, he got trapped in loans at usurious interest
rates when he borrowed from the rickshaw owner. He and his family live in a
dilapidated house on a hillock in the outskirts of city. Naturally, they all require
food and clothing. His wife worked as a domestic helper in the city, but still they
could not meet their family’s needs.
Finally, in 2005, he saw a ray of hope. The field-level workers of the Rickshaw
Bank project told Mr. Kalita about the different facilities the project provided. At
first, he couldn’t believe his ears: a poor man could be a sole owner of a rickshaw
after a year of paying Rs. 25 to 30 each day. On July 21, he grabbed the opportu-
nity to join the project. Wearing a neat, clean uniform and pulling an innovative
model of rickshaw, Mr. Kalita was determined to shape his own destiny. “The
rickshaw was comfortable for the passengers as well as the driver and that
enabled me to earn at least Rs. 200 a day,” he stated. Eventually, he became a full
member of the Rickshaw Bank and even started promoting the project in the
city. He encouraged many youths to join the project instead of searching for a
meager income elsewhere. Now, having secured ownership of his first rickshaw,
he has bought a second one through the project and he leases it out to a neigh-
bor. Meanwhile, his wife is close to owning a bhogjan, a fast-food cart. Together,
they now earn at least Rs. 8,000 per month. Six months ago, the Rickshaw Bank
also released a loan of Rs. 40,000 to renovate their house, which let them make
great improvements. Their sons and daughter are being educated, and their
neighbors respect them. Thus, Mr. Kalita and his wife shaped their destiny with
determination under the aegis of the Rickshaw Bank. What inspired him so
much? No one knows, but at age 76, he still goes out with his rickshaw, wearing
a uniform and smiling. He is an asset to the Rickshaw Bank, a source of inspira-
tion to the whole rickshaw-puller community, and a living example of earning a
dignified livelihood in an unorganized sector.
Advertising
A rickshaw provides a mobile billboard for private advertising. Attractive rick-
shaws designed to accommodate large ads can serve as an appealing and cost-effec-
tive means of advertising for both local and national businesses. To provide such
advertising, the RB has formed partnerships with four large firms: Oil & Natural
Gas Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Leaver Limited and Punjab
National Bank. The Rickshaw Bank keeps 100 percent of advertising revenue to
subsidize operating expenditures until the driver achieves ownership. After this
point, the bank turns over 65 percent of the advertising revenue to the driver,
retaining the other 35 percent in exchange for arranging and producing the adver-
tisements. This gives drivers significant potential to enhance their income streams.
LPG Connectivity
During discussions with the driver community, RB staff identified a priority con-
cern: access to cooking gas. Because many drivers are migrants, and do not have
proof of address or investment capital, they cannot access connections to LPG
(Liquefied Petroleum Gas). Instead, drivers and their families typically use
kerosene and wood as cooking fuel. This issue was brought to the attention of the
Indian Oil Corporation, and after a series of discussions, the IOC agreed to con-
sider an identity card issued by the Rickshaw Bank as sufficient proof of address to
authorize an LPG connection. Loans from the RB provide partial support for the
investment.
Cash Loans
Once a driver has fully repaid his loan, and on time, he may apply for a cash loan
to provide for a range of family needs: children’s education, health emergencies,
the LPG connectivity mentioned above, land or housing purchases, etc. Cash loans
are typically under Rs. 15,000 and must be repaid in less than a year. Loans carry
1.5 percent monthly interest rates, and 0.5 percent monthly service fee. Pullers
with a good repayment history may be eligible for larger loans. The RB is current-
ly in discussions with the National Housing Bank of India to expand the housing
loan program.
72 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
and familiarity with the driver community, and gives drivers an opportunity to
move into alternate avenues of employment.
74 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
tion of India’s eight million rickshaw pullers. Not satisfied to reach such a small
fraction of people, the RB developed a unique partnership/franchise model. Under
the franchise system, CRD shares its vision, arranges financing, and provides
expertise to a local microfinance partner, which in turn provides a local network
of field and branch coordinators. The franchisee branches developed in Lucknow,
Allahabad, and Varanasi are examples of this arrangement.
To expand nationwide, we provide hand-holding support to interested NGOs
or entrepreneurs who want to begin working with pullers at their local level.
However, as we start our new expansion, we want to develop an operational sys-
tem, so either we identify an entrepreneur and provide him full support to carry
out the production and assembly for us, or we support our partner organization in
setting up its own production unit with all necessary facilities.
The day-to-day activities operate with a team, as shown in Figure 1.
How far can we scale the model? No official records state the number of rick-
shaw pullers in India, but people frequently mention a rough estimate of eight mil-
lion. On average, about five others depend on each puller, so 40 million people may
be directly related to this source of income. Similar figures apply to others who use
carts, including vendors of fruits and vegetables, sugarcane juices, fish, drinking
water, and other foods and goods.
76 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
Economic Mobility
The services that the RB offers were designed to have a positive impact on all
aspects of the triple bottom line. First, we have enabled pullers to own a rickshaw
in a reasonable timeframe. Before we launched this program, few could do so
because of the high daily fees and interest rates charged by corrupt businessmen.
Second, pullers can now make more money because they pay less each day for the
vehicle, and because the newer vehicles let them carry more passengers each day.
Third, pullers now have access to a sound financial organization where they can
borrow money for other ventures.
Social Status
The RB has also had a positive impact on the social conditions of pullers. It has
offered eye care for them and their families and driving insurance for him, and has
made the business more respectable. Through a combination of uniforms and
monthly discussion forums and peer groups, it has instilled a sense of pride among
pullers regarding their line of work. And passengers, especially the elderly and
those with children, prefer Dip-Bahan rickshaws because of their unique design
and the organizational identity attached to it.
We now have a total of nearly 5,000 clients throughout India, 1,700 of whom
have become owners, and many others are on their way to achieving that status in
coming months. The six cities of Agartala, Chennai, Surat, Varanasi, Allahabad,
and Lucknow all have 150 to 450 clients.
Governance
The project has improved law and order within the community in several ways.
First, by making licenses available to pullers, the RB has enabled the government
to better monitor its citizens and gain tax revenues. Second, it has reduced corrup-
tion because fewer policemen can now extract bribes from pullers for not having
proper registration. Third, it has created safer roads by offering driving tips to
pullers.
As a result of its comprehensive interventions, the RB is enabling pullers to
increase their standard of living and become more financially independent. Thus
it is a prime example of how an NGO can have a tremendous impact on the local
population by nurturing a native capability that already exists in the community
and making it financially sustainable.
I feel proud that a little change in the design of rickshaws and delivery systems
made a large and visible impact within the rickshaw puller-community. Various
educational, financial, technical, and social institutes are now showing deep inter-
est in the overall growth of both the rickshaw and the puller. I envision that simi-
lar changes can be made in the lives of other people who depend on slow-moving
vehicles, including those who sell vegetables, fruit, fish, and fast food from carts.
We have already taken a further step in this direction by providing hath lorries, or
hand-pulled carts, to textile vendors at Surat in Gujarat. At Guwahati, Assam, we
have also introduced better-designed carts for selling fish and other food, and dis-
posing of garbage. A newly-designed cart for selling vegetables and fruits will soon
be rolling on Indian streets.
78 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
Ms. Sheila Dikshit, and Sri Kapil Sibbal, then the Minister of Science and
Technology and Earth Sciences.
Soleckshaw is now in its pilot phase. At present, seven Soleckshaws, in three
models, are in use. CRD regularly reports their daily progress to the concerned
authorities. Their cost has not been finalized as commercial production has not
begun, but passengers and drivers both believe it will be revolutionary. The design
provides shade and comfort for passengers, and the motor relieves some of the
pullers’ drudgery. However, there is some way to go before this reaches commer-
cial scale.
A third, and integral, part of our organization strategy is to improve the over-
all lives and livelihoods of the pullers. We are working with an external group of
architects and social developers to offer low-cost housing.
80 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Empowering the Poor through Asset Ownership
vital public service. But their pullers still have to bear the burden of low wages and
subhuman living conditions.
Cycle rickshaws provide a much-needed and valuable public service. In the old
city area and in some congested areas meant for the poor where the roads are too
small for motorized vehicles, cycle rickshaws are the only available means of trans-
portation. In addition, they are convenient and available at virtually anyone’s
doorstep. They meet the need for urban mobility in middle- and lower-middle
income neighborhoods, and provide a low-cost way to transport household goods
and furniture. Even today, a kilometer-long ride in a cycle rickshaw costs no more
than five rupees, compared to 10 to 15 rupees for the same distance in an auto rick-
shaw. And cycle rickshaws reduce air pollution and climate change by avoiding
emissions.
Rickshaws can play a positive role in modern transport systems when mobili-
ty and a clean environment are the basic concern of policy makers. But when their
requirements are poorly understood and facilities are not built for them, the result
is congestion and inconvenience for all vehicles. Designing and building appropri-
ate roads and parking facilities for them in cities will also facilitate the movement
of other vehicles—and will enhance the positive role that rickshaws and other
non-motorized vehicles can play in a city’s transport system.
But pullers still have to bear the burden of low wages and subhuman living
conditions. Our pullers will probably get a better deal when our planners and gov-
erning authorities recognize that rickshaws are a non-polluting, cheap, and effi-
cient mode of public transport that provides employment for millions of people.
1. Onlending is when an organization lends money that they have borrowed from another
organization or person.
2. http://articles.directorym.com/Franchise_System_Failure_New_York_NY-r852283-
New_York_NY.html.
Let me begin this story by describing the ETV concept more fully and identi-
fying four of the main reasons why appropriate technologies do not get to the peo-
ple who need them.
Designers of technologies are often located far from those who will benefit from
them. Designers often fail to consider the culture of the users. Technologies are
designed primarily to achieve the best technical performance, and we tend to for-
get the relationship between person and product—or, more precisely, between cul-
ture and product. ETV seeks to change that dynamic. For example, our spinning
wheels are made of wood, which honors the tradition in the region where the
wheels are made and used. Although a metal spinning wheel would be easier to
make and consequently cheaper, ETV still cannot gain wide acceptance for such a
change.
People and groups are motivated to choose certain products. Knowing the inter-
ests and motivations of different cultural groups can help producers provide them
with the technologies that will benefit them the most. Some groups’ interest in
improving their own quality of life is mediated by production (agricultural or arti-
sanal, for example) and thus favors production-related technologies, however
much the producers may believe they need other technologies. These groups rea-
son that improving production will improve other aspects of their lives, and that
therefore they need to start there. Some groups consider ETV’s rope pump an
improvement for the home, while others believe its primary benefit is for irriga-
tion. Because of such differences in reasoning, ETV needs to know how to interact
with the people it wants to reach in order to determine how to design its products.
Knowledge of the groups and their contexts determines design guidelines.
Although this is a fundamental concept in technological production, too often it is
not taken into account. Designers often lack information about the contexts of the
people for whom they design their products. Consider a community that has no
source of spare parts for the products its people buy. These people need products
that do not break easily or that can be repaired easily. For example, FTV’s rope
pump stands on two wooden braces; based on our experience in the part of
Patagonia where we are located, these braces can easily be replaced by anyone who
has two pieces of wood appropriate for the purpose. But when we were installing
rope pumps in the La Puna region, we were surprised to discover that wooden
braces are rare because the only wood locals use is the wood of the prickly pear (a
type of cactus), which cannot be used for a brace. Because of this oversight, the
manufacturer had to travel hundreds of kilometers in search of braces. This taught
us that even if a product seems to be universal, every community will add its
unique characteristics. For instance, in certain areas in Africa, the structure around
the rope pump must be covered up because of a local rivalry that leads people to
cut the rope of their neighbor’s pump as an act of provocation.
Developing a technology doesn’t mean it is ready to be distributed or marketed.
Innovators of appropriate technologies often feel that their prototype or initial
design will serve as the final product. But this is a mistaken assumption, as a new
design has a long way to go before it becomes a product ready for distribution. It
84 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Pumping Life into Marginalized Communities
Opportunties for Employment, and Pride. Manuel had problems with addiction
a few years ago and even landed in prison briefly. Today he is the chief operator in
the manufacture of rope pumps. He is able to support his family, thanks to this work,
but in addition—and this is key—he is proud of his work. He feels that he has some-
thing to give to others, and he can see the fruits of his labor. At ETV we know that
it is workers like Manuel who make the difference.
technology. They often fail to consider basic issues such as marketing, operational
structure, taxes, packaging, etc.—and then they underestimate their costs.
Consequently, the product is discredited because of its apparently high price while
its true cost remains unknown.
Those who criticize ETV for putting high prices on its products include peo-
ple at public institutions that have developed similar products. They think ETV’s
prices could be lower, but they forget that ETV must pay salaries; meanwhile, their
own salaries are paid by the state. They also ignore other costs that the state pays
for at public institutions, including the use of facilities and services.
Mistrust of those who sell technology in underprivileged communities. Here, let
me provide an example. Many who buy rope pumps or spinning wheels are small
agricultural producers, so it is striking that some are suspicious about the idea of
“selling” technology to these people. Meanwhile, the consumers see it as simply
another part of their economic activity and they understand it well, perhaps even
better than those who advise them.
86 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Pumping Life into Marginalized Communities
The analysis described above has helped shape ETV, which has often learned
from the mistakes in these examples. As I said at the start, ETV is a social enter-
prise. Although this definition creates some ambiguity, as the category can include
organizations with various characteristics, the company can still make three
claims:
• The products and services ETV offers are directed at families in underprivi-
leged communities in an attempt to improve their quality of life.
• ETV’s workers are mostly young people who are at risk socially, and the com-
pany aims to gradually build a participatory structure that includes them.
• ETV has committed the company’s earnings, after making necessary reinvest-
ments, to the Fundación Gente Nueva’s educational projects.
These ideas are embedded in ETV’s vision and mission, which can be summa-
rized as follows:
ETV’s mission is to develop, produce, and disseminate technologies that
will enhance the development of those living in underprivileged situa-
tions and provide access to the basic services that are indispensable to a
decent quality of life, and to do so by operating a company that is social-
ly, financially, and environmentally sustainable.
very old technology, adapted in the 1960s for use in Central America. ETV modi-
fied it for production and marketing in Argentina according to strict guidelines:
relatively low cost, excellent quality, low maintenance. Rope pumps come in sever-
al types. The petiza (little one) pump has a water outlet 0.90 meters above ground
level. The jirafa (giraffe) pump has a water outlet 6 meters above ground level.
Both the petiza and the jirafa can be driven by a motor using either wind energy
or batteries connected to a solar panel.
In developing and producing the rope pumps, ETV had to meet six standards:
Good quality. ETV’s products had to be designed to last a long time and offer
excellent performance, and they had to provide quality-control systems. These
considerations were important not only to ensure that products would perform
well, but also because the company respects its customers, who all too often had
been sold poor-quality products because their main concern was low cost.
Low cost. Balancing low cost with good quality was a major challenge, but not
an impossible one. It involved seeking out suppliers and developing production
systems that could minimize the amounts of labor and wasted materials.
Ease of repair. Most of our customers do not have easy access to spare parts, nor
do they know how to operate complex repair tools. Therefore we designed the rope
88 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Pumping Life into Marginalized Communities
Doña Clementina’s New Pump. Doña Clementina lives in a place called Gualjaina
on the plains of Patagonia, in a precariously built house many kilometers away from
any other. She lives by raising sheep and a cow or two, and from the produce of her
small farm, where, at great sacrifice, she raised her five children. She had been draw-
ing water with a bucket and a rope for over 60 years. That’s why she looks so happy
now with her rope pump, which allows her to water the farm crops and have water
inside the house. She complains because the water tank has been exposed to the sun
so much that the water comes out warm, as she’s used to “really cold” water. We
showed her how she can have a direct water outlet without the water going through
the tank, and she tells us that relatives have come from far away to see what this rope
pump is all about.
pump so that it can be repaired with very few tools, and the spare parts that users
may eventually need are provided with the new pump.
Ease of installation. Ideally, products designed for people in remote areas can
be installed by the users themselves. This requires providing handbooks geared
specifically to them. All ETV rope pumps are delivered with an appropriate user
handbook, which includes a telephone number that customers can call if any prob-
lems arise. Moreover, to be sure that help is available in all the regions where the
product is sold, ETV trains local people—generally former customers—how to
install the pumps.
Design that includes distribution. The product design must take into account
that it will be shipped hundreds or thousands of kilometers via various modes of
transportation. Therefore, designing a product that can be packaged compactly is
as important as the packaging system itself.
Partnering with technology institutions. ETV believes it is important to partner
with institutions that can bring specialized knowledge to its products. It must also
persuade those partner institutions—generally government agencies—to devote
part of their activity to technological developments that fulfill people’s basic needs.
The design of ETV’s rope pump and spinning wheel, for example, involved tech-
nology experts from Argentina’s technology institutes, which added great value to
the designs.
90 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Pumping Life into Marginalized Communities
LEARNING
The strategy of developing partnerships with local organizations has turned out to
be very powerful for ETV: it would be impossible for us to duplicate the logistics
and marketing possibilities that each organization offers. For example, ETV has
installed rope pumps in the province of Salta near a place called Embarcación,
which is home to native Wichie communities. These communities are in the mid-
dle of inaccessible forests some 2,400 kilometers from where the rope pump is pro-
duced. ETV could not have reached them without its partner organization,
Fundapaz.
