The Anti-Poverty App: Coming Soon from the iTunes Store

It’s a strange world we live in where people on one side of the planet can earn a living creating iphone applications while those on the other side are using hazardous kerosene lamps to work into the night. Luckily, the 1’s (and 0’s) of change are a-blowin’ – in the Western world, that is.  Social and environmental issues are given more and more attention by creators and providers of technology, businesses and business schools and others. These people are increasingly interested in using their technological, managerial and financial resources to empower the intelligent, hardworking local people who have been tiring over these issues for decades. Whether because we’re finally realizing that our planet and people need attention, the increasing access and immediacy of information is making it hard to ignore, or the collective Western workforce is looking for transcendental motivation, it seems we’re on the right track now. At a time when our industrialization is catching up with us, the fruits of technological innovation are feeding powerful change. In enacting this change, partnerships and co-creation with developing nations are necessary to ensure the technological innovations suit local needs best and that the value created is distributed equitably.

Here is some exciting evidence of technological innovation, which I’ve grouped into the four categories of a product portfolio, which I think can help identify the impact made by innovations, inventions and everything in between.  (Source: Prof. Martínez de Albéniz, IESE Business School).

Breakthroughs
Cost efficient and micro-sized products, to me, classify as product innovation breakthroughs. These include LED lanterns (Philips, D.Light), variable prescription glasses and other radically new products that solve pertinent problems and create new categories. Arguably encouraged by C.K. Prahalad and his proposition that business can be done profitably with the base of the pyramid, the creative recombination of technology from the North for the purpose of conducting business with the South can yield maximum-impact new product innovation. 

Platforms
The use cell phone networks to overcome the lack of physical infrastructure is incredible. Services range from crop information for farmers (Reuters Market Light) to banking capabilities (M-Pesa) to anti-corruption verification and money transfer (ZERO) and others. New applications of existing structures have the power to create massive social change -through  empowerment and livelihood generation.

By-products
1. Advances in clean energy can be used for development and also enable the use of other power-operated devices.
2. Repurposed gadgets like cell phones, and eventually ipods and ebook readers can be powerful development tools.  Arguably, the ebook is a transitory technology that will meet its demise with the advent of tablet PCs and more efficient devices. When this happens (or before, if the technology becomes cheap enough) the technology or the discarded devices can be sold cheaply as multi-level textbooks that can bring libraries of knowledge to the developing world. 
3.  As technology creates changes in company organization, the rise of virtual enterprise will provide opportunity to anyone, anywhere who can get the job done. (From Samasource to name-that-multinational)

Support
In the Support category, I would put variations on existing technology that do not require any technological change, such as the use of social networks for consumer research with the Base of the Pyramid (BoP source), or blogs to disseminate information on the activities of social entrepreneurs, thereby inspiring more people to get involved and connecting people in the South to the resources available in the North.  Also, increased access to cell phones can facilitate the reporting of crimes and election fraud, like the Ushahidi platform.

To explore the interconnection between technology, innovation and social change is to dive into a deep and refreshing sea.  These few examples provide some hope and excitement for what is to come. In bringing these innovations to market, we in the West who are slowly becoming aware of these opportunities must use our tools to empower those who understand their country, its people and their unique needs. Then, the vast potential for impact is incalculable.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public are hosting Tech 4 Society, a conference exploring technology, invention and social change, in Hyderabad, India, in February 2009. Find out more about the conference here. This blog post is an entry in their competition to find the official blogger to travel to and cover the event.

When is Real Life Again?

I originally posted this article on IESETech.ning.com, IESE’s Technology and Media blog

I just read this article in The Economist

On the surface, it seems that the future is supposed to be a place in which our entire lives are enacted virtually. Businesses will run by employees who make up a swarm of temporary pinpoints surrounding the planet. All of our goods and services will be ordered in from screen store facades. Indeed it seems that book and music stores will be partially, if not entirely replaced in the not-so-distant future. It’s a sad and lonely future world I picture in which people sit at home all day ordering the things they need to go about their lives at homes and offices in which they fail to interact much with other humans.

But obviously this is never going to happen. People don’t just need “caves” as the article mentions, but want and need to interact with other humans. Likewise, it will be sometime, perhaps more than our lifespan, until all the people of the world are digitally connected in order to have this privilege, and until they are culturally accepting of virtual business.

What is important for managers today and tomorrow is the ability to tap into comparative advantages in local markets around the world and to run their businesses so as to benefit from disjointed organizational charts. In the process, they must somehow capture what surely are the unique benefits of this structure without losing the value of teamwork and relationships. These changes are of course already happening.

What is far more interesting, in my opinion, is what we can design to fill in the gaps where virtual enterprise fails. For example, people like bookstores. How can we create a substitute that saves trees and sells ebook readers while providing a similar browsing experience? People inherently like to collect things. How can we virtually store our enovels and music downloads in a way that looks and feels like a home collection? Along with these questions, we will also need to consider how the virtual future and the ease of consumption it promotes will be reconciled with the increasing need to protect the planet from electronic and other waste. Perhaps the virtual world can be part of the solution.

The future world of virtual worlds is already here. Let’s think about what to do when virtual gets old.

I’m reminded of another article.