Tag Archives: innovation

Ethics, Innovation among Tunisia’s Entrepreneurial Ambitions

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For months, the world has followed the unrest and protest in North Africa stemming from unemployment throughout Tunisia and Egypt. America.gov asked several Tunisian entrepreneurs to share their stories of business development amid the strife in their region.

Mr. Nazeh Ben Ammar is President of the Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce and multimedia company, Excellencia. He recently spoke on entrepreneurial challenges in the Arab world with Jonathan Ortmans, President of the Public Forum Institute and senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Read about their conversation on the Policy Forum Blog.

A man kissing the Tunisian flag

A man kisses the Tunisian flag during a demonstration in Tunis against high prices and unemployment.

Two major events took place in my mother country, Tunisia, while I was in the US. The first was in 1987, when I was completing my bachelor degree at Purdue University. The second was less than a month ago, and I was in California spending four days heading a delegation of major Tunisian entrepreneurs in the IT sector who were taking inspiration from the Silicon Valley spirit to help Tunisians back home.

I am quite accustomed to this environment as I spent nearly two years at Stanford University. My trip back to Silicon Valley was like a pilgrimage for me, 20 years after graduation. Having written my masters thesis on innovation and entrepreneurship, I felt I had returned to my roots. I have applied my studies during my career by focusing on bringing technology, innovative approaches and the entrepreneurship culture back to Tunisia.

For more than a year and a half now I have presided over the Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce (TACC). The chamber has a major role to play in today’s world in developing the entrepreneurial spirit, increasing investment from within Tunisia and the United States, and increasing trade between the two nations.

As a leader of an NGO, a trade company in electronics, an air conditioning company and a real estate company, I felt a lot of institutional pressure coming from a bureaucratic, police-like administration with the stick on our head coming either from customs or the Tunisian IRS. Our doctrine has been to remain ethical and environmentally friendly, which creates quite a challenge when surrounded by unethical practices.

I am proud to be part of the first revolution of the 21st century. The most challenging part is yet to come, and we Tunisians need to bring back our Phoenician, Carthaginian and Mediterranean character and strength of mind. The world is watching us.

The Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce will delegate in Washington, DC March 6-10, 2011.

Obama on Egypt / The Way Ahead in Iraq / Meet Ursula Burns

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President Obama tells Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that change in Egypt “must begin now” and U.S. congressional leaders are echoing Obama’s call for a peaceful transition to reform in Egypt. The two top American leaders in Iraq outline the way ahead. The White House has launched the Startup America Partnership in order to meet President Obama’s innovation goal. And finally, learn about Xerox’s Ursula Burns, the only black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

President Obama

Obama on Egypt
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A peaceful, meaningful and orderly political transition in Egypt “must begin now,” President Obama says. After speaking with President Hosni Mubarak, Obama says, “it is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders. Only the Egyptian people can do that.”

Congress Supports Egypt Reform
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U.S. congressional leaders are echoing President Obama’s call for a peaceful transition to democratic, economic and social reforms in Egypt. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry urged the Egyptian government and security forces “to exercise restraint in dealing with protesters and to respect the human rights of its citizens to seek greater participation in their own government.” At right, protesters gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt.

The Way Ahead in Iraq
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The two top American leaders in Iraq told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. transition from a military mission to a civilian mission in Iraq has been progressing on schedule and with the full cooperation of the Iraqi government and security forces.

Startup America
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Last week in his State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the need for investment and innovation to drive America’s continued economic recovery. Therefore, the White House and several senior cabinet members are joining some of the country’s leading entrepreneurs to launch the Startup America Partnership to help achieve Obama’s goal.

Ursula Burns seatedUrsula Burns’ Path to Success
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Ursula Burns of Xerox Corporation has the distinction of being the only black female to serve as the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company. While Burns, right, singles out her mother as the predominant role model in her personal development, she gives the example of Vernon Jordan — the lawyer, civil rights activist, and former presidential adviser — as a role model in her professional life. To learn more about Burns, watch this video clip of her opening remarks at the YWCA Third Annual Empowering Women Luncheon.

Governments Turn to Social Entrepreneurs

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J. Scott Orr runs m.America.gov, a version of the America.gov website designed for cell phones and other mobile devices.

