Archive for December, 2009
Thinking Within the (Sand) Box
Professor C.K. Prahalad’s book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, illustrated the potential of the BoP market. However, accessing that market often requires an informed understanding of what it means to create a product of value for the sector.
In his article, The Innovation Sandbox, Prahalad uses the example of two organizations within the Indian health care sector – Aravind Eye Care Hospital and Narayana Hridyula, a specialized heart care institution, to demonstrate the ability of organizations to achieve widespread success while serving the BoP.
Through the illustration of a sandbox, Prahalad analyzes the reasons behind the success of such organizations. An organization that understands the needs and constraints (illustrated in his example as the walls of a sandbox), he says is better equipped at reaching innovative solutions to reach the poor. It is often these constraints that prevent a company from viewing the BoP as a viable market.
Read the entire Innovation Sandbox article here.
Scaling up Social Innovation
Most social innovations in modern times have arisen from the voluntary sector, in part because it is hard for individuals to pursue their passion in either state or market institutions. However, our hypothesis is that to scale up, social innovation has to move from the voluntary sector to state and market institutions.
In this article, author Vijay Mahajan takes into account the social innovations that happened through out history and pan India and describes how voluntary agencies engineered the social innovations and scaled them up by actively engaging with state and market institutions.
Read the entire article here.
Not Just for Profit
The drawback of prevailing conventional shareholder-centric (corporate) design is that it focuses only on achieving short term goals and clearly overlooks long term benefits. Corporate model works with for-profit motive with out holding any responsibility for customers’ interests, protecting the environment, and supporting the communities in which they operate with social responsibility. The recession of 2008 is the corollary of the pursuit of making immediate profit by investment bankers and mortgage brokers who disregarded the impact of their actions on customers, economy, stockholders and the company itself in a long run. This clearly indicates the need for alternative and efficient designs that could replace this outdated industrial age model.
Though these alternative designs are emerging they are still at very nascent stages and needs further experimentation. But they indicate the transition of the conventional “for-profit” approach to “for-benefit”, which is more philanthropic.
In her article, Not Just for Profit, author Marjorie Kelly discusses the pros and cons of three broad emerging and promising approaches: stakeholder-owned companies, mission-controlled companies, and public-private hybrids, termed as hybrid between for-profit and nonprofit approaches. They could help in designing alternative models that could address the priorities of the 21st century better.
Read the entire article here.
Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India
Microinsurance is fast emerging as an important component to comprehensive financial service offerings to the BoP. Recognizing that often the poor fall back into poverty due to financial setbacks caused by illness, accident, death or natural destruction, several organizations are introducing policies that will help mitigate risk better – for example XAC Bank in Mongolia (where the population is nomadic and heavily dependent on the cattle trade), offers farmers livestock insurance.
This paper analyzes the risk mitigation strategies employed among farmers in India. In particular the team at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) Center for Microinsurance (CMF), looks at the adoption of rainfall insurance products designed to compensate low-income Indian farmers in case of poor rainfall during the monsoon season. The study compares patterns between Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, and offers lessons based on their findings.
Read the entire article here.
The Gift of Sight: A Case Review of Aravind Eye Care System
In 1976, Dr. G. Venkataswamy, a retired Professor of Ophthalmology at the Government Medical College in Madurai, India, founded the Aravind Eye Care System, which today has grown into the largest and most productive eye care facility in the world.
The 11 bed hospital has now grown beyond being just a chain of hospitals, and has evolved as a centre for manufacturing synthetic lenses, sutures, and also to train optometrists and other allied health care professionals.
As an institution that believes in being part of the country’s health care solution, Aravind Eye Care Systems has fine-tuned a low-cost model which has allowed it lower costs for the poor, as well as offer free eye care.
Over the years the hospital has gained global recognition. It is now a World Health Organization collaborating centre for prevention of blindness, and the only examination centre of the Royal College of Ophthalmology.
Read more about the Aravind Eye Care model here.
Agriculture for Development
One of the main objectives of Millennium Development Goals is to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger and extreme poverty to half by 2015. Agricultural development is considered to be the vital tool for achieving this goal. The present report was prepared based on the studies carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This Report addresses three main questions: What can agriculture do for development? What are effective instruments in using agriculture for development? How can agriculture-for-development agendas best be implemented? This Report provides guidance to governments and the international community on designing and implementing agriculture-for-development agendas that can make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor.
Read the World Bank Report here.
The Indian Innovation System
Since innovation is the key to progress and development, and therefore global competitiveness, each country must foster a climate of innovation. Not just technological or scientific innovation, but innovation in systems and processes as well. India is slowly setting up organizations and agencies who foster such innovation.
In their article, Indian Innovation System, authors Ashwini Gupta and P.K. Dutta, elaborate on the various agencies the contribute to taking an idea from its stage of ideation to the market. The report is a good source for researchers, entrepreneurs and stakeholders looking for consolidated information on the enablers within the Indian innovation ecosystem.
Read the full article here.