I love examples of simple, inexpensive solutions that solve important problems. Solutions like the water bottle light, the gravity light, etc., and Mike Freeston was kind enough to send this most recent example that I will share with you today. Thank you Mike!
The video details the work of a Non-Governmental Organization (aka NGO), that was created as a Community Service Center for marginalized families in rural areas an urban slums. It’s called Aarambh, and they wanted to help students who don’t even have the basic facilities, to be more comfortable and productive at school.
Most schools in rural India have two basic problems:
Schools don’t have proper desks, which leads to poor eyesight, bad posture and bad writing.
Students don’t have school bags.
Aarambh came up with a solution which tackled both these problems with a single, thoughtful design.
Aarambh came up with a design for portable desks made using discarded cardboard boxes (aka cartons). This choice for raw materials is both economical, and easily available. The stencil design, when cut and folded, creates a desk suitable for use by students whom must sit on the floor AND it also can serve as a school bag.
Brilliant!
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I came across an IndieGogo project that is focused on building and trialing a gravity-powered power station that can serve either as a lantern or as a flexible power source that can be used to power a task light, recharge batteries, or potentially other things that users might dream up that the designers can’t yet imagine.
Check out their video from IndieGogo:
They have already raised FIVE TIMES the money they set out to raise on IndieGogo.
I found it interesting in their promotional video that initially they started with a design challenge of designing a system that would charge a light for indoor use using a solar panel, but that they decided to abandon the approach specified from the outset and pursue alternate power sources.
Also interesting from the IndieGogo project page are the following facts:
The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke which is equivalent to smoking 2 packets of cigarettes every day. 60% of adult, female lung-cancer victims in developing nations are non-smokers. The fumes also cause eye infections and cataracts, but burning kerosene is also more immediately dangerous: 2.5 million people a year, in India alone, suffer severe burns from overturned kerosene lamps. Burning Kerosene also comes with a financial burden: kerosene for lighting ALONE can consume 10 to 20% of a household’s income. This burden traps people in a permanent state of subsistence living, buying cupfuls of fuel for their daily needs, as and when they can.
The burning of Kerosene for lighting also produces 244 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide annually.
So, what do you think, a meaningful innovation or an interesting but impractical invention?
More information available on their web site here.
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When it comes to education, we should adopt Nike’s famous motto and ‘Just Do It’.
In the United States (and probably many other countries around the world), it has become a popular pastime to complain about the state of the public schools. People complain about school funding, teacher performance, curriculum, class sizes, and more things than I care to remember right now.
And while the Gates Foundation and many other great organizations are trying to come up with new ways to make education delivery and administration better, the fact remains that education funding is likely to get worse (not better) and any reform is likely to take a long time to implement in the face of stiff resistance.
So what are parents to do?
Well, in my interview with Seth Godin at the World Innovation Forum (2010), he suggested that parents are going to have to take increasing responsibility for educating their own children at home AFTER they get home from school. The interview is one of many innovation interviews I’ve done, and is below for your reference:
But, I’ve been thinking lately that while parents may be interested in supplementing the education their children receive at school in order to help them succeed in the innovation economy (a topic for another day), they may NOT possess the knowledge, skills, abilities (or maybe even the desire) to succeed at this admirable task.
I have another idea.
It is time for us as parents and community members to stop praying for education reform, and instead take action. I’ve given you the WHY, now let’s look at the WHO, WHAT, and WHERE.
The WHO
You! Many people have knowledge and skills that they can share with kids. Skills and knowledge that will help prepare the next generation for the realities of a workplace that demands more flexible thinking, creativity, problem solving, and entrepreneurial skills.
The WHAT
Let’s face facts. Today’s schools are designed to mass-produce trivia experts and basic competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic (and maybe some history, science, and other important subjects).
But, to succeed in the innovation economy, the next generation is going to need to be proficient in at least these ten things:
Creativity
Lateral Thinking
Problem Solving
Innovation (of course!)
Interpersonal Skills
Collaboration
Negotiation
Partnerships
Entrepreneurship
And much, much more…
The WHERE
Our workplaces and our schools may be the most common places for citizens in our societies to congregate, but there is another place where we could come together to supplement our childrens’ educations…
Congregations: (a definition)
1. The act of assembling.
2. A body of assembled people or things; a gathering.
Now, the word is often used in a religious context, but not all people are religious (or even belong to a religious congregation). But, we have buildings all over the world that are designed for people to come together to study or pray together – or that belong to the government and can be used by the general public. We can use these buildings as gathering places to educate our children for the innovation economy.
Conclusion
We need to come together as societies and communities and fill the gaps in our educational systems that are unlikely to go away any time soon. We need to stop waiting for others to fix the problems and instead do what we can as individuals by coming together to solve this key challenge for continued prosperity. We must do this now.
Who’s with me?
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I came across this a while back on sitsite.com’s blog, use it in some of my innovation speaker engagements, and had to share it. After all, we could all use a little more fun in our lives, and if some social good can be achieved in the process, all the better!
It is from a Swedish site advertising a contest that was designed to award a 2,500 Euro prize for the idea that best exemplifies the premise that:
“something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”
To see more examples or to enter the contest, please visit The Fun Theory site. The campaign and competition are sponsored by Volkswagen – Smart move!
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Much has been written about ‘crowdsourcing’ and the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ over the past several years, including “Crowdsourcing” by Jeff Howe – a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and “Wisdom of the Crowd” by James Surowiecki – a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Crowdsourcing – “The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” – Jeff Howe
‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ – “Refers to the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question.” – Wikipedia
For those of you not familiar with crowdsourcing, here is a good video from Jeff Howe:
So, what will happen to ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘wisdom of the crowd’ as more and more companies start to employ these techniques.
Will the crowd remain wise or lose its predictive powers?
One thing is certain. Organizations will continue to use ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘wisdom of the crowd’ together to help them find ideas that will resonate with their targets.
Organizations will, however, have to work harder to market their initiatives as the competition increases for people’s time, if they are to maximize the value they accrue from the effort.
What do you think?
I recently used crowdsourcing to source the design for my upcoming Nine Innovation Roles interactive card game and received several good designs and one awesome one. Now I am using crowdfunding on IndieGoGo to raise the money to make it a reality and will be bringing sample cards with me to the Front End of Innovation 2012 in Orlando next week (Save 20% with discount code FEI12BRADEN).
Oh, and I will also be looking to crowdsource a software application for people to use on their iPad, iPhone, Android, or other mobile device too, so stay tuned!
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There is a lot of data in the Global Innovation Index 2011 and so I thought it would share it with you bit by bit to make it digestible and then share my overall thoughts. In previous articles we shared the country rankings and the input/output rankings.
Below you’ll find the country rankings based on innovation efficiency (an index comparing the innovation outputs to inputs):
In the final article – coming soon – I will give my analysis of the outcomes and implications of the Global Innovation Index 2011. Until then, feel free to sound off in the comments about whether you believe your country’s position in the innovation inputs or outputs rankings are justified or off base.
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When it comes to education, we should adopt Nike’s famous motto and ‘Just Do It’.
This article is the third in a series of four articles digging into the recently released Global Innovation Index 2011 put together by 