John F. Kennedy was right; it is all about what you can do for your country.

In fact, Kennedy’s famous words were never truer than they are today as democracies the world over are turning to their citizens, their businesses, their nongovernment organizations, their charities and saying, okay, who’s got ideas?

In the United States, President Obama has devoted $50 million to his Social Innovation Fund to encourage eureka moments in the minds of Americans. It could be new ways to help schools save money, to grow small businesses, to reduce carbon emissions, whatever. The point of the program is that when ideas strike, they should be supported, exploited and replicated.

David Cameron, the newly-minted British prime minister, has a similar idea. He calls it the Big Society and its goal is to empower social entrepreneurs by getting Westminster out of the job of micromanaging and into the job of promoting public involvement in the creation of what he calls “communities with oomph.” His Big Society rules are simple: “If it unleashes community engagement – we should do it. If it crushes it – we shouldn’t.”

Social innovation and social entrepreneurship are hardly new. But with democracies the world over facing ceaseless challenges, economic and otherwise, these concepts are gaining new currency. And it’s not just from the Obamas and the Camerons of the world; many individuals have taken to the task without prodding from politicians or governments.

Among the best known is Muhammad Yunus, who was 25-years-old and studying in the United States under a Fulbright fellowship, when a revolutionary idea struck him. Returning to his native Bangladesh, Yunus began offering small-businesspersons, mostly women, small loans at reasonable rates of interest. Yunus’ micro-credit idea was so successful it was copied around the world and earned him a Nobel Prize and a U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

But social entrepreneurship need not have such lofty aims. Take, Cláudia Sofia Marques Rodrigues, the president of the Cape Verdean Institute for Gender Equality and Equity, who is promoting new ways of protecting women. Working strictly through grassroots channels, Rodrigues was instrumental in gaining passage of a new law in Cape Verde that protects women from gender-based violence, creates shelters for victims and funds education and prevention programs.

So, sure, Democracy is about governments that derive their power from the people, but it is also a social partnership that carries responsibilities for all. And now, more than ever, governments are seeking out innovators, risk takers and non-linear thinkers to point out new paths.

This spring, First Lady Michelle Obama was speaking at the Time 100 Most Influential People Awards in New York City, when she turned to the pressing need for social innovation and entrepreneurship. “There are few times in history when the saying ‘we are all in this together’ would be more applicable than now,” she said.

Homeless Children to Human Capital

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Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami recently attended the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington. Ayobami, 27, is president of Glimmer of Hope Foundation, an organization that empowers youth and improves adolescent health in Nigeria.

Paul Romer is a senior fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He specializes in economic development.

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami

Ikuemonisan Banabas Ayobami:
I am the first of five children, all boys. We lived on $200 per month. My high school was so bad that we were taught English in Hausa — a local dialect. However, I was blessed to have a great father. He always told me I can be all I want to be. His words helped me to become a doctor, which was a long struggle.

In my country, Nigeria, years of corruption and bad leadership caused many to lose faith in the “Nigerian dream.” But my work as a social entrepreneur facilitates young people gaining the life skills to become self-reliant, make right choices and pursue their dreams. That eventually brings economic growth and less crime.

The work I describe began five years ago, when I, with others, started the Glimmer of Hope Foundation, while I was in medical school. We had an idea but no financial muscle. People thought our dream – to help Nigerian youth to be healthy and also to empower them to succeed in life – was grandiose. But today, we talk of spending close to 10 million naira this year on youth-funded projects.

The foundation helps homeless young people, some of whom have been involved in anti-social behavior as a means of survival. In South West Nigeria, we are bringing kids, between 9 and 15 years old, who are on the streets right now, back to school. We also give them vocational training. We have to keep young people from following bad leaders.

I see young people who do not believe they can amount to anything. A few years ago, one young man told me he could never go to the university. Now he’s in his final years studying for a degree in economics.

The young people in our country are intelligent and want change. They just need a push. They need to see someone like themselves, someone who came from poverty and became something. When they do, they follow that lead.

Paul Romer

Paul Romer

Paul Romer:
Your blog post addresses an important issue. Human capital – the skills and knowledge embodied in the workforce – is central to economic development.

Unlike those who focus on specific job skills, you recognize that human capital also consists of important character traits. For example, the right education can instill in young people a sense of possibility instead of passivity.

