Category Archives: social Innovation

Registration Opens for ForSE 2008-Forum for Social Entrepreneurs

Posted on September 10, 2008 | Leave a comment

In 2007, I helped found an annual conference on Social Entrepreneurship in partnership with Boston University and the Deshpande Foundation called the Forum for Social Entrepreneurship or ForSE for short. ForSE brings together social innovators with leading business professionals, investors, donors, government officials, academics, and students to facilitate the sharing of new technology and business ideas along with hard-earned management learnings to foster informed discussion and action on new social venture concepts. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conference, Education, environment, Health, Information Technology, international development, Micro-enterprises, micro-finance, mobile technology, non-profit, Poverty, Rural Development, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainability, sustainable development

Tagged Boston, Climate Change, Conference, ecosystem, Education, Food Security, Food Supply, Gerald Chertavian, Global Warming, Health, internet, microfinance, Mobile, mobile technology, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social entrepreneurship, Social Impact, social Innovation, sustainable development, Sustainable ventures, Year Up, Youth entrepreneurship

India’s Poor Get Health Care in a Card

Posted on August 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “India’s Poor Get Health Care in a Card”, outlines a program being launched in India to provide affordable healthcare to the masses. The key component of the program, which is targeted at those earning less than $100 per year, is the use of a secure smart card to store the beneficiary’s personal data and fingerprints.

By bringing together insurance companies and hospitals to address this segment, it hopes to providing healthcare to a target population that has seldom been able to afford it. The government is going to underwrite part of the costs while hospitals and insurance companies see it as an opportunity for them to extend their customer base. Continue reading →

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Posted in BOP, Information Technology, international development, Politics, Poverty, Rural Development, Social Ecosystem, social Innovation

Tagged BOP, Health, Health Insurance, hospital, ICICI, India, Information Technology, National Health Insurance Program, Poverty, Rural Development, smart card, Wall Street Journal

7 Rules of Low Cost Design

Posted on August 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

I came across this article that summarizes Amy Smith’s philosophy of design for low cost solutions

Here are her 7 key points. You can read the entire article on Popular Mechanics.

Try living for a week on $2 a day.
Listen to the right people.
Do the hard work needed to find a simple solution.
Create “transparent” technologies
Make it inexpensive.
If you want to make something 10 times cheaper, remove 90 percent of the material
Provide skills, not just finished technologies.

Some of Amy’s inventions and designs are also described with diagrams in another article Small, Low-Tech Inventions for Big, World-Changing Problems on their website. Amy is an editorial advisor for Popular Mechanics.

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Posted in BOP, Education, international development, Poverty, Rural Development, Social Ecosystem, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tagged Amy Smith, BOP, Education, innovation, international development, invention, Low Cost Design, MIT, Poverty, Social Entrepreneur, Social Impact, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tapan Parikh – Technology Review’s Humanitarian of the Year 2007

Posted on August 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

I had the pleasure of meeting Tapan Parikh a few weeks ago when he presented on a panel at a conference to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of my alma mater, IIT Bombay. The panel focused on the latest trends in technology with the rest of the panelists discussing emerging areas in nanotechnology, biomedicine and energy. Tapan provided a refreshingly different viewpoint that emphasized the needs of the end user in developing countries. By harnessing technology to make things simpler, Tapan has provided platforms that make the daily grind of field workers in rural parts of the world a lot easier. Continue reading →

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Posted in BOP, Information Technology, international development, micro-finance, mobile technology, Poverty, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

Tagged Berkeley, CAM, cell phone, ekgaon, Guatemala, human-computer interaction, humanitarian, India, Information Technology, microfinance, MIT, mobile technology, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, Social Impact, social Innovation, Tapan Parikh, Technology Review, University of California

Gates Foundation gets into Microsavings

Posted on August 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Gates Foundation has made some major investments in the area of finance over the past few years. Now, based on their findings and experiments, they are making a big push into the area of micro-savings. Traditionally rural finance has focused on providing micro-credit services to the poor. Only recently have some of the micro-finance organizations started extending their services to include savings and insurance. In most cases the issue has been local regulations and banking controls.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – Giving a Lot for Saving a Little – the author points out several issues why savings schemes for the rural poor have not taken off. Among the issues identified:

Strict regulations on entities that hold deposits
Lack of remote branches that allow easy access to money
Too costly for traditional banks to provide services for the size of accounts Continue reading →

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Posted in BOP, Information Technology, international development, micro-finance, Poverty, Rural Development, Social Ecosystem, social Innovation

Tagged Ethiopia, Gates Foundation, Information Technology, Kenya, M-Pesa, MFI, micro-finance, microcredit, microfinance, microsavings, Opportunity International, Poverty, rural banks, Rural Development, rural savings, Vodafone, Wall Street Journal