We have also distributed pumps to several communities in the northern high-
lands of the Argentine Puna, which borders Bolivia and is 3,500 meters above sea
level. We could reach these places only through the efforts of a women’s organiza-
tion called Warmis, which made the logistics and microcredit possible. In another
area of the Puna, the rope pumps arrived through the work of a public institution,
Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. It mounted a rope pump on a
small truck and visited local communities to demonstrate it and stimulate sales.
Although this type of partnership has great potential, ETV did discover certain
issues in this strategy that made it more difficult to operate, and we feared it might
extend to other situations. For example, the pump is directly linked to the issue of
water. Although all of our partner or potential partner organizations recognize
that water issues are a priority for their beneficiaries, few are directly involved in
solving water problems; at most they deal with water-related issues such as agricul-
tural production. Consequently, they direct the bulk of their time and effort
toward their primary mission, while water and pumps run a distant second. As a
result, ETV is seeing a slowdown in the rate of sales and their distribution is below
expectations.
Faced with this reality, ETV has revised its strategy to help improve its market-
ing. Through our partnerships, we have gotten to know local communities and
their people, which has allowed us to develop microfranchises. In agreement with
our partner organizations, we selected people from the communities we serve to
distribute and sell ETV products in their area. We train these people and provide
them the materials they need. This approach allows us to reach more customers
and stimulate demand. For example, families that were unfamiliar with ETV’s
products now request them from the partner organizations, which in turn help
customers with the credit or subsidies they need to buy them. ETV has put togeth-
er a catalog of products for these microfranchisees, which includes products from
a couple of companies similar to ETV that produce farm tools.
In order to continue and increase their activities, ETV and companies like it
need investors. No system of investors has yet been developed for social enterpris-
es with ETV’s characteristics. Although our company has been well received at
investment meetings, our proposals are rarely a match with the investors’ inten-
tions, which are strongly based on direct profitability, including selling a company
relatively quickly. Social enterprises like ETV can offer indirect profitability, but
that requires creating a system of investors. Social enterprises like ETV may have
low direct profitability, but it is vital to consider indirect profitability: the
improved quality of life for the people being served. ETV and other social enter-
prises must find a way to calculate this indirect profitability so we can gradually
build up a system of investors who will see indirect profitability as a direct contri-
bution to society, one they would otherwise make through foundations or chari-
ties. This will enable them to make donations through their main area of interest,
investment.
92 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
Pumping Life into Marginalized Communities
Diversifying our products remains a major challenge for ETV. To achieve this,
ETV must intensify our partnerships with institutions of technological develop-
ment, which will enable us to develop more quickly. In fact, the solutions to most
problems mentioned in this essay have been developed; the challenge for ETV is to
find those solutions and adapt them to our operation.
The effort to provide the world’s poor with affordable, safe, and sustainable solu-
tions to the problem of energy poverty has yielded myriad solutions. Current
methods of providing light, heat, and energy for cooking pose major health and
safety risks to users, often the same people who struggle every day with poverty
and its resultant problems. Our work in conservation awareness and sustainable
resource use in Nepal has led us, among other projects, to promoting the Solar
Tuki, a white LED lamp powered by batteries that are recharged with a small solar
panel. Each unit has additional functionality that extends to charging mobile
phones and powering small radios. The Solar Tuki provides a clean, affordable, and
safe alternative to the more prevalent, dangerous, and expensive kerosene tukis
(lanterns). In addition, the light and power it provides acts as a platform for other
development drivers related to education, communication, and income-generat-
ing activity that will, down the road, improve the quality of life for all those who
adopt the Solar Tuki technology.
Anil Chitrakar trained as an engineer and energy planner, and for the past 25 years
he has worked to bring technology to rural communities. Through his work, Chitrakar
seeks to enable communities to manage local natural resources, and he has assisted in
crafting national and international policies that affect natural resource management.
He directs Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness in Nepal, an organiza-
tion he founded.
Babu Raj Shrestha has worked as an aeronautics engineer, having earned his degree
in mechanical engineering. He currently serves as president of the Centre for
Renewable Energy, a Nepali organization that promotes sustainable technology, such
as solar driers, wind-driven pumps, and solar stoves, to help local communities make
the best use of their resources.
Chitrakar and Shrestha and their respective organizations joined in a partnership to
manufacture, distribute, and promote the Solar Tuki, a solar-powered white LED
light, to replace kerosene-fueled lanterns as the dominant form of lighting tool used in
Nepal’s poorest communities.
Users of the Solar Tuki, a simple device for which spare parts are easily avail-
able, can leave the lamp in the sun all day long, which will power it to work for up
to 10 hours during the evening. In Nepal, an average of 300 sunny days a year pro-
vides a ready supply of power without incurring continuous costs for fuels like
kerosene. We continue to train local entrepreneurs to manufacture, repair, and sell
the device on their own, and have begun to expand both the supply chain and the
marketing networks to further weave the Solar Tuki into the Nepali social fabric.
At present, we can report that 300,000 units are in use in over 150,000 house-
holds across Nepal. Six private enterprises play roles in manufacturing the device;
an additional three companies help to produce the inputs needed to assemble the
tuki. In addition, over 40 nongovernmental organizations operating savings and
credit programs have helped us to create a cost-effective mechanism through
which our target population can purchase the product. Creating a business model
that operates self-sufficiently and still reaches the poorest groups has required
inventive solutions, as well as a clear vision for future projects that will speed the
tuki’s adoption throughout Nepal and other areas that experience similar condi-
tions. However, the breadth and depth of energy poverty throughout the region, in
96 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Tuki: Lighting Up Nepal
For 2.4 million households, 2.3 million of them in rural areas, kerosene lamps
serve as the primary source of light. The government imports the country’s entire
supply of petroleum products, including kerosene, using its very limited foreign
currency reserves. Frequent strikes and highway blockages constantly interrupt the
stream of these materials into Nepal. Furthermore, day-to-day increases in inter-
national petroleum rates only exacerbate the difficulties of supplying kerosene. In
fact, this problem is so severe that the G8 countries have introduced a plan to cre-
ate an antishock fund to protect developing countries against the rapid rise in fos-
sil-fuel prices. The government has raised the prices of petroleum commodities
many times over the past few years, as many as three times in a five-month period.
One such increase raised the price of gasoline and diesel by 10.71% and 17.14%,
respectively. The price of liquefied petroleum gas went up by 13.33%, and the price
of kerosene rose still higher, increasing by 28.57% and leaving subsidized kerosene
up 25% per liter. Taxes bring the amount paid by consumers to even greater
heights relative to national income, and these prices only continue to go up.
As a result of these high prices and the pressing need for fuel, Nepalis go to
great lengths to obtain kerosene and other petroleum commodities. Along the
Mahakali River, which forms Nepal’s natural border with India, villagers walk an
average of three days to the markets in India to buy kerosene. In India, consumers
pay half as much as in Nepal, due to a better distribution infrastructure and sub-
sidies from the Indian government. However, the limited supply of subsidized
kerosene makes it difficult to acquire in large quantities. On any given day at the
Dharchula suspension bridge that spans the Mahakali, one can see 150 to 200
Nepalis crossing over to get kerosene, bringing back a combined amount of 1,000
to 2,000 liters.
The use of kerosene-powered tukis presents major health and safety risks as
well. Lamps cause fatal accidents and fires, as tragically illustrated by the recent
destruction of an entire village in Bhojpur. Small-scale fires occur on an unfortu-
nately frequent basis, and the fumes and smoke from the lamps damage people’s
eyes and lungs. Those who lack access to electricity face these risks every day, just
to obtain weak light of inferior quality.
98 innovations / Ashoka-Lemelson
The Tuki: Lighting Up Nepal
be that way. The first time Anil set up a solar light was in the mid-1980s, when it
was too expensive to be practical. However, the light, battery, and panels have since
become much better and more affordable. We did not wake up one fine day and
decide to build and sell the tuki. Developing the radio, the mobile charger, and now
a chlorinator has been a natural evolution involving not only our individual efforts
but the combined efforts of our respective organizations: Babu’s CRE (Centre for
Renewable Energy) and Anil’s ECCA (Environmental Camps for Conservation
Awareness). ECCA is now about 20 years old; since its founding it has mobilized
young people to be the first adopters of new ideas and solutions aimed at resource
management. CRE has also been dedicated to transferring renewable and clean
technologies to rural Nepal.
Through the partnership, Babu and CRE focus on the technology while Anil
and ECCA focus on distribution. Together we entered the tuki in a local competi-
tion in Nepal. We won $25,000, followed by another $50,000 from the Global
Environmental Facility of the UN. We then took the tuki to the World Bank’s
Development Marketplace, where we won an additional $92,000. Then we got
$100,000 from the carbon fund of a U.K.-based company called ERM. The money
helps us develop new products, such as the chlorinator mentioned above, which is
powered by the same solar panel as the Solar Tuki.
Our primary goal is to create a self-sustaining system to produce the Solar Tuki
that is paid for with revenues generated by sales. Meanwhile, we must sell the tuki
at an affordable price point and create as many mechanisms as possible to make it
easy to pay for. The Solar Tuki producers receive no subsidy, and the price—which
pays for one three-watt solar panel, two tukis, and a cord to attach a radio—reflects
the real cost of manufacture, overhead, and distribution. Moreover, we do not
want to sell a Solar Tuki and then leave the buyer with a damaged or nonfunction-
al unit. Therefore, the price of the tuki also pays for a five-year warranty on the
entire set. We train local individuals to provide repair and maintenance and keep
spare tukis available for immediate replacement in case one is damaged. Although
the initial cost of the set shocks those used to the cheap lights imported from
China, they begin to prefer our tuki when they understand that the price includes
a five-year warranty and after-sales service. These people cannot afford the luxury
of throwing something away as soon as it stops working, but that is inevitable with
cheap Chinese products.
As most of the targeted beneficiaries of our tuki live below the poverty line,
most of them cannot afford the up-front cost. Therefore, we have implemented a
microfinancing system that enables customers to purchase our tuki on an install-
ment basis, paying the equivalent of US$2.30 each month for two years. This
approximately equals the amount they now pay for kerosene or dry-cell batteries.
At the end of the two years, the users continue to get clean light and access to the
radio at no cost, until they need to replace the rechargeable batteries, usually after
an additional three years. We can reach even the most difficult markets using this
program. For example, for the Mushahars of Nepal’s eastern plains, probably the
poorest section of Nepali society, we have set up a revolving fund that charges for
the tuki at only 4 percent interest.
One key way we disseminate the tuki is through training and orientation.
ECCA has a training center in Kathmandu and CRE has one in eastern Nepal.
Basically anyone who says he or she wants to launch an enterprise can sign up for
a three-day training program on the basics of launching an energy enterprise.
Training covers ways to deal with issues of natural resources management and
explains the workings of saving and credit groups. We also train participants on
the basics of building a Solar Tuki and encourage them to share many past experi-
ences—both mistakes and successes. We keep it very informal.
A key challenge of getting the tuki to the most remote areas with high demand
is proper distribution. The primary strategy allows local entrepreneurs to make
over 36% of the total cost of the Solar Tuki by assembling and marketing it them-
selves. This network of local entrepreneurs throughout Nepal provides the best
and probably most effective model we have developed. The huge market for our
tuki requires this kind of decentralized assembly and transport in order to succeed.
Moreover, with local assembly, 36% of the tuki’s cost enters the local economy as
wages. We support this network through centralized strategic advertising. We
already have a model entrepreneur in Biratnagar in eastern Nepal who is produc-
ing 300 sets, and another is producing 200 in Kathmandu.
It will require some innovative changes on our part to produce and distribute
the number of Solar Tukis necessary to fill the gaps left by a failing energy infra-
structure. We do not doubt that there is a huge market for our tuki, but it is a chal-
lenge to find manufacturers who will help us meet this demand. In addressing this
challenge, we plan to maximize the backward and forward economic links between
creating jobs and eradicating poverty. We also believe that those previously exclud-
ed from the mainstream economy could do this job best. These target groups
include local entrepreneurs, single-women’s groups, and even kerosene-tuki burn
victims, who know better than anybody the pain that the Solar Tuki helps its users
avoid. Assembling tukis near the end users through groups like these will benefit
everybody, and we continue to develop these programs. Environmental Resources
Management, a U.K.-based company, has helped us build a central warehouse for
parts so we can develop our decentralized manufacturing model.
In terms of marketing, we intend to grow by developing new partnerships,
novel forms of purchase and payment, and additional appropriate products. For
example, the diverse Nepali market has the unique feature of being almost cash-
less. People in the most remote areas of the country trade primarily through barter,
and Nepal is one of the few remaining places on earth where most people grow or
gather what they need. In a region so rich in natural resources, villagers can weave
baskets and mats from local fibers, make paper from local shrubs, extract oil and
herbs from the local forest, and engage in a variety of other activities. The produc-
tion of these items gives us a variety of options, as finding a larger market for these
products could enable people to pay for household appliances, the Solar Tuki
among them, that would improve their quality of life. In the hill district of eastern
Nepal, Madan Rai of the Khotang Development Committee (and also an Ashoka
Fellow) has initiated a program to promote raising goats among the Brahmans and
Chettris and pig raising among the Rai villagers. Dealers weigh the livestock, and
when they meet the Solar Tuki’s price point, we can make a trade. If this model
begins to work, we can replicate it with other easily saleable commodities, such as
fruit, coffee, and bamboo.
In terms of manufacturing, we tried to do it with two private companies, one
each in Kathmandu and Biratnagar. Both failed. We then began to train local entre-
preneurs. Today, more than 13 local manufacturers are involved in assembling and
distributing the Solar Tuki, and we have the resources for a central warehouse to
support many more.
We have always believed that we have to focus not on the cost of a technology
but on how much people can pay. If it were not for the many groups setting up sav-
ings and credit programs in Nepal, we would not be able to sell the tuki. Initially
we thought we could offer the design to local workshops—Maharjan Electric in
Kathmandu and Krishna Grill in Biratnagar—to see if they wanted to manufacture
the lights. It did not happen. Then we began to have conversations with the Karnali
Savings Cooperative, which gave us many helpful insights. Pati Bhara Solar
Industries became the first group to assemble the tuki and sell it according to the
savings and credit model. Shree Savings Cooperative was the second. The Bhojpur
Finally, we have initiated a series of pilot programs to both extend our vendor
reach and make the tuki available through partnerships with other organizations.
We already have begun to leverage the existing network of kerosene dealers as a
resource for distributing the Solar Tuki. If these successful salesmen can grasp its
powerful potential benefits, they will play a vital role in distributing the tuki.
Industries and businesses can make the Solar Tuki available to their workers and
primary producers, and also create a financing mechanism that allows workers or
vendors to use part of the price of the product purchased, or part of their wages,
to pay for the Solar Tuki. We have begun to implement such a scheme in partner-
ship with ITC Nepal/Surya Nepal for the Simra area of south Nepal.
Worldwide, 1.6 billion people go to bed after blowing out a kerosene lamp—
this, at the beginning of the 21st century. We cannot accept this reality, given the
fact that simple, clean, and affordable lights can easily replace the kerosene lamp.
We must commit ourselves to change this state of affairs and apply the lessons we
have gathered through promoting the Solar Tuki. The relatively low capital cost of
the device allows for its mass dissemination, provided that certain support mech-
anisms are in place. Most important, we must mobilize every community and
instill in their vision for development an awareness of environmental conservation
and applying clean technology. A change in these attitudes, more than anything
else, will lead to real development among the Nepalis.
Better by Design
How Empathy Can Lead to More Successful
Technologies and Services for the Poor
Discussion of Design Case Narratives:
Rickshaw Bank
Solar-Powered Tuki
FGN Pump
Professional training becomes a lens through which we see the world. You can
imagine a dentist who finds it impossible to concentrate on an opera because the
singer has bad teeth. The writer Annie Dillard imagined that the happiest people
are constantly surrounded by opportunities to apply their expertise—for example,
those who study rocks or clouds. Designers are a pretty happy bunch because
opportunities to improve the human condition through design are everywhere. It
becomes an obsession. For example, after 10,000 years of post-Ice Age develop-
ment as a tool-using species, I find it amazing that human beings are still creating
uncomfortable chairs (such as the succession of airplane seats where I wrote this
article).
My goal in this article is to discuss the accompanying case studies: the
Rickshaw Bank of Pradip Sarmah, the Solar Tuki of Anil Chitrakar and Babu Raj
Shrestha, and the FGN pump of Gustavo Gennuso. I look at them in the context
of design for developing countries, and from my perspective as the founder of
Design that Matters (DtM), a nonprofit design consultancy for social enterprise.
“Design” is a term used so broadly as to be almost meaningless. In this article, I will
Timothy Prestero is the founder and CEO of Design that Matters (DtM), a nonprofit
based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. DtM collaborates with leading social entrepre-
neurs and hundreds of volunteers to design new products and services for the poor in
developing countries. A former Peace Corps volunteer and MIT graduate, Tim has
worked in West Africa, Latin America, and Asia. He is a Martin Fellow at the MIT
Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, a Draper Richards Fellow, and was
named an Ashoka Affiliate in 2004. His awards include the 2007 Social Venture
Network Innovation Award and the 2009 World Technology Award.
et full of lime-green size 56 swallow-tail tuxedos. When customers with that pref-
erence walk in the door the tailor is going to make money—but what if they never
arrive?
To anyone surveying the landscape of new products and services, “survivor
bias”can create the impression that product development is simply a matter of
having a great idea.1 It is possible to look at the success of the Solar Tuki and con-
clude that there is a tremendous market for LED-based, solar-powered lanterns.
