Behind-the-scenes look at design for social impact

We talked about design for social impact last fall. If you want to learn more about how the design approach can be applied to problems in the developing world, check out this blog.  It follows Jeff Chapin, a designer (or engineer?) who is taking a sabbatical from IDEO to work on a low-cost latrine with International Development Enterprises (IDE).  Jeff is blogging daily about his experiences working in Cambodia.  A great read if you’re interested in design for the other 90%.

As well, I’m taking a fantastic class this spring in the civil engineering department called Design for Sustainable Communities.  Taught by Ashok Gadgil, the class takes a hands-on approach to designing innovative products to address critical needs in both developed and developing countries. I’m working on a cross-disciplinary team (2 mechanical engineers, 1 environmental engineer, 1 business school student – me!) to re-envision the solar box cooker for the Indian market.  Solar box cookers have been around for many years.  The technology is simple – sun hits box, box cooks food inside.  But in the last 30 years, there has been almost zero innovation to the design or materials — advances have generally focused on increasing energy efficiency, rather than usability.  So there’s a huge potential to create a better, more relevant solution to spur mass adoption.

Other projects that my fellow students are working on include:

• Solar water heater for Guatemala (technology = solar panels on urban roofs for heating water)
• Arsenic remediation in Bangladesh (arsenic is colorless and odorless, but can be removed using a Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LNBL) technology)
• Bioclimatic design for “kit” houses in South Pacific

Very inspiring stuff indeed!

Thought the $100 laptop was good? Try $10

Fast Company reports that on February 3rd, the Indian government will unveil a $10 educational laptop with 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi and expandable hardware, that operates on only two watts of power. Mass production costs are $20, but expect this to be halved as large-scale production starts up.

The laptop is an answer to MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 One Laptop Per Child.  Can’t wait to see what it looks like in a few days!

Click here for the Fast Company article.

**Update: It turns out that the $10 laptop is not a full-functioning laptop, but a “computing” device with storage.  Read the comments below for more information. **

School Feeding in Ghana!

This summer, I worked with the Ghanaian government on their school feeding program as part of Haas’ International Business Development (IBD) course. The Ghana School Feeding Program is an amazing program that provides lunches to over 975 primary schools in Ghana to over 400,000 students. By 2010, it is projected that the program will serve 2,900 schools and approximately 1.04 million primary school children.

The program was launched in 2005 with the goal of contributing to poverty reduction and increased food security in Ghana. The three key objectives of the program are to 1) reduce hunger and malnutrition by providing all primary and kindergarten students in beneficiary schools a nutritious meal each school day 2) increase school enrollment, attendance, and retention and 3) boost domestic food production by sourcing GSFP meals locally, and providing a sustainable market for local food producers in the community. These objectives align closely with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) surrounding hunger, poverty, and primary education.

While the program has been extremely successful, there are some operational areas that need attention. Our project was threefold, and involved sizing the market created by the feeding program for food staples such as maize, cassava and rice; optimizing meals given price trends and nutritional content; and identifying points in the value chain where small farmers can capture more of the market. We worked with the Ghanaian government and a number of international development organizations including the UNDP, WFP, IFCD, Technoserve to identify trends and opportunities for local farmers to be more involved in the school feeding program.

The experience was awesome. Not only because we were able to provide a valuable analysis, but also because I was able to work closely with two other MBA students in an environment which was extremely challenging!

End of Week 1 in Ghana

Now that IBD in Gabon is over, I am in Ghana for a 10 week internship at BusyInternet, which started as an internet cafe/copy center, but also offers a plethora of services ranging from ISP (dial-up, broadband, satellite) and SME (small/medium enterprise) incubation to laptop repair, event hosting, and movie nights.

Busy is located off of Ring Rd., which is one of the main roads in Accra:

Most of this week was consumed by organizing and facilitating a two-day workshop for brainstorming the restructuring of Busy’s ISP business unit. I am pleasantly surprised to have the opportunity to apply concepts learned from my Organizational Behavior class this past fall =). I have also started interviewing people from Busy’s various departments (HR, Finance, Sales, Tech, Help Desk, etc.) to get to know the business better and also assess Busy’s functional requirements for a CRM implementation. It’s a bit intimidating thinking about designing, configuring, testing, deploying, and training a CRM application in 10 weeks (especially when this is usually done by a large team of consultants over the course of at least six months), but I hope that whatever I accomplish, I will make a lasting impact.

