Response to to "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"

The case studies discussed here really show that it is possible to develop a business model that first looks at the need that is out there and works toward a business model that can work to reach a sustainable price point for their project. The Jaipur Foot really stands out to me as the best example of this, their administrative cost is at 4%, and COGS is 90%! An amazingly lean business, that would make any traditional business owner jealous. The difference is that that a traditional business owner would then look to see how high the price could be set to maximize profit. Jaipur Foot is plowing their profit back into their business to make the product and service better and reduce the price, and to make it more accessible.

Response to " The Power of Unreasonable People"

The author tells us about Bunker Roy and the Barefoot Colleges based in Rajastan. Central to their success is an open and transparent structure that puts people's fate in their own hands. It seems to me as we get further and further into our project that the real challenge will be in designing a thing or a process that enables the project to be in the hands of the people running it. Their knowledge and benefit from its continued operation has to be there.

The real gap that I see social entrepreneurship filling is in the type 2 model . A traditional business will always be seeking to maximize profit and any other considerations are subservient to that. A type 2 model has the freedom to form a business that seeks to succeed so that it can achieve its other goals which can be providing something other than a maximized profit as the end goal. At the center of any of these successes is always something resembling a sustainable business model.

It is also interesting to hear the founders of these socially driven businesses say that their companies first asset were their people. The people who make up the core team are what venture capitalists tend to look for first in determining the potential success of a new venture, yet it isn't what seems to be the stated focus of most businesses. It's very interesting to hear these social entrepreneurs and venture capitalists say similar things about this element of success.

Solar Group Mind Map

Mind map of the problems, issues and opportunities for our solar solutions to consider.

Solar Group Ideation Sketches

On Thursday we divided up into groups addressing different issues. I joined the solar group along with Peter Simon and Cassie Mauer . On Saturday we met and developed three general areas to focus on; home heating and heat storage, Cooking, and bio design using aquaponics or green houses.

The Possibilities of Aquaponics

At first look it may seem that an area that is extremely dry like Western China would not be a place to ever try a method of farming called Aquapnics, but the reality is that if done properly it uses 80 to 90 percent less water than traditional growing methods.

Here are a couple of links on the method from people who know more about it than me

re-nest aquaponics

ny times aquaponics article

Three Areas of Social Need:

1. Increased bike use - There is a wide array of other disparate societal problems facing the world that are solved by biking.

They generally fall into three broad categories: Transportation, Health, and the Environment. From a transportation perspective the amount of road space used by a single person on a bike is significantly less than a person in a car, the impact on cost of road maintenance and construction due to a bikes lower weight is significant. Bikes unlike cars are not separated from the driving environment and result in a much more personal traffic interaction. Biking also satisfies these basic transportation needs at the same time that it provides exercise. People actually drive to a gym to workout then drive home, an insane proposition when compared to biking for exercise and transportation. America has serious obesity problems which could be greatly reduced by widespread biking. Biking is also largely a carbon neutral form of transportation, especially when compared to the alternatives of using a motorized vehicle. Our dependence upon foreign oil supplies and the entire host of geopolitical issues that go along with that dependence could be greatly reduced if not eliminated by widespread biking.

2. Global Climate Change and Renewable Energy:
The greatest challenge facing our generation is the way in which we will come up with solutions to the myraid problems that global climate change will cause. Any solution that can prevent more CO2 from entering the atmosphere needs to be implemented now because the effects climate change is having not just on the natural world but also upon an enormous portion of the population are disastrous. Bangladesh will basically disappear with sea level rise. Think of the geo-political ramifications of an entire country of refugees. Multiply that on a global scale and it is a monumental problem worsening almost all other current areas of social need.

3. Improved Food Knowledge:
We are faced with rapidly increasing childhood obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise which causes over 30o thousand deaths each year. Obesity is estimated to cost society nearly $100 billion a year. These are crazy numbers. Think what could be done with 100 billion in health care spending. For me I feel that a lot of this problem is rooted in a decline in cooking of good, simple food at home and a transition, especially among the poor, to heavily processed and packaged food. It seems that many families are not taught how to make food from the standard unprocessed ingredients at the grocery store. I personally love to cook and see an enormous potential for educating people on ways to make low cost healthy food for their family that can be a key to escaping the cycle of poverty.

Here are some local Providence, RI area organizations working on these issues.

1. Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council

2 Recycle-a-bike

3. Farm Fresh Rhode Island

Design Ideation for Helping Western Chinese Communities

These sketches are the product of brainstorming possible solutions to challenges faced in everyday survival for Himalayan communities in Western China. I was specifically concerned with solutions that could improve the quality of life in these communities by using materials that would be readily available and low cost. Specific areas I tried to tackle with these solutions included the construction of solar collectors, improving insulation, generating electricity, and improving stove design.