The reality is that there have been many solar lantern projects, even in Nepal, and
most have failed to achieve significant scale. Similarly, consider the many unsuc-
cessful attempts to scale technologies like the solar cooker and the improved wood-
burning stove.
Despite enormous budgets for R&D and marketing, most new products and
new technologies created for the commercial market in the industrialized world
fail to achieve scale.2 In poor countries, the statistics are even worse: we find very
few examples of successful appropriate technologies.
The design approach is an alternative to invention. The most basic difference
is that where invention often leads to a technology in search of a user (or a solu-
tion in search of someone who has that problem), design starts with the user and
then goes in search of the technology. In design, specifying the user involves con-
ducting direct and indirect research to define who the user is and what they
want—sometimes described as “consumer pull.” A combination of the user’s state-
ment of need and the constraints imposed by their environment creates the prod-
uct requirements, statements, and metrics that define the “victory conditions” for
product features and performance. Developing the product also involves design
iterations, but the direction of the refinements is dictated by the user require-
ments.
Tolstoy wrote that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhap-
py in its own way.”3 Successful products are all alike in that they represent a happy
marriage between product function and the user’s needs and circumstances.
Products that fail do so for a million different reasons.
A common failure of defining the technology before we have defined the user
is that the approach puts the burden of adaptation on the user. Who is to blame if
they refuse?
In the case of the Rickshaw Bank, the initial production run of the improved
rickshaw had a problem with the bicycle chain repeatedly falling off the cog. The
team could have satisfied themselves by blaming the problem on user behavior—
perhaps the rickshaw-pullers were riding over too many bumps and that was caus-
ing the rickshaw frame to flex and the chain to fall off. They could have argued that
the rickshaw pullers simply needed to adapt to the technology: ride more slowly,
take fewer passengers, or avoid bumps. Instead, the project succeeded because the
team listened to the user and adapted their design.
Another common failure is that many inventors attempt to create a “one-size-
fits-all” solution to a general global problem: a new product that will solve the
problem in any context. First, the “all-in-one” technology often requires that every
single user pay for features they don’t need and will never use. Second, given that
context is so important, “one-size-fits-all” rarely works. In the case of the FGN
pump, based on their experience in Patagonia, the team assumed that a wooden
frame was a universal solution to the problem. In Patagonia, this was certainly
true—wood parts are easy to find and inexpensive. But when the team installed the
pump in La Puna, where wood is scarce and the local building material is made
from cactus, their assumptions did not hold.
Product development is a relatively straightforward process if the inventor is
the only customer. This helps to explain the success of the open source software
movement and the Linux operating system. Every volunteer programmer is also a
system user, so in a sense they are all simply solving their own problems. The slow
adoption of Linux outside of the developer community is in part a consequence of
non-programmers finding the system to be anything but intuitive.4
EMPATHY IN DESIGN,
OR WHY KIDS HATE GETTING CLOTHES FOR THEIR BIRTHDAY
The principal difference between the examples of design and invention described
above is the demand for empathy: the ability to imagine the world from someone
else’s perspective. If we want to make a child happy at their birthday party, the
approach may not be to give them what we think they need (a new sweater), but
rather what they think they want (a new toy).
The first component of empathy is the understanding that there are no “dumb
users,” only dumb products. For example, my cell phone, which was clearly devel-
oped by a bunch of engineers, contains dozens of amazing features that after two
years I have yet to figure out. Hearing this, the cell phone engineer might reply that
I am merely lazy—that all of the clever features buried in multiple sub-menus and
behind cryptic key combinations would be intuitive if only I would bother to read
and memorize the 45-page product manual. In great design, the burden is on the
innovator, not the user, to justify every quality and feature of a product.
The second component of empathy in design is the appreciation of context.
Again, an engineer might complain when a user shorts out his cell phone in the
rain, arguing that the device was only intended for use in dry weather (however
absurd that claim). The qualities that define a product or service become either
virtues or liabilities as a function of context. Many products are developed with
embedded cultural assumptions that prove to be crippling liabilities in the context
of a developing country. Examples include general assumptions about the avail-
ability of spare parts and trained maintenance, or very specific assumptions about
a user’s familiarity with the standard iconography of consumer electronics.
The Rickshaw Bank case presents a series of excellent examples of applied
design. Although a veterinarian, Pradip Sarmah was not moved by the plight of
rickshaw-pullers to offer them free veterinarian services. His approach was dictat-
ed by empathy rather than the resources he had at hand. The bank’s business
model is based on the insight that the rickshaw-puller’s lack of access to capital
kept him from owning the tools of his trade. Several of the bank’s practices—the
daily loan payments that match the puller’s cash flow, the provision of a uniform
to increase dignity and brand identification, and the identity card that allows bank
customers to secure gas connections to their homes—are based on direct observa-
tions of, and empathy for, the rickshaw-puller’s point of view.
The Rickshaw Bank also illustrates how good design includes non-technolog-
ical considerations, such as matching loan payments to cash flow. The same is true
for the Solar Tuki. The Solar Tuki may be technologically superior to kerosene
lanterns, but Chitrakar and Shrestha understood that the kerosene lantern was a
better match for consumer budgets. A key innovation was the design of a financial
product: a loan for the Solar Tuki whose payment schedule and terms were rough-
ly equivalent to the intended user’s daily expense of kerosene for home lighting. By
including a five-year warranty for after-sales service on the two-year loan, they
could effectively market the Solar Tuki as offering three years of “free” lighting.
Alignment of Incentives
One of DtM’s most important and painful lessons is that needs do not necessarily
equal markets. We have learned the hard way that altruism is an excellent motiva-
tion for someone to do something once. What allows a program to scale is its abil-
ity to repeat success over and over again; if that is to happen, all the stakeholders
must be motivated as much by self-interest as by the desire to do good. It must be
clear from the beginning who will make money selling and/or maintaining the
intervention, and how everyone else involved in development and implementation
will benefit from the product’s success.
Furthermore, user enthusiasm for a great design does not necessarily guaran-
tee that it will be possible to solve the problems of product financing, manufacture,
and distribution. As Michael Free at the global health nonprofit PATH says, it is
necessary to identify, as early as possible, who will “choose, use, and pay the dues.”
Figure 2 shows all of the stakeholders involved in the development, distribu-
tion, and use of a medical device targeting infant and maternal health. Notice that
the designer is the stakeholder in the top-left corner. Given the huge scope of prod-
uct development, manufacture, and implementation, design may be the “least
hard” part of the process. The challenge is that any one stakeholder in the process
can say no and effectively kill the project. In other words, every stakeholder is nec-
essary; no single stakeholder is sufficient.
In the Rickshaw Bank case, after many unsuccessful attempts to raise project
financing through bank loans, the team hit on the innovation of raising capital by
selling advertising space on the backs of their improved rickshaws. Similarly, the
bank realized that the individual rickshaw puller’s financial success depended on
their ability to attract more business, which led to key innovations like the rick-
shaw puller’s uniform and the redesigned rickshaw’s improved ergonomics, safety,
and aesthetics.
The Solar Tuki program faced stiff competition from the existing supply chain
for kerosene lanterns and fuel. Rather than competing with kerosene, the team
convinced existing kerosene vendors to sell the Solar Tuki as well. This gave ven-
dors a home lighting product to sell during the frequent interruptions of the coun-
try’s kerosene supply. Because the Solar Tuki diversified and strengthened their
business, kerosene vendors—potentially their biggest competitors—became their
marketing ally.
Another excellent example of design elements informed by stakeholder context
is the way Solar Tuki is distributed to students through the program developed by
Ashoka Fellow Mahabir Pun. The team changed the distribution pattern so that
each student received a light of their own, but the school owned the collective
solar-powered charging station. This created a natural alignment of incentives
between the goal of Solar Tuki, to distribute lights, and the goal of the school, to
increase student attendance. The key was that students had to return to school
every day to charge their lights for the evening.
In the FGN case, Gennuso describes the challenge of partnering with NGOs to
distribute his products in regions far from the FGN production centers. Although
the partnership had many advantages on paper, providing water was not central to
the mission of these partner NGOs. This led to disappointing performance in
terms of product marketing, sales, and distribution.
Ashoka fellow Souleymane Sarr (L), the author, DtM volunteer Martin Tolliver and
literacy teacher Amadou Traore during early user testing with the Kinkajou Microfilm
Projector. The beta prototype is in pieces on the table.
Photo by Design that Matters.
tialist: either the design is a match for the user need and people use it, or they don’t,
and the design effort has had no positive effect.
The good news is that our experience with the 80/20 rule tells us that even a
relatively small up-front investment in researching user needs and product context
can pay enormous dividends in the development of appropriate product require-
ments and the alignment of stakeholder incentives. Below are some lessons learned
from the three cases and from DtM’s work.
DtM Fellow Matt Eckelman interviewing NICU nurses at the Kanti Children’s
Hospital, Kathmandu. Having already conducted research at American hospitals, our
goal here was to compare standards and practices in the context of extreme financial
constraints..
Photo by Design that Matters.
team produced a concept for a beautiful, rounded projector housing that used an
aluminum extrusion. At a design review, MIT Professor Woodie Flowers was
unimpressed. “Why don’t you just put the Kinkajou in a lunch box?” he asked.
Imagining life from the perspective of a poorly-equipped teacher in rural Africa,
he assumed that aesthetic appeal was far less important than product cost—and
subsequent user testing proved him right. The final design is very much like a
lunchbox, at a significant cost savings in production.
DtM Fellow Tom Weis user-testing our infant incubator prototype with Childrens
Hospital NICU nurses Maria Davila and Lori Boa. Seeing them accidentally launch
a baby doll out of the bassinet and onto the floor gave us the idea to incorporate an
infant seatbelt for hand-transport.
Photo by Design that Matters.
were access to books and lighting. Limiting ourselves to only these two constraints
during brainstorming, we came up with the idea for the portable, battery-powered
microfilm projector, a design that overcame the problems of a shortage of books
and a lack of classroom lighting in a single product.
to provide a comfortable chair. All three of the cases here serve as good examples
of first doing one thing well—providing pumps or solar lights or credit to rickshaw
peddlers—before adding complexity.
other words, local production is often assumed to be the best manufacturing strat-
egy for appropriate technologies, in that it creates local jobs—but this approach
also introduces significant constraints on product cost and performance, and ulti-
mately limits the potential social impact. Had local production or user assembly
been required initially, I doubt that cell phones would have ever become a global
technology. The challenge for each product is to identify the appropriate point on
the continuum between the high efficiency of a capital-intensive mass production
process and the ultimate local production methodology of having every user build
for themselves what Gennuso, thinking about pumps, very appropriately describes
as a prototype.
Conclusion
An invention approach to problem-solving is, and will remain, popular among
those developing new technologies for the poor. The challenge is that good design
is neither necessary nor sufficient for a product to succeed. The oft-cited example
is the enormous difference in usability between the Microsoft and Apple
Macintosh operating systems of the 1990s. Apple’s superior user interface design
was not enough to guarantee commercial success in the face of competition from
Microsoft’s marketing savvy and existing user base.
Saying that we don’t need great design insights to launch a successful product
or service is similar to saying that we don’t need great market insights to make
money trading on the stock market. Great success requires luck, and in advocating
for the design methodology, I side with those like the authors of the three cases,
who clearly define luck as “opportunity meets preparation.”
Neil Postman wrote that the early success of “Sesame Street,” which is now a
global phenomenon, was based on children’s familiarity with television commer-
cials, “which they intuitively knew were the most carefully crafted entertainments
on television.”12 The same observation applies to product design. We live in a world
where luxury goods and consumer electronics represent some of the most careful-
ly crafted products available. It is exciting to have the opportunity to address real
human needs as opposed to simply creating consumer desire, and to take the same
skills and insights that make a product like the iPod so irresistible and apply them
to the creation of new and useful tools for the poor.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ben Spiess, Elizabeth Johansen, Elizabeth Bruce, and the editors for
shaping up a crummy first draft.
1. Survivor bias: the tendency to draw conclusions from a sample set that includes only successes.
Although the oldest woman in the world reportedly eats sweets and drinks a glass of sherry every
day, it does not follow that those same dietary habits will lead to the same results for everyone.
2. “Among history-making innovations, those based on new knowledge—whether scientific, techni-
cal, or social—rank high. . . . Knowledge-based innovations differ from all others in the time they
take, in their casualty rates, and in their predictability, as well as in the challenges they pose to
We applaud the efforts of ETV, Tuki, and the Rickshaw Bank (RB). Each, in its
own way, provides vital products or services to the people. Without their work, the
relevant users would certainly be less well off. ETV offers a reliable way to get safe
water. Tuki creates jobs in rural areas and sells lamps that meet owners’ needs in a
sustainable way. RB began by giving marginalized rickshaw pullers access to own-
ership of their rickshaws and went on to create a variety of social services. These
organizations and others like them are making a difference. We are particularly
impressed by the cogent arguments about technology choice in the beginning of
the ETV paper. We admire the positive values and motives of the three entrepre-
neurial organizations.
Yet we struggle with whether the efforts—and in Tuki’s case, the money—are
being used in the most effective and efficient way. What problems do we see? We
will explore five different aspects of the ventures: project scope, design process,
financial model, distribution strategy, and scaling and implications for future
Christopher Bull, Senior Lecturer and Senior Engineer at Brown University, pursues
teaching and research in renewable energy, appropriate technology, social entrepre-
neurship, and the pedagogy of classroom-community partnerships.
Barrett Hazeltine is Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Brown University, but con-
tinues to teach full time. He has worked in six African countries and is co-author of a
textbook and a field guide on appropriate technology.
Nicholas Stoker is a recent graduate of Brown University. His honors thesis,
Appropriate Technology in Practice: Understanding Project Failure and a Model
for Proper Implementation, examines why appropriate technology development
projects fail and how they can be more successful.
development.
We wonder further if, in the cases of the Solar Tuki and ETV, the scope of what
the projects hope to accomplish has been clearly defined and limited to an achiev-
able level. In many appropriate technology development projects, leaders set out
both to produce an affordable, useful product and to create good, sustainable
employment opportunities in the community. The Solar Tuki demonstrates both
of these goals: it aims to alleviate the energy/lighting problems that many Nepalis
face, and it is fabricated locally, creating new jobs in manufacturing, as well as in
service, repair, marketing, distribution, etc. These goals are laudable but a project
model trying to meet both goals faces significant obstacles.
Appropriate technology products are generally targeted at bottom-of-the-
pyramid consumers with little, if any, disposable income. It can be very difficult to
design a useful product that is cheap enough for impoverished consumers to pur-
chase but still creates a large enough profit margin to provide the equally impov-
erished producers with a living wage. Nearly all development organizations have
limited time, resources, and expertise. In order to succeed, most project leaders
have to make a trade-off: is their primary mission to create local jobs, thus justify-
ing the use of more costly, labor-intensive production and distribution methods?
Or is it to get as many pieces of technology into the community as possible, even
if that means centralized production abroad? In other words, is the Solar Tuki a
means for creating workplaces, or is it a solution to rural Nepal’s illumination
problem? Is ETV’s primary purpose helping “young people at social risk” or is it
distributing water pumps? Determining, even deciding, project priorities at the
outset is vital to strategic decision-making and can be essential to a project’s long-
term success. Success, in fact, cannot be determined without prior knowledge of
alternatives.
DESIGN PROCESS
It is crucial that the end user be actively involved in the design of any development
project. For technology-based ventures, this means involvement in both the design
of the final product and the project organization. Too often, well-meaning engi-
neers and development professionals come at a problem with preconceived
notions about how to solve to it. For example, RB’s light weight hollow-tube rick-
shaw chassis was evidently an innovative design, but proved non-functional on the
streets. Significantly, it was the rickshaw pullers—not the IIT engineers or the RB
employees—who were able to identify the flaw in the design.
Similarly, solutions that are technically viable may be culturally inappropriate.
ETV’s choice of a rope pump, a technology long known in the region, may reflect
a desire for user acceptance. Working closely with local clients is often the only way
for project leaders to recognize and design for these cultural complexities.
Involving end-users has the added benefits of building trust with the community
and promoting the adoption of a new device. Employing end-users may create
long-term jobs. Of the three cases, we only know details about how the RB rick-
shaw project was implemented. The implementation did involve end-users and did
succeed. As the ETV paper points out, successful implementation depends on
many factors besides technology. We know of no better way for designers to learn
about these factors than by involving end-users.
PROJECT SCOPE
When we consider the three case studies, we are unsure of the extent to which the
users were involved in the design process. Did Tuki work with village groups to
come up with appropriate ways to assemble the solar lamps, or even to determine
whether such lamps would be worthwhile? Did they offer rural people alternative
designs and heed the advice they received? We know rickshaw pullers gave signifi-
cant advice after the first RB model broke, but we could not tell from the RB arti-
cle how or to what extent they interacted with the IIT engineers in the early stages
of the design—often the most crucial time for determining the scope of the final
product. The ETV article does not describe their design process: Is the rope pump
a standard and traditional design in parts of Argentina but not known in this par-
ticular village? There is a delicate balance in the design process, between the
expertise of an external designer and the needs of users. This balance is even more
delicate when the designers and the users are separated geographically or cultural-
ly.
Project leaders have another important question to ask themselves: What is
being promoted? Is it a technology that appears relatively benign but may have
adverse long-term consequences, such as discarded fluorescent tubes in Nepal? Or
is it a technology that traps human beings in an obsolete technology, such as rick-
shaw pulling? (One could also argue that human-powered rickshaws are environ-
mentally benign, easy to maintain, and create employment, and that they may have
been phased out in places because of a prejudice toward “modern” technology.)