[IBD: Gabon] Last Day in Libreville

After three weeks, IBD Team Gabon’s life in Libreville has come to an end. Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way:

·    Images of President Bongo (basically a democratic dictator) are everywhere – wall prints, button-up shirts, and on billboard signs, like this one, which reads: 40 years - Peace, Unity, Stability and Progress:

• Paper products such as napkins, toilet paper, and paper towels are a precious commodity. Don’t leave home without a roll of toilet paper.
• The cost of taxis is not based on a meter but rather distance, time of day, and cab driver’s mood. Always set the price before getting in the cab (1000-1500 CFA).
• Mosquitoes are strangely lethargic here – a quick clap can result in one smushed ‘skeeter.
• There are more stray cats than dogs here. These poor kitties are usually over-looked and desperate for attention.
• Running is an oddity. Every time we went for a run around our neighborhood, we received not only stares from every passer-by, but also shouts of “Ils sont fous!” (“they are crazy!”).
• Our botanist friend Manuel once told us, “The Gabonese got rich at the wrong time in history” referring to the proliferation of tacky 70s style architecture:

•  Flexibility and patience are critical to doing business in Africa. A 10 o’clock meeting may not start until 1 pm. Someone says that they will email you a document the next day, and you have to send a courier to go pick up a paper copy… three weeks later. You tell your British client that you need someone to take you to the airport for your 11:15 am flight, and about 15 minutes after the time you should have been picked up, he sends you a text saying that you’ll be picked up at 11:00.
• Many residents of Libreville display a very French sense of “malaise”, seemingly perpetually dissatisfied with life. However, a quick bonjour or bonsoir accompanied by a smile will nearly always result in a reciprocal greeting.

[Mayfield Fellows: China] The Great Wall and Goodbyes

Our last day in China was a blast, a great way to end our Mayfield trip. 

We woke up early and loaded onto a bus that took us to the Great Wall in Badaling, a 1.5hr trip.  As we drove into the mountains, the scenery was amazing.  We had a tour guide on the bus that none of us could understand except David.  All we remembered was how loud the volume was!  Badaling’s Great Wall point is perhaps the most touristy of the Great Wall destinations – cheap souvenirs, fake wood entrance (think Matterhorn or Splash Mtn), and speakers blasting Kenny G (I kid you not!).  We were a bit taken aback by this introduction to the Great Wall.  But, once we all made it up to the wall itself and began our climb (we climbed from tower 4 to tower 9), our initial skepticism was washed away.  This wall truly is amazing, especially when you consider it took decades to build, 10 thousand people, and it spans approx. 10k miles in total!!  This is one experience I will never forget – just like the Taj Mahal in India.  How lucky we are to experience 2 of the greatest man-made feats of engineering in one trip!!

 

 By the end of this Great Wall experience, we were in high spirits.  We felt on top of the world; the Mayfield Fellows are prepared to tackle any obstacle; any challenge or issue we know we can navigate to a solution.  Like getting back home:

Well, eventually we found our bus and made it back to Beijing.  Our final event was a good one — dinner with some of our Haas classmates and some of the 2010 new admits!!  We ate in a very cool area called Hohai, which is a bar/restaurant area surrounding a small lake.  I don’t remember the name of the restaurant where we ate, but it was very tasy!  We crammed 12+ folks into a small private room and had a blast.  I wish I had a picture of this event, but I had already used up my 2 GB of memory space on my camera (yeah, I took ~600 pictures on this trip!!)… 

And that was that.  We woke up very early the next day, caught a cab to the airport, and spent the next 24 hours traveling back to the US through Hong Kong.  Our Mayfield Trip 2008 has come to a close and now we are on to beginning our summer internships.  What an experience!!  We met with so many successful folks on our trip from VC, law firms, etc – some great contacts.  We saw some amazing sites, and experienced some of the finer aspects of the Indian and Chinese cultures.  And we ate (and ate, and ate) some extremely delicious, and occasionally adventurous, meals.  I have to shout out some kudos to Uday and David for their excellent job in being our tour guides, translators, food experts, etc in India and China respectively.  Thanks guys, you were great!!  And with that, I am signing off – Mayfield Fellows 2008 trip blog is officially complete!!

[Mayfield Fellows: China] Operation Do-Everything-In-China On Road to Success

We Mayfield Fellows don’t quite know how to describe this two week trip; is it a vacation?  A business trip?  I think it’s just a big mash-up of both.  But in any event, we have certainly done a lot, whether it be educational meetings or sightseeing excursions.  The wear-and-tear on the team is showing, but we’re still kicking (on fumes) and having a great time!