Social norms – each person’s learned beliefs about what is right and wrong – are also part of human capital. Social norms influence our interactions with others. If the only available role models are the bad leaders to whom you refer, young people will internalize social norms that undermine Nigeria’s prospects. Your organization provides a much-needed alternative, offering a different standard of what is normal and right.

In the pursuit of human capital and economic development, changes in social norms are driving forces, not incidental side effects. Societies can get trapped by outdated or counterproductive norms that hurt everyone.

But societies can change. In the 1970s, Hong Kong dramatically reduced corruption in its police force partly by changing social norms. The government convinced citizens that police corruption is not normal or tolerable. As a result, ordinary citizens helped fight it by reporting requests for bribes to a special hotline.

Entrepreneurial organizations like yours play a role in the diffusion of more just and socially constructive norms within existing social settings. (With my new research non-profit, Charter Cities, I hope to convince people that newly chartered cities offer complementary opportunities to establish desirable norms in new social settings. In a sense, new cities can be like startup companies that establish new cultures.)

Working from both directions – reforming existing social systems and forming new ones – we can move all nations toward rules and norms that unleash everyone’s potential instead of holding them back.

From Libya to USA, Boosting Business Opportunity for the Blind

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Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington recently for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. He directs the Vision Center, in Benghazi, Libya. He opened an Internet café for the blind in Benghazi and plans to open another in Tripoli.

Thomas Panek is vice president of National Industries for the Blind, the largest employer of blind people in the USA. He earlier served as president of the Chicago office of the World Trade Center and senior trade specialist for the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi

Omar Abdelaziz Abdelati al-Obeidi:
I have been blind since eye cancer took my sight when I was two years old. When I was nine years old, I intended to invent the world’s first car for the blind. (I have not realized that ambition yet, but I have not forgotten it.)

I have always believed that a blind person can function as well as a person with sight because his brain is as good as anyone else’s. But that view is not held by many in the Arab world, including the blind themselves. I graduated from high school at the top of my class in 1992 but was denied entrance into university because of my disability. This led me to go abroad for six years to study.

I have owned and operated several small businesses.

Now as director of Vision Center in Libya, I’m engaged in the business of training and providing computers and other resources to people with vision disabilities. Vision Center has achieved a number of things already, such as starting the first computer laboratory in Gaza and the first online library for the blind in the Arab world. This library is located in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. It enables the blind to read thousands of books, which were unavailable to them in the past. In 2009, Vision Center opened the first Internet café for people with impaired sight. We’re planning to open a second café in Tripoli in 2010. I am also on the board of directors of a foundation that supports a business incubator for the disabled. At present, I am seeking financing for a business project that was fostered by the incubator. I have been looking for a loan of $160,000 for ten months now.

Thomas Panek

Thomas Panek

Thomas Panek:
I am proud to learn of your Internet cafés that cater to the blind in Libya, Omar. Your experiences are not only the very definition of entrepreneurship, you are a “social entrepreneur,” creating social value through the improvement of goods and services offered to the community.

When it comes to businesses and blindness, the Arab world and the United States are not that far apart.

As a businessman, like you, I have worked in many countries, including the UAE, changing perceptions about the capabilities of the blind, but we have most of our work yet to do. My last trip to Dubai, my white cane was confiscated at the airport for lack of understanding. Recently, in Washington, I was prohibited from entering a business because of my Seeing Eye Dog. In the U.S., seven of ten working-age Americans who are blind are not employed.

Many Americans who are blind are gaining independence by joining the National Industries for the Blind (NIB), whose mission is to enhance opportunities for the blind by creating jobs. NIB is part of the AbilityOne Program, which helps more than 45,000 blind or disabled people find employment. The program coordinates with nonprofitts to provide goods and services to the federal government at fair-market prices.

Finally, it is not too late to realize your childhood dream to invent the world’s first production car for the blind…but you better hurry! Earlier this year, a university here, Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, created a vehicle that can be driven by blind people.

You and I are a world apart, but we both have courage gained from business experiences. Keep the ambitions you had when you were a child and apply them to your new venture.