Project leaders risk promoting a particular technology rather than solving a prob-
lem: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” We see a
hint of this approach in the ETV rope pump story: in order to make their pump
work in La Puna, ETV workers had to travel “hundreds of kilometers” away to find
appropriate wood for the pump. Later on, the ETV project leaders explain that it
is difficult to partner with local organizations because “few of them are directly
involved in solving water problems.” Perhaps this suggests that retrieving water is
less of a concern for the local population than ETV believes?
FINANCIAL MODEL
Without a sustainable financial plan, it is difficult for an organization to have a
long-term influence. RB has a viable financial model and we will not comment on
it further, but we do have several concerns about the Tuki financial model. First,
the motivation for a customer considering buying a solar lamp is based on the dif-
ference between the cost of conventional fuel (kerosene) and the monthly install-
ment for the Tuki. The price of kerosene is tied to both the price of oil and distri-
bution cost. Either cost could drop, if, for example, supplies in the market
increased or the roads that facilitate distribution were improved, and that drop
could make the product unattractive to the customer.
Second, a business model based on importing components and assembling
them locally will require a good deal of working capital. We presume the investor
supplying the capital funds will want her money back in a reasonable time, which
will affect the cash flow. A capital investment in tools and assembly space will also
have to be made, although this will probably be less than that required for work-
in-progress inventory. It would seem prudent when working in emerging
economies to try to minimize capital expenditures. A third issue is the trade-off
between creating employment and adding cost to the consumer, as we mentioned
above; this is the same issue at the heart of the “Buy American” exhortations. It
sounds like 36 percent of the cost to the consumer is allocated to manufacturing
in the local area. Could the price be materially reduced if production was central-
ized, even by importing assembled lamps? How important is it to the organization
to create local manufacturing jobs? As decisions are made on how to allocate costs
among different stakeholders, the trade-offs become obvious.
We have different concerns about the ETV financial model, perhaps because
we do not understand it in detail. Is it selling rope pumps produced by wayward
urban boys for the benefit of the rural poor? Selling pumps to the poor has a low
potential to pay the producers a living wage, and also pay for materials and sup-
port the organization.
DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY
Making a new product available to customers is often the most difficult aspect of
technology innovation—a concern we have about ETV rope pumps. For Tuki, per-
haps its biggest contribution will simply be having lamps available for purchase in
villages; distribution may provide the needed competitive advantage if the quality
of the Chinese imports improves or if the manufacturer adds a five-year warranty.
At the same time, we are not sure that the current kerosene vendors can be mobi-
lized to sell solar lamps. Proper training may be difficult, but it is important to pay
attention to those who will actually be dealing with customers. We applaud RB for
not only distributing rickshaws conveniently but also bringing other social servic-
es—health care and microfinance—directly to users. Once again we see a trade-off:
between giving attention to the actual device and to other forms of support,
whether or not they are directly tied to the product. Much of the support RB offers
is only loosely related to rickshaws.
SCALING
Scaling is the capacity for an organization to grow efficiently. RB can scale by
bringing to market the various carts described at the end of the article. If Tuki
establishes a distribution network, it can add other products to its line, perhaps
other devices powered by the solar panels. For ETV it seems that scaling simply
FINAL WORDS
These three projects approach the problem of improving people’s lives in different
ways. Tuki focuses on distributing an existing technology. RB focuses on a new
financial model, albeit with a significant technological contribution, and ETV on
a philosophy for development. Tuki asks how to make the technology available,
and RB asks how to make ownership possible. ETV asks how we can leverage our
assets and network to build user capacity. All identify dimensions in which appro-
priate technology and development projects can fail, and each, in its own way, tries
to overcome these potential failures. Some themes reoccur in each approach.
One theme is the imperative to engage the end user from the beginning and to
recognize that the outsider has an incomplete knowledge of the context. From
product design to marketing channels to distribution mechanisms, the client must
be consulted every step of the way. Further, if the goal is to provide a technology,
it must be one that users can adapt to fit their particular needs. The technology
must be designed with a recognition of the user’s capacity to make changes to it.
Project leaders also cannot be wedded to one solution: as the understanding of the
problem evolves, so must the project.
Another theme is development of the organization. How can an organization
grow without losing its sense of mission? How can it adapt to a changing set of
needs and resources? For example, can the RB model be extended to motorized
rickshaws? Of course the financial constraints—initial cost and available capi-
tal—would be significant, but the real issue is how rickshaw pullers would be
affected. A related problem is multiple missions: is ETV primarily a distributor of
products, an employer of marginalized youth, or something else? Their expressed
concern about their partners’ focus on things other than water is relevant here. The
history of RB shows, however, that an organization can accomplish much good by
enlarging the strategy for accomplishing its mission.
These articles were, at once, inspiring, humbling, and thought-provoking.
Until recently, Carolina Amesquita, the principal at La Escuela Ramona Jil primary
school in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, lamented daily that her students were drink-
ing contaminated water directly from the tap, often contracting gastrointestinal ill-
nesses that kept them out of school. Others in the community were suffering too.
Juana Ramirez, an expert weaver in the village of San Mateo, could no longer see
well enough to sort her threads by color. Her productivity had plummeted, further
stressing her already struggling family. While preparing meals over an open-pit fire
in her home, as Guatemalan women have done for generations, Alva Rios was
inhaling harmful smoke for hours each day. Julia Garcia was spending more and
more of her family income on electricity bills, while Benito Ramirez had no elec-
tricity in his home and at night had to study by candlelight.
These and similar problems confronting thousands of rural Guatemalans have
now been solved through the hard work of two Guatemalan women. Yoly Acajabon
and Clara Luz de Montezuma, local homemakers in their mid-40s, started their
own enterprises in 2004 with no entrepreneurial experience or start-up capital.
Working within the MicroConsignment Model (MCM), these extraordinary
women are providing low-income villagers with essential products and services
that help improve their health, nutrition, and economic situations—and they are
earning incomes for their own families while doing so.
La Escuela Ramona now owns a water-purification device. Juana Ramirez got
a free eye exam and bought low-cost reading glasses. Alva Rios now cooks on a
fuel-efficient stove with a chimney. Julia Garcia has installed energy-efficient light
Greg Van Kirk, an Ashoka Lemelson Fellow, is the Co-Founder and Executive Director
of Community Enterprise Solutions and the Co-Founder and President of Social
Entrepreneur Corps. He is a former investment banker and Guatemala Peace Corps
volunteer. He lives in New York City, where he also dedicates time as an “Entrepreneur
in Residence”at Columbia University.
bulbs in her home, and Benito Ramirez owns a solar panel and LED light that
brightens an entire room.
By providing access to needed but previously unavailable products, Yoly and
Clara are “bridging the last mile” in the supply chain of products needed by the
rural poor in an appropriate and sustainable way. In the beginning they simply
sold reading glasses, but over time their “basket of solutions” has become a grow-
ing enterprise. Known in our system as “Community Advisors,” these two women
travel on buses to villages that often lack even a small tienda (store), let alone pro-
fessional services accompanied by life-changing products. They work with local
mayors and community leaders first to market to villagers’ needs, and then to offer
products and services that will help meet them. These women are seen not as sales-
people but as problem-solvers because what they offer has never before been avail-
able to these villagers, except in sporadic donations. Those who benefit often say
“Gracias a Dios” (thank God) when Yoly and Clara find solutions to their needs.
Today Yoly and Clara are not only MCM entrepreneurs; they have also become
regional coordinators in charge of training and supporting 10 other women,
including other new regional coordinators. They are leaders and shareholders in a
newly formed social enterprise, Soluciones Comunitarias (SolCom). They have
control over their economic lives and are helping others as well. They increase their
income by selling products that help rural families solve healthcare needs, increase
productivity and/or lower their cost of living, proving that sustainable, replicable
access to critically needed services and products can be created through the MCM.
munities—by addressing the “what” (essential products and services), the “who”
(rural villagers), and the “where” (rural villages). They do so by creating a “how”:
a highly scalable local distribution network that works to diagnose and address the
myriad obstacles confronting these communities in a sustainable way.
pockets her profits—but only after she completes a sale. At that point she gets her
inventory restocked and the cycle begins again. Just as in a credit scheme, when she
sells, everyone is happy. But when she doesn’t sell, the repercussions for the organ-
ization and the entrepreneur are very different from those of microfranchising.
Just as in a credit-financed scheme, when the woman doesn’t sell, organizational
capital is tied up out in the field. But this capital is tied up in the organization’s
products that the entrepreneur is simply holding for sale and not in a loan that the
entrepreneur must find some way to pay back. The woman can go out and sell the
next day, or the next week or next month. She lives to sell another day without the
burden of a debt payment that is pushing her further into poverty.
Of course not every woman will be a successful entrepreneur. The
MicroConsignment Model takes this into account and aims to “do no harm.” In
this model, save the sunk training costs that are needed in both models, the orga-
nization’s capital is not lost if the woman stops selling briefly or even entirely; the
organization can simply take back the products and consign them to a new entre-
preneur. A key component is that individuals can “test drive” an entrepreneurial
opportunity. They get classroom and field training that enables them to make
informed decisions and gain the skills they need. Thus, the consignment structure
empowers women who have little education and no business experience to invest
their time and “sweat equity” in a venture in which they can earn a profit from
their first sale. If it doesn’t work out, a woman is not left with burdensome debt
and product inventory; ideally she will leave with new skills and knowledge but not
a loan obligation.
A final difference between MCM and models such as microcredit and
microfranchising is the way entrepreneurs reinvest their earnings. When credit is
used as the enabling mechanism, entrepreneurs often use all or much of their earn-
ings for personal or family consumption needs before they have time to restock
their inventories. That stunts their growth. Remember that they are usually low-
income women who often live a hand-to-mouth existence, so they are easily
tempted to consume their revenues. In contrast, MCM entrepreneurs reinvest effi-
ciently in their ventures. Because they buy their goods after they make a sale, they
do not see as theirs the portion of their revenues that goes to restocking their
inventory. So they don’t consume what isn’t theirs. Of course they have to learn not
to spend the revenues they need to reinvest. We have found that they never do
spend them. We have trained and equipped nearly 200 entrepreneurs over the past
five years, and not one has run off with the money. This is mostly because the
MCM is not just a financing mechanism, but in fact creates a mutually respectful
relationship between the organization and entrepreneur. The women entrepre-
neurs are offered a compelling opportunity that is empathetic to their situation.
They respond in kind. This is human nature.
Certainly one school of thought considers debt necessary to give entrepreneurs
a sense of ownership and to motivate them. I agree with this on some level: having
a loan obligation can definitely focus the mind on one’s work. But both our own
experience and broader evidence contradict this idea. First, MCM entrepreneurs
working in our infrastructure in Guatemala and Ecuador have already sold over
35,000 products, and we have only scratched the surface from a geographic scale
perspective. And VisionSpring, which adopted the MCM in 2004, has sold thou-
sands of pairs of glasses using the model. So clearly, an upfront debt obligation is
not the sole motivator. Second, this belief contradicts the very premise behind the
origins of the micro-credit: before it was implemented, the idea was that women
entrepreneurs had ongoing concerns, and simply needed access to capital through
credit to grow their businesses. They needed to be able to buy more stuff to sell
more stuff. Therefore, it makes no sense to state that the loan obligation is what
creates a sense of ownership and drives entrepreneurship. If it did, these women
would never have been entrepreneurs in need of micro credit in the first place.
What successful entrepreneur would say that debt created a sense of ownership
and was a primary motivator? Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn’t start Apple in
a garage because they had a loan. Apple exists because they believed in themselves
and in what they were doing. The MCM has empowered Yoly and Clara to believe
in themselves and in what they are doing.
But one person’s risk may be another person’s uncertainty. Perception, not neces-
sarily reality, defines this distinction. Although almost any endeavor involves some
risk, actors in high-risk situations may feel so much discomfort that they cross the
line from risk into uncertainty.
Credit-driven structures work when the entrepreneur perceives risk. An entre-
preneur whose inventory is funded 100 percent up front through credit has little
time for learning and a slim margin of error. She must sell immediately and sell
consistently without fail, or she will likely fall further into poverty. Therefore, she
must understand and feel comfortable with her risk before she takes out a loan to
buy her inventory. So she first has to know her supply-and-demand equation and
predict that she will likely be able to sell her products.
However, when potential entrepreneurs perceive the market as not just risky
but uncertain, the MCM has proven to be an optimal solution. With new products
for new markets, primarily high-value-added products, sometimes an entrepre-
neur simply cannot calculate risk. There is no knowledge on which to base a risk
assessment. An entrepreneur who is highly skeptical of a new product, her ability
to effectively sell that product, and market demand will not want to take out a loan
and bear all the up-front risk. And even if she wants to, she probably shouldn’t.
to pay expenses and invest in new products. This is a great example of the “win-
win-win” solution this model can create.
Finally, the MCM can be implemented through micro-franchisors, in one of
two ways. First, some microfranchisors currently use a credit scheme to enable
their microfranchisees to buy their products. Those using this credit scheme can
offer their microfranchisees new value-added products and services through the
MCM. The franchisees can add products that are initially “uncertain” to comple-
ment their “risky” mix. Instead of the MCM replacing existing, functional, micro-
credit-based strategies, it can be added as an effective complement. Second, new
product innovators and manufacturers can promote the MCM as a way for organ-
izations to get new technologies out the door. Nick Swoden of ToughStuffOnline,
an innovator in solar energy and lighting solutions, recently said to me:
ToughStuff ’s microfranchising effort, the Business-in-a-Box program,
has partners that love the MicroConsignment Model. The partners pre-
fer this model to microcredit because it greatly limits the risk an entre-
preneur must bear. This is especially critical when launching new tech-
nology, like solar products. The other benefit we hear is that the MCM is
much simpler and easier to manage and scale. Whereas microcredit, with
its scheduled loan repayments, is actually quite a complicated model with
high transaction costs, our partners who aren’t financial institutions are
able to launch and scale a MicroConsignment Model program without
taking years to learn this business.
found them inadequate. That led me to develop a new model based on the old con-
cept of consignment.
In my role as a small-business Peace Corps volunteer, I was tasked with sup-
porting two organizations: a microcredit institution and the local Chamber of
Commerce, which was in charge of an Internet center financed by USAID. After
living in Nebaj for eight months, I also received permission from the Peace Corps
to open a restaurant, though all I knew about restaurants was how to eat in them.
My personal mission was to learn about best practices while having a positive
impact. In retrospect, the lessons I learned working in these three initiatives—a
microcredit institution, the Internet center, and a small business—have proven
fundamental to the approach we took with MCM. Unfortunately, I learned most
of these lessons the hard way.
Learning from the Micro-credit Experience
FAFIDESS (Fundación de Asesoría Financiera a Instituciones de Desarrollo y
Servicio Social), the microcredit organization I worked with, was implementing a
village banking strategy. I was delighted to discover this, as I had specifically
requested a placement where I could work in microcredit. In fact, I had finally quit
my investment banking job as a direct consequence of reading David Bornstein’s
book about Muhammad Yunus, The Price of a Dream, which made me a true
believer in the power of microcredit. But my inspiration quickly turned to doubt
and frustration—for several reasons.
In Nebaj, the micro-credit manager met twice a month with village banks,
informal groups of 20 to 30 members who receive individual loans and are pre-
dominantly female heads of household. One monthly meeting focused on disburs-
ing loans or collecting principal, interest, and savings from the women, and the
other was designated for small business training, for which I was responsible. Each
meeting was to last one hour.
Soon after I began teaching, it became evident that no one valued the train-
ing—neither the women borrowers nor the institution. Managers were evaluated
on the number of banks they developed, the number of borrowers, and the size of
their loan portfolio and delinquencies, and were often hard pressed to spend ade-
quate time with borrowers in any capacity, let alone a support capacity. With the
emphasis on increasing numbers, training—my job—took a back seat. Moreover,
the women borrowers often had very different businesses, were in different cycles
of those businesses, and had varying levels of education, literacy, and Spanish lan-
guage ability. And they had little time. So the trainings I designed and gave had to
be thematically universal and very basic—broadly applicable to all of them, but
specifically helpful to few. Most participants viewed training as more of a burden
than an opportunity. In fact, looking back, my most successful training day was the
one when I leaned against the house door of the woman who was hosting the
training, ripped the door off its hinges, and fell backwards onto the bed in her
daughter’s room. I couldn’t stop apologizing, and the women couldn’t stop laugh-
ing. That day, they listened to me.
little value in the experience. The key to a successful Internet center is high usage,
but because usage didn’t meet expectations, management raised prices in a coun-
terproductive effort to increase revenues, which reduced usage even further. All of
these factors led to conflict and mistrust between stakeholders and the Chamber
and the clients it sought to serve. The Nebaj Internet center closed after just four
years.
I learned many lessons in my work with the Chamber and the Internet center.
Above all: opportunity must be earned. There had been no vetting process; the
Chamber members were simply given an opportunity they did not earn, and they
had not proven through their efforts that they merited the opportunity.
By contrast, MCM entrepreneurs put in sweat equity to earn the opportunity
they are given; that ongoing process begins with the training, a course of roughly
eight weeks. Four “classroom” sessions are followed by three field-training sessions.