Our last day in Shanghai was productive.  Brian had been on a mission since we arrived in China to go to the Shanghai Museum.  We decided against going Saturday afternoon because the line was wrapped around the building – we thought we’d be clever and show up early on Sunday morning to beat the crowds.  Well, little did we know, Sunday was a holiday (Children’s Day), so the line was even longer in the morning, full of families waiting to get inside!!  Once inside, we experienced four floors of very cool, historical artifacts.  I took lots of pictures of many of these exhibits, here are a few of my favorites:

We had one last meeting that day with NEA Ventures, and one last evening on the town. We then said goodbye early Monday morning. 

Beijing — our last leg of the trip, home of the summer olympics (in ~2 months). I have to say, I’m not sure they’ll actually be ready for the games by then!  Lots of construction is happening all over town, restoration of lots of the sites, etc, but I cannot see how the city will be ready by the start of the games.  Reminds me of that commercial for Coke (or something) before Athens where the sprinters ran through a construction site of workers finishing the stadium!

Yesterday we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, right in the center of Beijing.  Quite cool, although we found ourselves very ignorant of the historical significance of what we saw.  I need to review my 8th grade world history books I guess…

We ate dinner at a famous restaurant renowned for its Peking Duck dishes.  I can say we certainly had opportunity to eat duck – pretty much every part of the duck!  I can elaborate later, it was a new, and actually delicious, experience!!

Today, we visited the new Olympic Stadium and surrounding area – there is quite a bit of Olympic excitement all around town, and the new structures are quite amazing!

Well, this is my last blog entry from China – we have one last day, which I am very excited about, as we will be traveling to the Great Wall for a day trip!  Should be a great way to end our Chinese experience.  I will finish out our Mayfield trip blog after I get back to the states, so stay tuned!

[IBD: Gabon] An average day working in Libreville

IBD Team Gabon’s daily routine in Libreville:

1. Le petit dejeuner: A light breakfast consisting of French bread with butter/jam/Nutella, and powdered coffee w/powdered milk.

2. Head to the old office of the Wildlife Conservation Society so that we can check email before our first interview.

3. Pile into the back of a sedan or smelly taxi and head to our first interview.

4. Wait anywhere from 15 minutes to over two hours.

5. Our WCS client introduces us, and Sergio masterfully drives the interview in near flawless French. Kris and Charlene listen intently and scribble notes in EngliFrench.

6. We pose for a formal photo:

 

7. If we’re lucky, we have lunch at a random restaurant. If not, then we have ham & cheese baguettes at the hospital cafeteria across the street.

8. We head to our afternoon interviews. Continue to sweat in our business clothes.

9. Work at the old WCS office.

10. Hail a taxi to head home:

11. Go for a run (while the locals stare and/or laugh at us) or unwind in the living room:

12. Eat dinner, cooked by our chef/housekeeper Pierre.

Brasil

*The Brasil IBD team on arrival*

I want to preface my post by saying a few weeks or even months abroad does not make me or anyone an authority on a country and its people. That truly takes a lifetime. This is my third trip to Brasil (no, that’s not a typo; it’s spelled with an s), and I am still making new discoveries about this place each and every day.

I’m about to start week three of my International Business Development (IBD) trip to Brasil. The first few days were purely recreational, spent wandering about in Salvador da Bahia. Salvador is very distinct when compared to the storied beaches and samba music from Rio de Janeiro that most [American] people associate with Brasil. I did make it to Rio for one night after meeting up with the rest of my project team. I’ve been before but this time rather than stick to the touristy areas like Copacabana and Ipanema, we went out in Lapa. Last time, I was warned it wasn’t safe.

I can’t say whether it is Brasil or me that has changed so much in the past 5 years, but I am no longer comfortable referring to this nation as “developing.” Even “emerging” doesn’t seem right. Whether it’s the flex fuel and natural gas cars, the waiters equipped with PDA’s and wireless credit card machines or the veritable opulence of Campos do Jordao, if this country isn’t developed and emerged, how can [America] claim to be? I’ve been to China and India, 2/3 of the remaining BRIC countries. There, with their skylines dominated by cranes, those words have more resonance than they do here. It’s not my purpose to opine on word choice, only to question whether we [Americans] are quick enough to recognize the accomplishments of that part of the world we used to so pompously refer to as the Third World. (Please forgive my own preachiness here; isn’t it ironic though?)

