Ethan Zuckerman - Explains 7 rules of innovation based on constraints

Too many times we think technology can just fix a problem. Ethan Zuckerman offers a great post of how he sees innovation come from constraints. This post actually reminds me of a book I read in business school called, "The Goal". The goal is operational book about the theory of constraints. 

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My Hearts in Accra

So I offered a talk about some very different types of innovation - African innovations including the zeer pot, William Kamkwamba’s windmill, biomass charcoal, and endless examples of innovation using mobile phones. My argument was that innovation often comes from unusual and difficult circumstances - constraints - and that it’s often wiser to look for innovation in places where people are trying to solve difficult, concrete problems rather than where smart people are sketching ideas on blank canvases.

I offered seven rules that appear to help explain how (some) developing world innovation proceeds:

- innovation (often) comes from constraint (If you’ve got very few resources, you’re forced to be very creative in using and reusing them.)

- don’t fight culture (If people cook by stirring their stews, they’re not going to use a solar oven, no matter what you do to market it. Make them a better stove instead.)

- embrace market mechanisms (Giving stuff away rarely works as well as selling it.)

- innovate on existing platforms (We’ve got bicycles and mobile phones in Africa, plus lots of metal to weld. Innovate using that stuff, rather than bringing in completely new tech.)

- problems are not always obvious from afar (You really have to live for a while in a society where no one has currency larger than a $1 bill to understand the importance of money via mobile phones.)

- what you have matters more than what you lack (If you’ve got a bicycle, consider what you can build based on that, rather than worrying about not having a car, a truck, a metal shop.)

- infrastructure can beget infrastructure (By building mobile phone infrastructure, we may be building power infrastructure for Africa - see my writings on incremental infrastructure.)

Read More

Juliana Rotich - at Global Voices summit in Budapest, Hungary

Building big, starting small by Ethan Zuckerman

A radical new way for poor countries to get the phones, power, and roads they need

By Ethan Zuckerman | August 5, 2007

IN 1997, IN the midst of a vicious civil war that was tearing apart the Democratic Republic of Congo, entrepreneur Alieu Conteh decided it was time to build the country's first mobile-phone network.

The odds were stacked against him: He couldn't get equipment or loans. The handsets cost too much. He hired welders to build towers, one by one, out of scrap metal.

Now his phone network is the most important piece of infrastructure in the country, the only way most Congolese can communicate with their neighbors and with the wider world. Conteh's company, CWN, grew into Vodacom Congo, with 3 million mobile phone users and a market valuation of $1.6 billion.

AllAfrica has home page articles about TED Global 2007

You Didn't Have to Be There

If you weren't at the TechnologyEntertainmentDesign (TED) conference in Arusha, Tanzania in June, you can be there virtually - thanks to Ethan Zuckerman who captured the proceedings live on his laptop and the TED folks who have begun posting video presentations from the conference on their website.