When training new entrepreneurs in a new territory, we begin with up to eight
women, knowing that fewer will attend each subsequent meeting. Attrition is actu-
ally desirable and is built in. By the time the women who remain are consigned
their products and begin their field work, they have proven they are willing to put
in the necessary effort and that they share our vision. In effect, the training works
as a mutual vetting process.
Second, when the goal is creating access, the pricing structure must allow for
the highest possible usage while also compensating the service providers appropri-
ately. This is a continuous balancing act. A volunteer-driven model is unsustain-
able because no one is compensated, and volunteers’ motivation will wane as other
priorities take over. Conversely, pricing products or services too high may boost
income in the short run, but it cannot create broad access.
With the MCM, prices are established by the implementing organizations after
they test how end users perceive the value of products. If prices are too low people
see the product as cheap; if prices are too high no one can buy it. The entrepre-
neurs’ needs for compensation are also key. Prices must maintain a balance
between providing broad access for villagers and sufficient earnings for sellers. We
have found that establishing a price point at the start and stating it on the adver-
tising materials is a better strategy than allowing entrepreneurs to set their own
prices. Because revenues must be divided at monthly meetings, MCM entrepre-
neurs cannot charge less than the stated price for the products. Admittedly, they
may sometimes charge more for their products without our knowledge, but
because we set goals for sales volume, these altered prices do not hinder usage, for
two reasons. If a woman is charging a higher price but is reaching her volume
goals, then there is no actual problem: she earns more and all the goals are met. But
if she is charging more than people will pay, she will not meet her volume goals.
Then she will lower her price to achieve the volume goals and start earning prof-
its! In either scenario the outcome is positive.
I learned a third lesson at the Internet center. A “push strategy” with a service
approach is essential in marketing new and high-value-added products. If you
build it, they won’t come. You must look at potential users and consider how the
product will benefit them. The Chamber failed to attract potential users because it
failed to demonstrate how the Internet would benefit them. Within the MCM,
entrepreneurs “push” to remote communities and are called community advisors
because they are seen as such. As service providers who are trained to market and
sell health and economic benefits at an appropriate price in the appropriate place,
entrepreneurs with little experience quickly come to be seen as experts. So, villagers
not only purchase their products but also ask them for new solutions to other
problems. The entrepreneurs then share this information with their field leaders,
who respond by seeking appropriate new solutions to the problems that have been
learned about from the villagers.
their existing abilities and continually increase both their knowledge and their
level of business sophistication.
Another lesson I learned is that people will only do better work if they see
value in it. If the goal is for individuals to take ownership—which it should be for
any development project—they must truly feel the need to do high-quality work
or their enterprise will fail. Odd as it may seem, to achieve this, entrepreneurs must
be allowed to fail. While running the restaurant, for example, I found that staff
would not keep careful records. They began keeping precise systems in place only
after I left them in charge and they ran into problems. When they failed they saw
the need to improve, which enabled them to move from dependence to independ-
ence. Ownership must be felt; people often value something only when they feel
the negative consequences of potentially losing it.
With the MCM, we achieve this transition to a sense of ownership through
field trainings that teach budding entrepreneurs how to conduct a village cam-
paign. The first campaign is led by regional coordinators with support from the
budding entrepreneurs, the second is co-led, and the third is led by the entrepre-
neurs with much diminished support from the coordinators. As training progress-
es, the entrepreneurs learn through both their successes and failures. When they
are allowed to make mistakes, they also see the need to improve. When first train-
ing entrepreneurs, I often went on village campaigns where they set up their prod-
uct display tables inside a town hall or school. In theory these were natural places
to set up, especially because the space had been offered. But they were invisible.
The familiar real estate mantra also applies in developing countries: location, loca-
tion, location. The best place to set up, of course, is outside, where everyone walks
by. So for the first hour few people would come and I would stay quiet. I could see
the worry and anxiety on the women’s faces. Then I asked them why no one was
coming. They nearly always replied that no one knew they were there and then
decided to move their tables outside. Invariably more people came. It was painful
to do but necessary to help them take ownership of their learning and see that they
needed to make their own decisions to succeed.
The most important lesson I learned was that even with limited financial
resources, people can achieve the seemingly impossible through a model based on
teamwork. I had established the tourism businesses with very little investment and
with people who knew nothing about how to run these businesses—including me.
But we did well. We worked as a team with a common goal, thus proving the whole
to be greater than the sum of our parts. This team approach is at the core of the
MCM and empowers everyone involved to overcome seemingly insurmountable
obstacles. Every product or service offered through the MCM is the first of its kind.
In effect, no other organizations in Guatemala are selling eyeglasses, wood-burn-
ing stoves, water filters, solar lights, seeds, or energy-efficient lightbulbs in remote
villages. The model empowers everyone, especially the women, to see a lack of
access to products and services as an opportunity, not as an insurmountable prob-
lem. They start out timid and intimidated but soon become confident self-starters,
seeking out more and better ways to provide solutions to other problems, and
repeatedly converting the impossible into possibilities.
model. In response, I developed what I then called “the stove model,” which would
later become the MicroConsignment Model.
Ignoring the widespread opinion that no one would buy a stove, I decided to
find a way to make stoves continuously available and affordable. My first thought
was to pay someone to build them, but the few hundred dollars I had wouldn’t pay
anyone for more than a few months. I then met with Augustín Corrio, the mason
who had built the original stoves, and offered to lend him money to buy the mate-
rials to make and sell stoves. His reaction mirrored that of others: he perceived
uncertainty, not risk. “No one will buy a stove, Gregorio”: villagers simply would-
n’t buy stoves because they were used to getting them for free or they cost too
much. At the time, materials to make stoves like those Augustín had built in La
Pista cost roughly $75, plus labor. Putting the donation issue aside, I first decided
to tackle cost.
To find a less expensive stove, I conducted extensive research on stoves being
built throughout Guatemala, but could not find another compelling option. So I
asked Augustín to help me modify the $75 model to bring down the cost. After a
few weeks, we got the cost down to approximately $50 without hurting the integri-
ty of the design and function. But this still seemed prohibitively high for families
earning $120 a month. To lower costs further, I proposed that we make the legs of
the stove out of wood rather than cinder blocks. Although Augustín protested that
The First Stove Model. A family purchases the first stove in La Pista, Guatemala.
wood would rot and no one would buy a stove with wooden legs, he agreed to
build a pilot model in the home of one of the restaurant’s cooks. The stove per-
formed as intended. We had it! In fact, that stove is still in use six years later.
Though this design succeeded, I ultimately had to abandon the wooden legs.
This experience taught me that even in rural villages, form is just as important as
function, and sometimes more so. Moreover, I realized, perceived need trumps real
need and desire drives sales. A family cooking on the floor has a real need for a
stove. One might think that any stove would do, but no. Just because someone is
poor doesn’t mean they want a “poor” solution. People make purchases based on
their perceived needs and their desire for a particular solution to that need. The
wooden-legged stove passed the first two tests: it addressed the real need and it
addressed the perceived need. But it didn’t address the desire. Nobody desired a
wooden-legged stove. This lesson was reinforced in our work with VisionSpring,
when cofounder Jordan Kassalow concluded that people want high-quality glasses
and are willing to pay for them. Even poor people want what we want, not donat-
ed used glasses that look like they should be worn with a polyester disco suit.
Development initiatives fail when they base their strategies only on real needs
described in a report or on perceived needs, without gaining a true understanding
of actual desires.
Given that the wooden-leg solution was unworkable, I decided to go with the
$50 model. But I still had two problems: how could I get people to buy the stoves
at that price, and who would sell them? To solve the first problem, Augustín and I
concluded that villagers needed a payment plan. To solve the second problem, I
came up with the idea of consignment. In fact, consignment seemed to solve a
number of problems. I would consign to Augustin the construction materials up
front; to cover his profits and administrative expenses, I would add a margin onto
the price. This meant Augustín would not have to bear the up-front risk. I was con-
fident we could make it work and took the risk. My risk-taking allowed him to
work with uncertainty. We devised a six-month payment schedule for our cus-
tomers: the stoves saved so much on energy that they could pay for themselves.
This is a critical element of the MCM. Customers either save money, as with the
stoves and water filters, or they create the ability to make money, as with the eye-
glasses. Buying the products creates equity, essentially putting money in cus-
tomers’ pockets.
Augustín needed to invest his time to find buyers. He was willing to bear this
risk because the opportunity cost of his time was effectively zero. I would purchase
the materials for him at a local hardware store, and as people made payments on
their stoves, Augustín would earn a profit. Meanwhile, as he repaid me for the
materials, I could reinvest that money for more material to make more stoves—a
rotating capital mechanism. Augustín would be motivated to sell and would have
a long-term opportunity: providing stoves to more and more families. Because he
wasn’t a businessman by training and was only compensated if he succeeded, we
had built-in business training. If something didn’t work, he would tell me and we
could make modifications. He had incentives to get training. And, this method
assured me that the funds I was providing went directly to the intended purpose.
For argument’s sake, if I had simply loaned Augustín the money for his stove busi-
ness and he took the risk, he could have spent the money on other things, as tends
to happen at times with microcredit. A microcredit lender doesn’t stipulate, much
less direct, the credit recipient’s business investment. But using the consignment
process assured me that Augustín would build stoves.
No one had done this before. In fact, I was anxious that people wouldn’t pay
him back for their stoves because they were accustomed to handouts. But I need-
n’t have worried: to date, Augustín and other entrepreneurs in the Ixil region have
sold over 1,600 stoves, and everyone has paid back their loans. People will buy what
they need and want with their very limited resources if a quality product is provid-
ed through an approach that responds to their needs, desires, and limitations.
Realizing the Potential
After finishing my stint in the Peace Corps, I decided to stay in Nebaj to continue
the work I had started and to work as a consultant for USAID. At this point, CE
Solutions and Social Entrepreneur Corps cofounder George Glickley joined me.
George had been a Peace Corps volunteer in another part of the country and
became my partner in all my initiatives from then on.
In March 2004, the Scojo Foundation (now VisionSpring) contracted with us
to help them find an effective way to distribute reading glasses to low-income vil-
lagers in El Salvador. They estimated that over 90 percent of people over age 40 will
need reading glasses to see up close. Of course, “reading glasses” is a misnomer in
countries like Guatemala, where many who buy them cannot actually read. The
glasses simply help them see up close.
Although we were originally hired to address what VisionSpring saw as a mar-
keting issue, while working with their programs leader, Neil Blumenthal, we con-
cluded that the overall implementation model needed to be changed. VisionSpring
was using a microcredit model to give local women the means to give basic eye
exams and distribute glasses door to door, but it wasn’t working effectively.
We noted that lending the women money to buy the glasses created problems
at three distinct points in time. At inception, we faced the same problem I had
encountered with Augustín. When women were presented with the opportunity to
give eye exams and sell glasses, many would decide not to take it. It was an entire-
ly new business and appeared impossible at first glance. Perceived uncertainty was
an obstacle. Later, some women did take the plunge, and they initially experienced
an enthusiastic response. But many then saw a downturn in sales but still had to
both repay their loans and buy a predetermined number of glasses. Many of them
came to meetings without money and asked for an extension, which led others to
do the same, essentially creating a domino effect. After a few months, many simply
stopped coming to meetings and the VisionSpring staff had to go to their homes
and reclaim the glasses. In many cases, what was intended to be a collaborative
relationship instead became antagonistic. Moreover, the project did not achieve its
aim of creating access; instead the women were left with debts. All of this was total-
ly contrary to the VisionSpring mission.
Finally, because the sales were made to the women and they simply had to pay
back the loan and buy more glasses, VisionSpring wasn’t continuously learning
about the market. Moreover, the training was separated from administration, just
as it had been in my microcredit experience. VisionSpring and the entrepreneurs
were essentially sitting on opposite sides of the table, not on the same side looking
in the same direction.
After considerable analysis, we concluded that the “stove model” could miti-
gate the challenges VisionSpring was confronting with its microcredit model.
VisionSpring decided to adopt a modified stove model as its mechanism for imple-
mentation. Although I didn’t name it until a year or so later, this is effectively when
the stove model became the MicroConsignment Model. For George and me, this
was the “Aha!” moment. We realized that the MCM could provide a unique way to
deliver myriad products and services that addressed health, economic, environ-
mental, and educational needs to villagers in remote areas.
Soluciones Comunitarias: The Mechanism for Local Self-Sustainability
This realization led us to establish CE Solutions as the engine to develop, test,
implement, and expand the MCM in Guatemala, and ideally in other countries in
the future. VisionSpring offered funding for our start-up in Guatemala. To create
national scale and local self-sustainability, we saw that the key was to train an
and more satisfied with their work, and SolCom earns more while reducing any
negative effects of short-term regional saturation and/or competition from donors
for any one product.
The lightbulbs and seeds are generally what we call piggy-back products;
Miguel Brito, the president of SolCom, calls them propinas (tips). Because both
entrepreneurs and villagers already appreciate the benefits of these products and
because they are relatively inexpensive, they fit more into the risk than the uncer-
tainty paradigm. From SolCom’s economic perspective they are in many ways “free
riders”: they benefit from being in the product mix but contribute little to the bot-
tom line. However, these propinas are important for other reasons.
First, they benefit the users tremendously; the fact that they turn over fairly
quickly is already enough reason to include them. Second, they provide an easy
way for an MCM entrepreneur to earn extra money with relatively little effort—
they simply place the propinas on their tables and offer them along with other
products and services. And third, in the eyes of community leaders, villagers, and
the MCM entrepreneurs themselves, offering these other products reinforces the
fact that the women are visiting communities not as sellers, but as service
providers. So we continually seek more propinas.
In June 2008, we piloted and launched our initiative to train and equip local
organizations as MCM entrepreneurs. Social Entrepreneur Corps interns led this
effort under our guidance, and two months after we identified and spoke to organ-
izations, we had set up five of these socios comunitarios. This effort helps us to scale
up in regions where we currently have regional coordinators and to expand into
new regions to establish a footprint.
As of September 2009, through the combined support of CE Solutions and
Social Entrepreneur Corps, SolCom has trained over 200 local entrepreneurs who
have executed approximately 1,800 village campaigns and sold over 35,000 prod-
ucts. After subtracting the purchase price and using conservative assumptions
about savings—for example, $12 per month with a wood-burning stove, $16 per
month with a water-purification bucket—we project a total savings (equity) for
product purchasers in excess of $1,000,000. Though this figure is not exact, it still
represents a whole lot more money in the pockets of rural villagers to spend on
health care, education, food, and developing their own businesses—money that in
the past was ill spent.
Gross revenues from the sales of the products total approximately $330,000,
and MCM entrepreneurs have earned profits of approximately $60,000. Using the
official Guatemalan daily minimum wage of $6.75—though few rural people,
especially women, can earn anything close to this—these earnings equate to
approximately 8,888 days of work. At present there are 65 MCM women entrepre-
neurs and 10 socios comunitarios. Some women drop out after a month of “test
driving,” while others, like Yoly and Clara, have been working as entrepreneurs for
up to five years. SolCom now earns revenues of approximately $6,200 per month
and has 11 staff members, who earn a combined $2,400 per month. SolCom cur-
rently has losses of about $1,500 a month after accounting for the cost of goods
sold. CE Solutions subsidizes this loss.
We have been able to achieve all this with a relatively small donor base. Total
donations to CE Solutions, including those targeted for the tourism initiatives and
education center we created in Nebaj, were $20,000 in 2004 and have never exceed-
ed $135,000 in any one year. Increased scale and impact are now simply a function
of increased financial resources. The model works, so it is time to scale it up.
George and I have been able to do this work drawing very small salaries/stipends
while earning a living as consultants. Social Entrepreneur Corps has also proven
instrumental in this process. In 2006 we started with seven interns and no univer-
sity relationships; by the summer of 2009 we had 74 interns from a broad range of
universities including, Notre Dame, Columbia, Duke, the University of
Connecticut, William and Mary, Miami University (Ohio), and Franklin and
Marshall, all schools with which we now have forged strategic partnerships. In
2009, revenues of over $100,000 from Social Entrepreneur Corps went directly to
our development work. Financial self-sustainability is being created at the field
level in Guatemala through SolCom’s rotating capital mechanism (no income goes
to CE Solutions or Social Entrepreneur Corps), and increasingly through Social
Entrepreneur Corps at the operational level. And we are expanding.
1. James Surowiecki, “Hanging Tough”. The Financial Page, The New Yorker. April 20, 2009. Can be
accessed at:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/04/20/090420ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz0Z5z28GW6
There is a great deal of debate about the definition of social entrepreneurship. I use
an emerging definition: “Innovative and effective activities that focus strategically
on resolving social market failures and creating opportunities to add social value
systematically by using a range of organizational formats to maximize social
impact and bring about change.”1 This definition acknowledges three key aspects
of social entrepreneurship: an innovative element, a primary focus on the creation
of social value, and a diverse set of approaches that employ creativity to deliver
social value. Thus it paves the way for a greater understanding of “invention-led
development,” which, according to the Lemelson Foundation, focuses on how new
ideas, products, or services can be converted to widely accessible or adopted forms
in the creation of social value.
When the language of invention-led development is used, it conjures up
images of novel products and services used in development activities. On the prod-
uct side, for example, a treadle pump—such as those designed by KickStart—
offers significant advantages over other alternatives in improving irrigation for
subsistence farmers in Africa. Similarly, on the service side, the creation of micro-
finance by organizations such as Grameen Bank makes credit available to popula-
tions that previously had been denied such access.
signment organization sit on the same side of the table. As a result, the microen-
trepreneur may see the opportunity as more desirable and be motivated to “test
drive” the model.