If I were to form an opinion of China having only visited Shanghai, I would surely conclude that China was among one of the more advanced economies of the world. Fortunately, my perspective on Brasil has been derived from more than just one data point, and I will still be the first to admit that the economic growth of Brasil in the past few decades has not benefited everyone equally (after all these people are still brasileiros). All joking aside, the favelas are a testament to the perennial challenges of social equality that every nation faces. Here in Brasil, those challenges may be felt more acutely than back in the US, but anyone that thinks we’ve done a better job of dealing with them must not have turned on CNN in the days after Katrina. I’m a firm believer that to whom much has been given, much more should be expected, and a society should be judged by how it cares for its weakest members.

One problem that’s derived from the inequality is the high crime rate in Brasil, particularly in urban centers. I’m speaking more specifically to the so-called petty crime that I have experienced as a tourist, but the same idea applies to illegal logging and drug trafficing. The Brazilian government has worked very hard to overcome the perception earned in the ’80’s that it was unsafe here for tourists here. Corruption among police is reportedly on the decline, but the jail system is still so strained that it is hardly worth the effort to track down and arrest a mugger who never actually hurt anyone, something that I could clearly see in the apathetic looks of the police scattered around Pelourninho for security. To really address high crime rates, enforcement alone isn’t enough. People must be saved from the desperation that would push them to crime, and that is where all this pontificating comes back to the world of business, market solutions, and economic development.

Right now I’m working for a entrepreneur who has developed a portfolio of novel technologies in search of a market. Formally he was a researcher, and he told me that he could have made all the money he wanted in that field but he want to create something of value. He wanted to develop technologies that would solve problems for people, and he would actually prefer if he didn’t have to worry about making money from them (it’s not really his core competency). He probably has no clue what a social entrepreneur is, and I sincerely believe he is more excited about solving problems than trying to change the world (one of his technologies is for liposuction). Still, could there be a truer social entrepreneur? For a number of reasons that would require an entire post themselves, he has grown frustrated with the business environment here and is looking abroad for relief. If only [Brasil] could push through the legal reforms to keep entrepreneurs like this one focused on solving the problems here.

I’ve been inspired again, as I was in my last year of college, to move to Brasil. I love it here, and I see a huge market opportunity that some may be overlooking amidst the fervor to tap China and India. It is an opportunity to do well while doing good, but not without obstacles. On the spectrum of “social entrepreneurs” I definitely fall further out toward the entrepreneur side of things. I believe that a company can realize the most good in the world through economic vitality: providing goods and services and creating jobs. Of course, we will need to learn to share the gains from business better to see it become a significant part of the solution. Hopefully that’s going to come from the generation of inspired leaders Haas is working to develop right now.

*With our client*

[Mayfield Fellows: China] Shanghai Express Rolls On…

The past two days in Shanghai have been filled with great meals and some fun exploration to parts of the city whose names I cannot pronounce. I apologize to any of you considering traveling to Shanghai, this entry will be of no help to your planning, unless you can match up the pictures to the actual destinations!

But first, business: Mayfield business to be exact. We were lucky to set up an appointment with one of Shanghai’s top IP lawyers of Watson & Band. We had a great discussion over tea about China’s regulatory processes, entrepreneurship and the law, and of course, the big question of how china is addressing violations and piracy of foreign IP.

We have explored several areas of the city over the last two days. The best I can say is that the city is divided into East and West by the Huangpu River. Most of the areas we’ve visited are on the West side. One of the great Chinese experiences is the Nanjing Road, with shopping galore for everything you can imagine, both fake and real. We were lucky to be there after dark and the lights and excitement of the area were fun. It got real interesting when we noticed one store selling pig faces (yes, it’s true)!! No one bought one, in case you’re wondering…

Today we explored a different part of town, near the famous “Bund” area of Shanghai. This area (which will remain nameless, someone please fill me in!) was a mix of local shopping area into an extreme tourist area. In the center of this tourist area is the famous Yuyuan Garden — this place is beautiful! We spent the better part of an hour exploring the nooks and crannies of the place – coi fish, rock formations, pagodas and all! Beautiful! (and surrounded by some great dumpling places I might add…)

Well, besides the good times during the last two days, we’ve had a great time exploring Shanghai’s nightlife as well – the French Corridor has Kaan’s favorite bar: Beaver. Known for it’s mean foosball table and relatively cheap beer. Tonight’s bar of choice was Luna, in some area I can’t pronounce. Expensive, but great fun! And near our favorite restaurant of our Shanghai experience, one that (again), I don’t recall the name, but it specializes in Taiwanese dumplings. Good thing Wende of the IBD team was there to show us the proper way to consume dumplings!!

We have one more day in Shanghai, and Brian is dead set on visiting the museum. One more meeting, and one last dinner hurrah, and we’re off to our final destination of our Mayfield trip, Beijing! More to come soon!