The MCM model also offers an operating system platform that allows other
products and services to be easily integrated. Like Microsoft’s Windows, the MCM
offers an opportunity to piggyback new products or services onto the existing
infrastructure and therefore to expand the offering of both the microentrepre-
neurs and the system as a whole. However, as a social rather than a commercial
innovation, the MCM is available as an open-source model for other organizations
to replicate and adapt for the creation of social value. As a result, the MCM holds
great promise as a new platform for invention-led development.
SHIFTING RISK
One primary advantage of the MCM is its ability to shift risk from those who can
least afford to take it (microentrepreneurs) to those who are more able to bear it
(microconsignment organizations). Several established models (e.g., microfi-
nance) and emerging models (e.g., microfranchise) of social entrepreneurship
require the microentrepreneur to bear substantial financial risk. The argument in
favor of this is accountability: proponents suggest that if the microentrepreneur
takes a financial risk they will have to have skin in the game, as angel investors and
venture capitalists typically require. However, in the developing world, such an
approach may not be appropriate because the financial risk associated with failure
may put not only the microentrepreneur but also their family members in debt for
an extended period of time.
Community Enterprise Solutions, in contrast, does not require the microen-
trepreneur to take such risks. Instead, the MCM allows the microentrepreneur to
test drive the model and to invest sweat equity rather than borrowed financial cap-
ital. This shift of risk from the microentrepreneur to the microconsignment organ-
ization allows microentrepreneurs to realize a profit within one month of startup,
and makes the opportunity available to a greater number of potential microentre-
preneurs by shifting the risk from a financial to a time risk—the opportunity cost
of investing time without realizing benefits.
One outcome of shifting risk is the avoidance of systemic failure. In many
development approaches, the economic condition for the majority of microentre-
preneurs is improved. However, what happens to the unsuccessful microentrepre-
neurs? While some development approaches leave unsuccessful microentrepre-
neurs mired in debt, the MCM—through the elimination of startup costs and
loans—avoids the systemic failure of any microentrepreneurs who simply incur
the opportunity cost of investing their time. As such, the MCM adheres to the
principle of prinum non nocere by ensuring that no harm is done to even unsuc-
cessful microentrepreneurs.
Shifting risk also provides a “real options” opportunity for the microentrepre-
neur in which smaller initial investments can be made, thereby limiting the down-
SCALING OPPORTUNITIES
A final benefit of the MCM is the myriad of mechanisms through which the scal-
ing of social impact can occur. Scaling refers to the increase of social value that can
occur through an invention-led development. It can occur first through the addi-
tion of products or services for Community Enterprise Solutions. Whether they
are identified through microentrepreneurs or foreign development workers, effec-
tively vetted products and services can be added to the MCM’s infrastructure to
provide access to the growing number of products and services available to the
rural poor and to increase income opportunities for the microentrepreneurs.
Second, scaling can be realized by expanding the model to include other geo-
graphic markets. The recent expansion of Community Enterprise Solutions to
Ecuador is an important step in understanding the MCM’s ability to be replicated
in other geographic regions where common problems of access to basic products
and services exist. Third, the MCM offers scaling possibilities through replication
by other organizations. In microfinance, replication and adaptation accounted for
significantly increased access to microcredit. In the same way, the MCM offers a
platform for other organizations to scale social impact.
Finally, the MCM provides a mechanism for the scaling of education. Having
personally met Yoly Acajabon and Clara Luz de Montezuma, the microentrepre-
neurs described in the opening vignette of Greg Van Kirk’s case study, I have wit-
nessed the scaling of education. These two women have increased their knowledge
and skills, resulting in their being promoted from community advisors to region-
al coordinators, the latter position being one that trains prospective community
advisors. The MCM has provided the same sort of scaling for students of social
entrepreneurship. The growth of the SE Corps to additional universities and the
growth of individual students—such as Mary Claire Sullivan from the University
of Notre Dame and Mike Duchen from Miami University (Ohio), who have taken
coursework in social entrepreneurship, participated in the summer internship pro-
gram, and joined Community Enterprise Solutions with full-time commitments—
illustrate the scaling of social impact through education.
Enterprise Solutions and its founders, Greg Van Kirk and Bucky Glickley, are to be
applauded. Community Enterprise Solutions offers better access to essential prod-
ucts and services in developing countries and an opportunity for microentrepre-
neurs to develop new skills and increase their income. It provides a unique oper-
ating system as a distribution model that encourages shifting risk, knowledge
transfer, and scaling capabilities. The Lemelson Foundation suggests that an inven-
tion-led development should be widely accessible and adopted. Additional
resources in various forms of capital are needed to increase the accessibility and
adoption of the promising MCM: Financial capital needs to be added in stages for
further replication and expansion of the model. Human capital is needed in the
form of additional microentrepreneurs and aspiring social entrepreneurial stu-
dents. Social capital is needed to increase the products and services available, and
to integrate the MCM with other forms of invention-led development. Such
investments of financial, human, and social capital in this most promising inven-
tion-led development are needed—and warranted—to maximize social impact
and build the bridge to the last mile.
Acknowledgments
I thank Greg Van Kirk and Bucky Glickley for their ongoing collaboration and
education on different development approaches. I also thank the many members
of Soluciones Comunitarias, including Miguel Brito Ramirez, Yoly Acajabon, Clara
Luz de Montezuma, and Mary Claire Sullivan for their knowledge and hospitality
during my time in Guatemala. Finally, I thank the students, donors, and adminis-
trators of Miami University who have made this work a reality.
1. Nicholls, A. Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change. Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
2. Schumpeter, J. Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934.
3. McMullen, J., and D. Shepherd. “Entrepreneurial Action and the Role of Uncertainty in the
Theory of the Entrepreneur.” Academy of Management Review 31 (2006): 132–152.
4. Smith, B., C. Matthews, and M. Schenkel. “Differences in Entrepreneurial Opportunities: The Role
of Tacitness and Codification in Opportunity Identification.” Journal of Small Business
Management, 47 (2009): 38-57.
5. Kolb, D. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.
6. Tracey, P., and N. Phillips. “The Distinctive Challenge of Educating Social Entrepreneurs: A
Postscript and Rejoinder to the Special Issue on Entrepreneurship Education.” Academy of
Management Learning and Education 6 (2007): 264–271.
7. Smith, B., T. Barr, S. Barbosa, and J. Kickul. “Social Entrepreneurship: A Grounded Learning
Approach to Social Value Creation.” Journal of Enterprising Culture 16 (2008): 339–362.
Grameen Bank has loaned US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million very poor borrowers, and
International Development Enterprises (IDE) has helped three million very poor
small-holder families increase their net income by $288 million per year by creat-
ing affordable irrigation tools and markets. In light of growing evidence that most
development projects fail to produce measurable positive results, what these pro-
grams have achieved seems, at first blush, extraordinary. But approximately one
billion people in the world survive on less than $1 a day, and over 2.4 billion live
on less than $2.1 So, what Grameen Bank and IDE have done to improve the lives
of some 10 million very poor families amounts to nothing more than a drop in the
bucket. Achieving positive, measurable change at significant scale remains the sin-
gle biggest challenge in development.
Many reasons have been offered to explain why the appropriate technology
movement, in particular, failed to fulfill its promise of alleviating poverty; the most
important among them are the failure to build technology that meets users’ needs,
lack of local ownership, and complicated and expensive replacement parts. But
these explanations, while true, bypass the underlying reality that the movement
Dr. Paul Polak is the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and D-
REV, both non-profits, along with for-profit Windhorse International, all of which
develop products to serve poor customers. For the past 25 years, Paul has worked with
thousands of farmers around the world to help design and produce low-cost income-
generating products which have already moved 17 million people out of poverty.
Peggy Reid joined the Lemelson Foundation as Program Director in 2008. From 2001
to 2008, she served as Director of the Public Management Program at Stanford’s
Graduate School of Business. Her private-sector experience spans product develop-
ment, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions. She holds graduate
degrees in Business and Theology from Dartmouth and Harvard, respectively, and a
B.A. from Wellesley College.
Amy Schefer, Paul Polak’s daughter, provided extensive editorial support for this arti-
cle. She has also been collaborating with Dr. Polak on a blog that will appear on
PaulPolak.com.
Paul Polak’s first-hand narrative is presented in italics.
late 1970s by Norwegian engineer Gunnar Barnes and the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural
Service (RDRS), the pump works like a modern stairmaster. The operator walks in
place on a pair of bamboo foot pedals, pumping water from a shallow well dug just
for this purpose. Poor farmers most often irrigate their fields with buckets of water
they carry from a local water source; that work is inefficient and back-breaking. In
areas where the water table is high, the ability to irrigate by treadle pump not only
increases the size of the plot that can be irrigated, but adds another planting and
harvest cycle during the dry
season when no water is
In the third year after it accessible on the surface. The
pump is designed to do just
introduced the pump in what a farmer needs and no
Bangladesh, IDE added a full- more—no unnecessary bells
and whistles that might add
length Bollywood movie to its to the cost or require expen-
sive or troublesome upkeep.
rural mass-marketing This leads us to the next cru-
campaign. This movie, in which cial design element: cost. At a
total cost of only $25—
the treadle pump saved the day, including the expense of
played to open-air audiences of drilling a tube well down to
the groundwater—the pump
a million a year. The pump’s was an investment that farm-
impact was profound for the ers could easily pay off with
increased profits from crop
few who had access to it, but it sales in an average of four
months.
would never have reached the And, finally, although
scale it did without that movie. design and affordability are
critical, equally crucial is a
plan to replicate the results
on a larger scale as the initial pilot project succeeds. In the case of the treadle
pump, some 75 percent of IDE staff time and project funds were focused on rural
mass marketing and on engaging and strengthening the local private sector. IDE
convinced 75 small, private-sector workshops with welders to manufacture treadle
pumps; recruited more than 2,000 village dealers to sell the pumps at an attractive
profit margin; and trained and employed some 3,000 well drillers to manufacture,
sell, and install treadle pumps. In the third year after it introduced the pump in
Bangladesh, IDE added a full-length Bollywood movie to its rural mass-marketing
campaign. This movie, in which the treadle pump saved the day, played to open-
air audiences of a million a year. The pump’s impact was profound for the few who
had access to it, but it would never have reached the scale it did without that movie.
But how, specifically, does one build scale into the design, pricing and distribution
of a technology from the very beginning? The process involves three steps.
To illustrate, let’s consider another IDE project: a low-cost drip irrigation sys-
tem. In many dry areas of the world, drip irrigation represents the stingiest and
most efficient way of delivering water to crops, and has the added benefits of
improving crop yield and quality. Yet because drip irrigation requires a compara-
tively high capital investment, only one percent of irrigated acreage around the
world uses it. To the 75 percent of the world’s farmers who cultivate less than five
acres, conventional drip irrigation systems are far too expensive, and far too big to
fit their typical quarter-acre plots.
Recognizing that even at $20, the system might not be within reach of everyone
who could benefit from it, IDE created an even smaller, cheaper system: a 20 square
meter kitchen garden drip kit that cost $3. Women who used it earned $10 in the
first year, allowing them to “move up” to a more expensive system.
The key to developing an extremely affordable product was decreasing the cost
of materials. IDE started by reducing the water pressure required to move water
through the system; it used a bucket or drum to collect water a meter or two above
the field, instead of the 10-meter head used by conventional drip systems. This
allowed the team to dramatically decrease the thickness of the tubes carrying water
to each row of crops. Then they replaced expensive filters with flour sifters lined
with cloth that could be washed every day, and they replaced expensive emitters
with holes in the pipe, in which they placed microtubes. These modifications cut
the cost of the system in half. In addition, they designed the ongoing maintenance
to be both affordable and locally available. The systems could be easily installed
and repaired by the farmers who bought them, and a whole range of simple
replacement parts was made available through the same village dealers who sold
the drip systems.
The IDE team then went to ten Nepali farmers. They asked the farmers what
problems they experienced using the prototype, so they could quickly re-think, re-
design, and re-test it. This process of repetitive field trials was and remains critical
to building scale. But early on, IDE learned another key lesson: by itself, a well-
designed and affordable product wouldn’t solve the problem. You must talk to the
customers, again and again and again. In the case of small-scale drip systems, we
found that in the first year after they bought a system, farmers didn’t use it as much
as they could or would find beneficial, as few had much experience growing the
more lucrative off-season vegetables that this system made possible. Using drip
systems to grow vegetables in the dry season demanded a different way of farm-
ing—intensive horticulture—that was unfamiliar to the farmers of subsistence
crops like rice, wheat, or corn. To get millions of people to adopt this technology,
IDE needed to dispatch agronomists on bicycles to train the farmers. Many an
excellent project has died on the vine because we fall in love with the technology
and forget to pay sufficient attention to how that technology is being used—or not
used—in the real world.
Finally, the decision about where to place the prototype was critical to the field
testing. In this case, IDE tested it with farmers in visible locations close to Pokhara
and on the outskirts of Kathmandu, where its use could spread quickly as other
farmers, leaders of development organizations, and government officials could
easily hear about it and see it in action. This was “viral marketing” for the develop-
ing world. Exposing the beta product to a larger base of potential customers also
elicits even more feedback on product design and user specifications. It also helps
build a groundswell of excitement about the product and a strong base of future
customers.
rural farmers and support local dealers in selling drip irrigation systems. It took
two years to sell the first 1,000 systems that truly met farmers’ needs, were reliable
and affordable, and could earn the farmers three times their investment in the first
year. Once the product and business model were on solid footing, and the enthu-
siasm, awareness, and demand for it were growing, IDE was ready to expand again.
could grow only a few of the vegetables and fruits that afforded them a healthy
margin and livelihood. Similarly, in peri-urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa, mil-
lions of farmers’ yields were limited by their practice of using sprinkling cans to
carry water from ditches, streams, and rivers to irrigate their vegetables. IDE
expected that its drip system would meet with great demand in both places.
The first approach IDE took to bring low-cost drip irrigation to at least one
million dollar-a-day farmers was to try to persuade large international drip irriga-
tion companies to introduce and mass market small, low-cost systems. Partnering
with large corporations has traditionally run counter to the beliefs of many devel-
opment organizations, but in IDE’s view it was simply expeditious because corpo-
rate producers already had manufacturing facilities, raw material sources, the abil-
ity to produce large volumes, and marketing and sales capacity.
Paul: Despite our enthusiasm for commercial paths to scale, we encountered skepti-
cism from irrigation producers. I met with the leaders of Netafim, the world’s largest
drip irrigation company, but came away empty-handed. Netafim was interested in
partnering with us only if we could get World Bank subsidies to deliver its more expen-
sive drip systems to African farmers. Netafim executives were concerned that manu-
facturing lower-cost systems would negatively affect the company’s brand by associat-
ing it with low-cost systems. We faced a similar reaction from Jain Irrigation, India’s
largest drip irrigation company. We had no choice but to introduce low-cost drip irri-
gation to the market ourselves, through IDE India, which was established in 1987 to
improve the livelihoods of small farmers by providing access to affordable irrigation
tools and is now an autonomous development organization. Taking advantage of the
dissemination strategies we had honed as we mass marketed treadle pumps in Eastern
India, IDE India recruited and licensed several manufacturers and many rural deal-
ers, and launched a rural marketing campaign to popularize low-cost drip irrigation.
Fortunately, most poor farmers were already familiar with drip irrigation technol-
ogy, since their richer neighbors were already using higher-cost versions of it. And, as
a result of our high-visibility prototype development approach, many were also aware
of IDE’s low-cost version. Sales in India rapidly grew to several hundred thousand sys-
tems, and wealthier farmers began to prefer IDE’s low-cost systems to conventional
drip systems for their smaller crops, like 30-acre banana farms. Ironically, today, both
Netafim and Jain Irrigation have introduced their own smaller, lower-cost systems.
And IDE has now introduced low-cost systems in Myanmar, Zambia, Ethiopia,
Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe, working with a variety of local partners. At present, the
global market for these irrigation technologies far exceeds 10 million customers.
ment to help small farmers around the world improve their livelihoods from farm-
ing; in this movement organizations like One Acre Fund, KickStart, and Enterprise
Works Worldwide now play leadership roles. Nevertheless, it has taken Paul Polak
decades to realize that the efforts of IDE and others did not, and still do not, rep-
resent a model that can or will be scaled at the level we need to move the needle on
global poverty.
Similarly, Muhammad Yunus had a revolutionary dream: lend small sums of
money to poor people and enable them to create and grow small enterprises to lift
themselves out of poverty. His leadership has galvanized a global microcredit
movement. By July 2008, his brainchild, Grameen Bank, had issued US$6.38 bil-
lion to 7.4 million very poor borrowers. Grameen’s efforts have galvanized others,
like Acción International, MEDA, and even commercial banks to, offer micro-
loans around the world, making capital more readily available to poor people and
at better rates than ever before. While recent studies, using randomly assigned con-
trols, have raised interesting questions about the impact of microcredit, no one
questions that microcredit services are now being delivered to poor customers at
scale. This is a remarkable achievement. And yet, in the global context of extreme
poverty, 1.1 billion people still live on less than a dollar a day and 2.4 billion live
on less than $2 a day: that is 40 percent of the world’s population. Relative to the
need, our collective best efforts are but a drop in the bucket. We must do better.
The single biggest challenge in development is to replicate success stories from
those like IDE and Grameen Bank to achieve far greater scale than we can today.
Many have pointed to the private sector and commercialization strategies as a
promising way to get there. But the fact that corporations are increasingly interest-
ed in social causes should not be cause for premature celebration. Unfortunately,
with few exceptions, this growing interest has led to very little measurable change
at the kind of scale we need. Why? Because, to date, most corporate involvement
has taken the form of either charitable efforts or “socially responsible” commercial
ventures that fail to target poor customers. And only a scant few of those develop-
ing products and services for the poor have bothered to structure their businesses
to offer real market rate returns that would attract large numbers of traditional
investors.
pany that will deliver safe drinking water in their villages at a cost lower than what
they pay to treat the dysentery and other illnesses they now get from their water.
The one billion or more customers who will never connect to the electric grid are
waiting for the company that finds a way to deliver electricity to their homes for
less than the $5 to $10 a month they now pay for flashlight batteries, kerosene, and
candles.
And just as there are plentiful
opportunities to create tremendous
new markets that serve poor cus-
The one billion or more
tomers, there is a vast reservoir of customers who will never
untapped entrepreneurial energy in
hundreds of millions of poor peo- connect to the electric grid
ple themselves, who have, by neces- are waiting for the company
sity, learned survival entrepreneur-
ial skills at an early age. This is a tal- that finds a way to deliver
ent pool that corporations can tap electricity to their homes
to build local, cost-efficient supply
chains, ensuring even greater for less than the $5 to $10 a
wealth creation for the poor.
What’s keeping current corpo-
month they now pay for
rations from creating these new flashlight batteries,
markets?
They don’t see a profit in it.
kerosene, and candles.
They don’t know how to design
products and services at the radical
level of affordability required to meet the pocketbooks of poor customers.
They don’t know how to design the decentralized supply chains required to
serve the billions of very poor people who live in rural villages.
It’s hard to believe that nobody saw a profit in personal computers either, until
Apple created a much cheaper computer that was so small it could sit on some-
body’s desk. Poor people are more than willing to spend their meager amounts of
money on things they value and that will make them more money: things that are
simple, reliable, affordable, and offer a better alternative to their current options.
But three major challenges must be overcome. The first is to design products and
services that are radically more affordable than those sold to the richest 10 percent
of the world’s customers; this requires a total rethinking of conventional design
processes. Most current design teams in big businesses don’t know much about the
characteristics and preference of poor customers, and many have a track record of
earning the most attractive profits by designing high-end, high-margin products.
The second is to focus on earning profits from very large volumes of low-margin
products. This is a comparable but more bracing challenge than the one that
supermarket chains faced when they began to use “value” pricing to compete with
mom-and-pop grocery stores. The third challenge is to create hundreds of thou-
sands of kiosks and small stores in rural villages that can bring these high volumes
of products and services to poor customers at volume, and make money doing it.
What is most urgently needed now is a practical working model of a multina-
tional business that achieves both a measurable positive impact and scale by serv-
ing the needs of at least 50 million of the world’s poorest customers, and generates
commercial rates of return for its investors by doing it.
and will deliver it to poor customers at a price they can afford. The water will be pro-
vided through village micro-kiosks, each capable of delivering as little as 500 liters of
water a day to women coming to fill their 20-liter containers. To enhance margins, a
home delivery service will be available at double the kiosk price, and the business will
also sell a variety of higher-end, higher-status water products to middle-class cus-
tomers. The first step is talking to many, many potential customers and testing a pro-
totype with them, getting feedback, and refining the system based on that feedback. We
plan to begin with a six-month test period setting up at least 10 micro-kiosks selling
safe drinking water to 3,000 poor rural households a day in three separate multi-vil-
lage regions in rural Orissa. During this beta test phase, we will collect systematic
information on how both the technology and the business strategy work in practice
and will adapt our approach accordingly. At the end of the beta test phase, we will hire
a management team capable of implementing a rapid scale-up program. By the end
of the third year, we expect the 1,100 regional systems to be delivering more than 10
million liters of safe water to one million poor rural households each day.
But the end of year three will represent just the beginning. We expect the exponen-
tial process of expansion to continue in Eastern India over the next five years, deliver-
ing approximately 100 million liters of safe drinking water to 10 million rural house-
holds by the year 2020. We plan to roll out a similar initiative delivering safe drinking
water to poor households in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. And by the year 2011,
we expect to be a global company providing safe water products. I know that many
people will find this to be a wildly optimistic plan. But I believe that that the only way
to create wealth at the scale our world’s population requires is to make poverty allevi-
ation a profitable business.
1. 2008 World Bank Development Indicators and World Bank’s 2007 report Understanding Poverty
indicate that the number of people living on less than $2 a day is as high as 2.6 to 2.7 billion.
2. Founded in 1981 by Paul Polak, IDE has relied on a market-oriented development model to
increase the income of the rural poor. IDE’s projects aim to increase income for those living on
less than a dollar a day in the most efficient and viable manner possible, according to each region’s
unique opportunities. To date, throughout the world, IDE staff has helped more than three mil-
lion entrepreneurial farm families and their 19 million family members lift themselves out of
poverty, permanently.
3. International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2009 ICT Development Index, Measuring the
Information Society p. 2. Geneva.
<http://www.itu.int/ITUD/ict/publications/idi/2009/material/IDI2009_w5.pdf>.
4. International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2009 ICT Development Index, Geneva
.<http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Indicators/Indicators.aspx>.
5. R. Heeks. “ICTs and the World’s Bottom Billion.” Development Informatics Short Paper no.10.
Manchester, UK: Centre for Development Informatics, IDPM, SED, University of Manchester,
2009. <http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/short/di_sp10.pdf>.
6. Jenny C. Aker, “Does Digital Divide or Provide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in
Niger.” BREAD Working Paper No. 177, 2008.
<http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/abstract.php?paper=177>.
7. According to the United Nations Development Program’s 2007 Human Development Report,
more than 80 percent of the world population lives in countries where income differentials are
widening.
Enabling Innovation
Technology- and System-Level Approaches
That Capitalize on Complexity
Making innovation happen is central to what many engineers do. However, when
we finish our training, most of us believe that it is our job to conceptualize designs,
develop products, and worry little about what happens after they have been intro-
duced. Our courses are generally too practical to bother with theories about how
innovation occurs, who it affects, and how we might better manage the process.
Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, distinguished between two phases in techno-
logical progress: the conception and carrying out of the idea, which is a happy
period of creative mental work in which technical challenges are overcome, and the
introduction of the innovation, which is a “struggle against stupidity and envy,
apathy and evil, secret opposition and open conflict of interests, a horrible period
of struggle with man, a martyrdom even if success ensues.”1 Diesel is perhaps over-
stating the difficulties of managing innovation, but nevertheless, as engineers we
are still taught to prefer technical “invention” and leave dealing with people and the
“innovation” side to others. However, engineers ignore the innovation process at
their peril. Enabling innovation means building on peoples’ ingenuity and motiva-
tions, rather than working against them.
In this paper, I describe the learning selection approach to enabling innovation
that capitalizes on the complexity of social systems at different scales of analysis.
In the first part of the paper, I describe the approach and how it can be used to
guide the early stages of setting up a “grassroots” innovation process. In the second
part of the paper I look at how the learning selection model can be used “top-
down” to guide research investments to trigger large-scale systemic change.
Boru Douthwaite is a Technology Policy Analyst working for the International Center
for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia. He previously worked for eight
years in the Philippines as an agricultural engineer at the International Rice Research
Institute.
This essay draws heavily on his book Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to
Understanding and Fostering Technological Change (London: Zed Books) pub-
lished in 2002. The essay originally appeared in Innovations, Vol. 1, No. 4, Fall 2006.
© 2006 by Boru Douthwaite
innovations / Tech4Society 2010 179
Boru Douthwaite
In 1995, the Burmese military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) (now the State Peace and Development Council) decided that, to boost
production, the country’s rice farmers should grow two crops of rice each year
instead of one. There was a good reason why most Burmese rice farmers grew only
one crop, however: growing two meant harvesting the second in the middle of the
monsoon and, without very fast harvesting and drying, the grain would go moldy
and spoil. The traditional single crop meant that the grain could be dried in the
field after the rainy season and that there was far less rush. SLORC realized this, of
course, and had asked the director of the Agricultural Mechanisation Department
(AMD), part of the Ministry of Agriculture, to come up with a rice harvester, with-
in six months that could save the first crop by working in wet conditions.
By July 1995, when AMD’s search had become frantic, somebody, and I still
don’t know who, gave the department the drawings of a rice harvester. These draw-
ings were the fruit of five years of research and development I’d carried out with a
team I’d led at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines,
with help from local manufacturers and the Philippine Rice Research Institute. The
harvester my team had designed and built is known as a stripper-gatherer because,
rather than cutting the rice so that it can be carried elsewhere for threshing to
extract the grain, it moves through the field gathering the grain by stripping it
from the standing stalks.
Desperate for a solution, AMD set about building one immediately from the
drawings. When it seemed to work, they videotaped it in action, and AMD’s
Director showed the footage to the Minister of Agriculture and then to the whole
of SLORC. Four weeks after the drawings arrived, and without anyone using the
machine more than twice, SLORC decided to build 2,000 units, 1,000 of which
were to be ready within three months to then be distributed to the country’s trac-
tor stations. I did not find out about what was happening until production had
already begun, and I traveled to Burma soon afterward.
Hardly any of the machines were ever used. Thankfully, only the first 1,000
machines were made, but all of these ended up dumped in sheds or in the bush to
rust away. In the rush to build the machines quickly, quality control had been
scrapped and substandard materials had been used, making the machines inoper-
able without significant modification.
The few harvesters that were used were rejected by the farmers, because the
machines did not cut the straw, but rather left it in the field, making it unavailable
for animal fodder and making subsequent land preparation much harder.
Why had this happened? When I asked the factory manager why there was no
quality control, he admitted that he knew that there were problems with the
machines but fixing them would mean he would not reach his quota. He was wor-
ried that any delays or negative reports from him would cost him his job, and he
was relying on the tractor station managers to keep quiet as well. When I visited a
few tractor stations, I quickly realized that this was the way things were done in
Burma. I found that the stripper harvesters had been abandoned next to foot-oper-
ated rice threshers, rice-hull stoves, and other equipment that had been manufac-
tured by AMD in previous years. Neither farmers nor the tractor stations had been
asked if they wanted the equipment. It had just been assumed that the AMD engi-
neers knew best and could develop what was needed with little consultation.
When I left Burma for the last time, I learned that AMD was starting to build
7,000 mechanical rice-reaper harvesters, which were much more complicated that
the stripper harvester, and so even less likely to work. Nothing had been learned. I
realized that the Burmese Ministry of Agriculture, AMD, and the tractor stations
were all locked into a top-down model of technology transfer that people said was
working when it wasn’t, because they were too afraid of the consequences of feed-
ing back stories of failure.
It would be easy to dismiss what happened in Burma as the inevitable outcome
of having a military junta running a centrally controlled government through fear.
This, however, would be a mistake, because the only way this story differs from
others I came across in the eight years I worked in Asia is that it is more extreme
and its lessons are consequently clearer to see. The fact is that similar centrally
made decisions about what is “good” for farmers have led to even greater waste of
resources in other countries.
My Burma experience, as well as the realization that it was not isolated, led me
to two conclusions: first, the way people think about and plan for innovation is
vitally important; and second, an adequate model of the early innovation process,
where products move from concept to initial manufacturing, did not exist. I dis-
covered that most people thought little about how innovation would happen, and
when they did, they tended to assume a model that had worked well for distribut-
ing the high-yielding plant varieties responsible for the Green Revolution.
This is a top-down model, very much like that used by SLORC on the stripper
harvester, which sees formal research and development (R&D) laboratories as the
source of an innovation, which is then passed on to others to implement. The key
stakeholders—the people who will reproduce and use the technology—are not
seen as sources of innovations or ideas in their own right. I also found out that a
similar model is also mistakenly used in the developed world. As Von Hippel com-
ments:
It has long been assumed that product innovations are typically devel-
oped by product manufacturers. Because this assumption deals with the
basic matter of who the innovator is, it has inevitably had a major impact
on innovation-related research, on firms’ management of research and
development, and on government innovation policy. However, it now
appears that this basic assumption is often wrong.2
These realizations motivated me to learn from other successful and unsuccess-
ful attempts to introduce harvesting and drying equipment into Asia. I researched
13 cases in all and as a result developed a model of the early innovation process,
called the learning selection model.
LEARNING SELECTION
The main finding from the research, and the most striking, was that the successful
technologies were the ones which manufacturers and users had modified the most.
The research showed that engineers and designers were often singularly unable to
develop machine designs that people adopted without a great deal of further co-
development with the manufacturers, who would build the machine and the peo-
ple who would use it.
This co-development occurred when manufacturers and users believed that
the first commercial prototype made a “plausible promise” of being of benefit to
them, thus motivating them to become co-developers. In the co-development
process the key stakeholders learned about the equipment and developed their
own procedures and protocols, that often increased the performance of the equip-
ment in ways that the engineers had not envisaged. In short, the successful equip-
ment evolved after launch through adaptations made by the key stakeholders and
increased in fitness as a result, while unsuccessful equipment did not evolve.
I developed the learning selection model to describe this process.3 As the name
suggests, the learning selection model is based on an analogy with natural selec-
tion, which is the algorithm that drives biological evolution. Natural selection con-
sists of three mechanisms. These are:
y Novelty generation. As a result of random genetic mutations and the sexual
recombination of differing genetic material, differences between individual
members of a species crop up from time to time.
y Selection. This is the mechanism that retains random changes that turn out to be
beneficial to the species because they enable those possessing the trait to achieve
better survival and breeding rates. It also rejects detrimental changes.
y Diffusion and promulgation. These are the mechanisms by which the beneficial
differences are spread to other areas.
The learning selection model is depicted graphically in Figure 1. It shows a
technology, represented by a cogwheel, beginning as a “plausible promise” that
motivates the key stakeholders to co-develop it. The technology then increases in
fitness by gaining knowledge and becoming “meshed in” to existing systems
through the adaptation and learning that takes place. Here, fitness is taken in the
biological sense to mean improvements in the likelihood that the technology will
be adopted and promulgated. The “meshing in” of the technology, or its “social
construction” as it might also be termed, is represented by the move from a single
cogwheel to three interlocked ones. The increase in knowledge is represented by
the increase in size of the cogwheels.
Learning selection is shown inside the black box in Figure 1 and is responsible
for the evolution. Learning selection is a process built on Kolb’s four-stage experi-
ential learning cycle,4 and is perhaps best explained using an example.
y Experience. Suppose a farmer finds that the rice miller pays her a low price for
the grain dried in her dryer because some of it is not properly dried.
Researcher knowledge
Technology good enough
for widespread adoption
Many
Other replications
participants
Experience of cycle
Technology at beginning
Drawing
conclusions
Enabling Innovation
Fitness of technology
Participant i Participant j
183
Boru Douthwaite
y Making Sense. She reflects and makes sense of the experience. She realizes that
uneven drying is losing her money and that it might be sensible to try and
improve the dryer’s performance.
y Drawing Conclusions. She then develops personal explanations of what hap-
pened from her own or others’ previous experience or theories. She hypotheses
that if she reduces the amount of rice she loads into the dryer, then drying will
be more uniform.
y Action. She then decides to test her hypothesis, and in so doing generates a nov-
elty.
Testing the novelty begins another learning cycle. Her selection decision to
adopt or reject the novelty will depend on whether the rice miller pays her more
for her product. The miller will make this price decision after going through his
own learning cycle when he tests a sample of her rice for milling quality. If the
farmer is participant i in Figure 1, then the miller represents participant j.
So far, the third component of the evolutionary system—the promulgation
and diffusion mechanism—is missing. In the example, promulgation of the novel-
ty occurs when the farmer tells people in her social network, represented in Figure
1 by the “other participants” box, about the benefits of her novelty and they choose
to experiment with it themselves.
The farmer, the miller, and the people that are connected to them through
their social networks will be going through their own learning cycles creating the
conditions for the recombination of differing observations and experiences that
can lead to novelties that have “hybrid vigor.” In the process, the technology
evolves, and with it the participants’ opinions and knowledge of it and the way they
organize themselves to use and promote it. These processes are all involved in
learning selection.
The learning selection model is most useful when key stakeholder “learning by
using” and “learning by doing” are important in the early adoption phase, which is
the case for technologies that open up new markets. The learning selection process
works best when users are able to modify the technology, and if there are ways of
evaluating changes.
Wind Turbines
The wind turbine industry is a good one for describing the applicability of the
learning selection model. Excitingly, it shows that learning-selection-type innova-
tion processes are able to harness the innovative potential of the people who are
directly affected by technology. A grassroots development process in Denmark was
able to produce a wind turbine industry that had a 55 percent share of a billion
dollar a year world market in 2000, beating the U.S. which spent over $300 million
funding a top-down development program led by the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA). The origins of the Danish industry were a few agri-
cultural machinery manufacturers and ideologically motivated “hobbyists” who
began building, owning, and tinkering with wind turbines (generating novelty).
There were many early “teething” problems but the owners organized themselves
into a group who lobbied successfully for design improvements (selection), work-
ing closely with manufacturers to solve the problems. The owners’ group devel-
oped a co-operative ownership model and pressured politicians to support the sale
of their electricity to the national grid at a fair price (promulgation and diffusion).
In contrast, NASA led a top-down science development approach that implicitly
assumed that scientists could develop the “perfect” wind turbine with little input
from the owners and users. NASA’s approach failed.
Computer Software
Another example, now very well-known, of the power that a grassroots innovation
model can harness is the computer operating system Linux. Linux is a “a world-
class operating system” that has coalesced “as if by magic out of part-time hacking
by several thousand developers all over the planet connected only by the tenuous
strands of the Internet.”5
Linux started life when a Finnish computer science student, named Linus
Torvalds, started to write a UNIX-like operating system that he could run on his
PC; he had become tired of having to queue for hours to gain access to UNIX on
the University’s main frame. When he finally got the core of an operating system
working, he posted it on the Internet so that others could try it out. Importantly,
he released the source-code so other people could understand the program and
modify it if they wanted. Just like the first Danish wind turbines, early versions of
Linux were not technically sophisticated or elegant, but they were simple, under-
standable, and touched a chord with “hackers”—people like Torvalds himself—
who got a kick out of generating novelty for the sake of being creative, not for
money.
Torvalds’s main role in the development of Linux after the first release was not
to write code for features people wanted, but to select and propagate improve-
ments to the system from the ideas that streamed in. Ten people downloaded ver-
sion 0.02 and five of these sent him bug fixes, code improvements, and new fea-
tures. Torvalds added the best of these to the existing program, along with others
he had written himself, and released the composite as version 0.12. The rate of
learning selection accelerated as the number of Linux users increased and, to cope
with the volume of hacks (novelties) coming in, Torvalds began choosing and rely-
ing on a type of peer review. Rather than evaluate every modification himself, he
based his decisions on the recommendation of people he trusted and on whether
people were already using the patch (modification) successfully. He in fact played
a similar role to that of an editor of an academic journal who makes sure submit-
ted articles are reviewed but retains final control over what is published and what
is not. This approach allowed Torvalds to keep the program on track as it grew.6
selection mechanism. Manufacturers and researchers are able to gather and codify
more and more information that can be used to build predictive models. This
allows them to move from “learning by using,” which requires adopters to be co-
developers, to “learning by modeling,” where learning comes from virtual tests car-
ried out on computer rather than field experience. In so doing, the learning selec-
tion model of the innovation process becomes less relevant and the conventional
assumption that manufacturers or R&D departments can and do develop finished
technology begins to fit better.
3. Keep it simple.
Don’t attempt to dazzle people with the cleverness and ingenuity of the prototype’s
design. A plausible promise should be simple, flexible enough to allow revision,
and robust enough to work well even when not perfectly optimized. The critical
comments of your colleagues don’t matter. Your potential co-developers’ needs
and knowledge levels do. For example, if you are designing a combine harvester
and you know the manufacturers and farmers you’ll be working with are familiar
with a certain type of thresher, then use that in your design, even if it is technical-
ly not the most elegant solution. To quote John Gall, “A complex system that works
is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.”9
5. Work in a pilot site or sites where the need for the innovation is great.
Your co-developers will be influenced by their environment. Their motivation lev-
els will be sustained for longer if they live or operate in an environment where your
innovation promises to provide great benefit. In addition, they are more likely to
receive encouraging feedback from members of their community.
If a product champion defends the technology too strongly, or shows bias, then
“forking” occurs and the disaffected person or group branches off on its own to do
what they felt prevented from doing by the selector. It is good to have people test
alternative design paths, but if it is done in frustration or spite, then cliques form,
making any comparison and subsequent selection between rival branches difficult.
Creative talent is split and energies can be dissipated in turf wars.
(ii) Alternative selection mechanisms
Even if the product champion can be open-minded and unbiased he or she may
have problems convincing others. One option is to set up a review mechanism that
is well respected by your key stakeholder community. There are a number of ways
of doing this. Three that work are: (i) review by an independent organization; (ii)
peer review; and (iii) providing potential adopters with enough information to
make informed selection decisions themselves.
I work for one of the 15 international agricultural research centers based in Africa,
Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States that constitute the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). In the 1960s and 1970s,
research in CGIAR centers helped spark the Green Revolution by breeding
improved higher yielding crop varieties that were then disseminated to farmers by
national agricultural research and extension systems. This “pipeline” approach is
effective for developing certain types of technology, like seed and vaccines—tech-
nologies that have some characteristics of magic bullets. In the case of seed and the
Green Revolution, farmers planted improved seed, harvested more grain, sold it
for more, decided to plant it again, and gave some seed to their neighbors.
Adoption of new varieties and improved yields spread like a virus. The role of
research was clear—keep breeding improved varieties to replace those in the field
when inherent resistance to pests and diseases breaks down. But the pipeline
approach does not work for more complex technologies than seed, as the Burma
story at the beginning of the article showed.
Today the CGIAR is confronting a new challenge: catalyzing a “Blue
Revolution” to contend with the global challenge of water scarcity. Unless water
use patterns change substantially, within 25 years agriculture can be expected to be
using an additional 500 cubic kilometers (km3) of water if the world is to feed the
additional billions who will live on the planet by then. This is more water than
flows down the Mekong River in one year. This water would have to come from the
world’s major rivers, aquifers, wetlands, and lakes which are already under pres-
sure. Already many large rivers now run dry or clog up before they reach the sea,
and an estimated half of the world’s five million lakes are endangered. Unless there
is “more crop per drop,” many aquatic ecosystems will collapse and conflicts over
water will increase. Climate change only makes the challenge greater.
In contrast to the Green Revolution, there is no magic bullet for a Blue
Revolution. As a consequence, a pipeline approach to research will not be effective.
What is more, the feedback between innovation and a successful outcome is far less
direct in the case of water conservation than it is in the case of increased agricul-
tural yields. Water flows between groups of people. Most of the time, when farm-
ers save water it is people downstream who benefit, often people they don’t know.
Improving how water is managed often requires technical innovation, but is at
least as much about linking people together, improving social processes of negoti-
ation, and changing norms.
Realizing this, the CGIAR researchers focused on the task of improving global
water management have sought not simply to develop new technologies to push
into target regions, but rather to build the capacity of networks of water and agri-
cultural scientists to develop local solutions with the people who would use them.
The result is the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), an internation-
al, multi-institutional research initiative with a strong emphasis on “north-south”
and “south-south” partnerships. The initiative brings together research scientists,
development specialists, and river basin communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America.
With a budget of $15 million per year, the CPWF is extended over nine of the
world’s largest and most important river basins, including the Nile, Mekong,
Limpopo, Volta, and Yellow River. One way these scarce resources can effect change
at the needed scale is if they motivate large-scale learning-selection-type innova-
tion processes. This is possible, as the case study in Appendix A shows—a story of
adoption of a no-till technology that saved 1.16 km3 of irrigation water in India
and Pakistan.
The learning selection model can also help guide top-down system-level inter-
ventions. The model and complexity theory suggests that rate of innovation in a
system can be changed by three sets of interventions:10 (1) changes in the variation
or novelty of system components (i.e., types of stakeholders involved and the
strategies and technologies they use); (2) changes in interaction patterns between
stakeholders, in particular through changes to social networks; and, (3) changes in
the way selection decisions are made. The research that helped trigger the Green
Revolution focused mainly on developing and introducing novelty. Research for a
Blue Revolution needs to be more balanced, as we now explore.
Many of the solutions to water management problems already exist.
Consequently, part of the CPWF research should be to identify promising local
solutions. Once identified, these “best bets” have the potential to spark similar
improvements in similar systems.
Although many solutions may exist, too much novelty and variation creates
uncertainty in people and can prevent them from adopting and innovating.
Research is needed to reduce this uncertainty by describing the variation that
already exists. People have been managing water for millennia and do not need
more variation so much as they need better understanding of what already exists.
Much more research is also needed on understanding how changing interac-
tion patterns and selection processes can help people manage their water proper-
ly. As already discussed, in some ways the Green Revolution was easy. Farmers
clearly saw the benefit in growing improved seed varieties in terms of higher yields
and incomes. Those making the changes benefited directly. Feedback was strong
and clear and adoption increased quickly. Politicians also understood and adop-
tion was supported by massive state endorsement, subsidies on fertilizers, the
building of irrigation schemes, and numerous policy changes.
Improving how water is managed is a different story. When farmers improve
the way they manage water, the benefits may not accrue to them but to other water
users downstream. Conversely, if farmers use excessive amounts of water the
effects are not felt by them but by people downstream for whom water becomes
unavailable. Feedback is weak or non-existent, so there is almost no incentive to
select and promulgate better water management practices. Learning selection can-
not work. Hence it is research on changing interaction patterns, promulgation
pathways, and selection mechanisms to improve information flow, feedback, nego-
tiation, and decision-making that probably offer the greatest potential for trigger-
ing a Blue Revolution.
Research to trigger a Blue Revolution should further develop a twin strategy of
fostering local “pilot site” changes while looking for opportunities to catalyze
much larger-scale changes. This requires mechanisms, such as innovation funds,
that can support potential winners. It also means using research to improve sys-
temic understanding to become better at spotting early winners, and knowing in
which systems they are likely to first emerge.
At the level of project management, a practical approach to making the most
of complexity is to facilitate a collaborative process in which project staff and
stakeholders come to a common understanding of how they see a project achiev-
ing outcomes and impacts. Doing so can help the project have an impact by map-
ping out promising “impact pathways.” Monitoring and evaluation of projects’
progress along their impact pathways enables early identification of opportunities
and challenges, which if acted on also makes an impact more likely.
Finally, to effect change, research findings further need to be packaged into
plausible promises. Without being packaged as plausible promises, key stakehold-
ers will not engage with the novelty. Without engagement, there will be no behav-
ior change and no impact. Packaging of plausible promises is needed as much for
research outputs such as policy briefs, models, and methodologies as it is for rice
harvesters and wind turbines. Packaging of plausible promises usually involves a
learning selection process with the key stakeholders.
CONCLUSION
The world faces huge challenges in the 21st century, of which triggering a Blue
Revolution to improve water use in agriculture is one. Much of the response to
these challenges will come through innovation. Research can and does enable
innovation, but the way that research and innovation processes are conceptualized
and managed makes a huge difference to the ability of engineers and researchers to
foster change. This paper describes the learning selection model that can guide set-
Acknowledgments
This paper is based on the author’s book Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to
Understanding and Fostering Technological Change, (London: Zed Books), 2002. It
reworks and adds to an article first published in 2002 in the CIGR Journal of
Scientific Research and Development.11 The author would like to thank Larry
Harrington for writing the no-till case study in the Appendix and to Simon Cook
for his contribution to the second part of the paper on the Blue Revolution.
No-till wheat is currently being planted after rice on over three million hectares of
the Indo-Gangetic Plains, producing net benefits of around US$239 million per
season, along with a 1.18 km3 reduction in the extraction of irrigation water.13
Work on no-till began in the Indian Punjab in about 1970. It was restricted to
hand-sown, small-plot, on-station trials, with little or no scientist-farmer interac-
tion. Trials as designed masked the true advantages of zero-till: earlier sowing,
higher yields, reduced costs, and improved weed control. In the mid-1980s,
researchers in the Pakistan Punjab began a separate program. A key factor was
access to a “best bet”—a no-till implement from New Zealand. These were, how-
ever, expensive, heavy, and few in number. Although appropriate for research, they
were not very well suited for use by farmers. Researchers sponsored the develop-
ment of a local prototype, but this, also being too heavy, was not well received. It
did not make a plausible promise of being useful.
From here, the initiative passed to India. An international scientist, familiar
with the no-till work in Pakistan, donated four imported implements to colleagues
in India. On-farm testing with one of these began in 1990 at Pantnagar University.
Zero-till wheat performed well, with good crop establishment, higher yields, and
lower costs. Nonetheless, progress was slow. The implement was again too heavy,
and openers were prone to breakage and unable slice through rice stubble. In the
following season, one of the scientists took a simple “recombination” step, attach-
ing “inverted-t” cross-slot openers from the imported drill to his own frame
design. This was the original “Pantnagar drill” and the first plausible promise.
As it happened, there was near Pantnagar a dealership for National Agro
Industries, a Ludhiana-based farm implement company. The local dealer became
aware of the Pantnagar drill and in 1992 introduced the researchers to one of the
company’s owners. Subsequently, National learned to forge its own inverted-t
openers, which then were installed on the frame of a National conventional-till
drill. This was the “Pantnagar drill” Mark II. National was soon joined by another
company, Amritsar-based ASS Foundries. Several dozen design changes were pro-
gressively introduced, largely inspired by farmer testing. By 1995, a well-adapted
design was ready for commercial production. And just at this time, an emergency
occurred that sent researchers looking for just such a drill.
In the Indo-Gangetic Plains, continuous rice-wheat rotations favor a weed
called Phalaris minor. For many years this weed caused little damage—farmers had
learned to control it with isoproturon herbicides. But with millions of farmers
using isoproturon for Phalaris control over many years, a herbicide-resistant
Phalaris evolved. It was during the 1992-93 wheat season that a scientist working
at Haryana Agricultural University (HAU) first reported such strains. By the 1995-
1996 season, the weed problem had become a crisis. The affected area in Haryana
continued to expand and began to move into neighboring states. Farmers grew
desperate for a solution.
Some scientists felt that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” with
zero tillage being one of the “desperate measures.” In order to test the effect of zero
tillage and new herbicides on Phalaris populations, researchers needed zero till
drills. The new Pantnagar drill had just become available. The newly-formed Rice-
Wheat Consortium donated to HAU four new National no-till drills. These were
delivered in October of 1996, as the Phalaris crisis peaked. With wheat sowing just
weeks away, researchers moved to organize a research program, but encountered
an unexpected obstacle: farmers placed a high value on tillage and wished to have
nothing to do with “zero tillage.” No-till was an invention that challenged a con-
straint long taken for granted: the need to till the soil to prepare for the next crop.
In the end, however, a combination of new herbicides plus zero tillage worked well.
Phalaris populations fell dramatically, and yields were excellent.
Although the very first zero till trials in Haryana were established by HAU sci-
entists, farmer experimentation with zero tillage soon followed. This happened for
one simple reason: instead of returning the drills to the university campus after
sowing the experiments, scientists decided to leave them in those villages where the
trials were located. Farmers were encouraged to try out the drills on their own, and
were provided with training and technical support. Learning selection began.
Farmer experimenters found that zero till helped control Phalaris—but also very
substantially reduced production costs. With this, adoption of no-till began to
spread through farmers’ networks.
This was spurred by the purchase (by ACIAR and the Rice-Wheat
Consortium) of additional drills for farmer testing. These still-scarce zero till drills
were shifted from one village to another each wheat season. Farmers interested in
no-till were invited to purchase their own drills—which they began to do in large
numbers. By 1997, 150 drills had been sold to universities, ICAR institutions, and
individual farmers. The Rice-Wheat Consortium, who became one of the product
champions, began to organize study tours, whereby farmers from different dis-
tricts—and even different States—could see for themselves the progress being
made in Haryana on zero till wheat. There were even study tour participants from
Pakistan!
Finally, adoption of zero till wheat in Haryana was further accelerated by an
unexpected event. An agricultural department official was testing zero tillage on
his own farm, with excellent results. In 1998, his daughter got married. The wed-
ding happened during the wheat season and was celebrated in his own home. The
no-till plots were located near the path leading up from the road. As a conse-
quence, hundreds of the most influential farmers and state officials saw for them-
selves the extraordinary performance of zero till. This led to its further adoption.
1. Mokyr J. (1990). The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press), p. 155.
2. von Hippel, Eric (1988). The Sources of Innovation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press), p. 3.
3. Douthwaite, Boru (2002). Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Fostering
Technological Change (London: Zed Books).
4. Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experiences as the Source of Learning and Development
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).
5. Raymond, Eric. (2001). Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an
Accidental Revolutionary (O'Reilly Media; Revised Edition).
5. For an elaboration, see Elliot Maxwell, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation:
Harnessing the Benefits of Openness,” Innovations 1(3), Summer 2006.
6. Mokyr (1990), p. 9.
7. Rogers (2003) identifies five types of adopter: (i) innovators, (ii) early adopters, (iii) early major-
ity, (iv) late majority, and (vi) laggards. See Everett M. Rogers (2003), Diffusion of Innovations
(New York: Free Press).
8. Gall, John (1978). Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail (New York: Pocket
Books).
9. In particular, Axelrod, Robert and Michael D. Cohen (1999). Harnessing Complexity:
Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier (New York: The Free Press).
10. Douthwaite, Boru (2002). “How to Enable Innovation: An Invited Overview Paper.” Agricultural
Engineering International: the CIGR Journal of Scientific Research and Development. Vol. IV.
October.
11. This story is based on an unpublished manuscript by Larry Harrington titled “A Brief History of
Zero and Reduced Tillage Revolution in the Indo-Gangetic Plains.”
12. Gupta, R. (2006). “RCT Induced Impacts in Indo-Gangetic Plains.” RWC Research Highlights
2006 (New Delhi: Rice Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains).
<www.rwc.cgiar.org/pubs/180/Highlights06.pdf>.
innovations
TECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION
SUBSCRIBE AT MITPRESSJOURNALS.ORG/INNOVATIONS
MIT Press Journals | 238 Main Street, Suite 500 | Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617-253-2889 | US/Canada: 1-800-207-8354 | Fax: 617-577-1545
Print with Electronic Access: Individual $50 | Institution $185 | Student and Retired $26
Electronic Only: Individual $45 | Institution $160 | Student and Retired $23
innovations
TECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION
mitpress.mit.edu/innovations
editors@innovationsjournal.net