Whether Pulling Rickshaws or Flying Airplanes, Employees Matter

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Irfan Alam is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, held April 26-27. Alam founded the SammaaN Foundation to modernize the rickshaw-pulling sector in Bihar. He manages 100,000 rickshaw operators and has implemented innovations such as advertising, first aid,and offering passengers newspapers and water.

Joe Harris is senior labor counsel for Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas. In 2009, Southwest was ranked 7th in FORTUNE magazine’s ranking of the 50 Most Admired Companies in the World and 1st in a ranking of the 50 best U.S. places to work by Glassdoor.com, a website that gathers its information from employees.

Irfan Alam

Irfan Alam

Irfan Alam:
SammaaN Foundation gives a new face to the unorganized workers who form nearly 93 percent of the workforce in India. One part of the group is made up of the 10 million cycle rickshaws and push cart operators. They are mostly laborers from Bihar, UP and West Bengal who migrate to bigger cities such as Delhi, Patna, Lucknow during the off-peak agricultural season. Typically, rickshaw pullers fall between 14 years old and 60 years old. While I consider them exploited, many make a lucrative living, despite a lack of skills.

I see exploitation because a puller has to pay a significant sum to hire a rickshaw from a contractor and then looks after maintenance himself. If the rickshaw gets stolen, he has to pay for it or work as a bonded laborer until the value is recovered. After a hard day’s work, operators have no place to rest; many spend their nights in the open, where they are easy victims of criminals. Being uneducated, they often become alcohol or drug addicts, making it impossible for them to break the poverty cycle.

At SammaaN, we give them dignity by encouraging rickshaw pulling as a trade/ job and not as desperate substitute work. We register them so they receive all the benefits mandated by law. They receive cycle rickshaws, uniforms and identity cards. We created lighter models of cycle rickshaws that are much easier and have operator-friendly features. Moreover, there is insurance coverage for the pullers as well as those traveling on these rickshaws.

We have incorporated the SammaaN Sabha (gathering) to increase awareness among our operators about social issues as well as to create belongingness. Held every Sunday at our rickshaw yards, it allows discussion about issues such as alcoholism or drug abuse.

We introduced microloans and are starting initiatives for family members — education programs for children and training for wives. We are also planning low cost homes for our operators.

SammaaN earns its revenue mainly through advertisements placed on the rickshaws.

Joe Harris

Joe Harris

Joe Harris:
In the airline business, and I would assume in the rickshaw business, frontline employees are out there on their own every day, taking care of customers and making a myriad of decisions that affect the operation of the business and the customer experience.

It is refreshing to learn of an enterprise that seeks to improve the economic and social well-being of the people whose labor is essential to the success of its business. Indeed, some of the activities undertaken by SammaaN are those typically reserved to philanthropic, religious or civic organizations.

But the business of a business is to make a profit, right? Is it possible then for a business to be profitable and also be so committed to the well-being of its employees?

In a customer-service business, it is not only possible, it is advantageous. There is a direct correlation between the return rate of customers and the type of service provided by a customer-service employee. The theory is simple. If employees are happy and motivated, they will treat customers well. If customers are treated well, they will return. If customers are treated badly, they will be inclined to take their business elsewhere. This is true whether they are flying in an airplane across the USA or being pedaled through 5 blocks of Delhi.

Employees should take pride in their jobs. They should be “engaged.”

Frontline employees who feel good about themselves and their jobs feel empowered to make right decisions and act in ways beneficial to customers and to the success of the business. By promoting the dignity of the vocation and by seeking to improve the economic and social well-being of these individuals, SammaaN is not only performing a laudable public service, it is also building a foundation for a profitable business.

Talking Turkey, by Phone

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Fatih Isbecer is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Isbecer is founder and chief executive of Pozitron, a wireless communications company, based in Turkey.

Elmira Bayrasli is director of partnerships, policy and outreach at Endeavor Global, a nonprofit that identifies and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

Fatih Isbecer

Fatih Isbecer

Fatih Isbecer:
When I was at a high school in Daytona Beach, Florida, as an exchange student from Istanbul, I was filled with an entrepreneurial spirit and loaded with different tech ideas. The year was 1993, and the U.S.A. was experiencing a technology revolution. I felt that this change would eventually affect Turkey. A few years later, back in Turkey, with some classmates from Istanbul Technical University, I started a small business that focused on Web projects. It was a kind of techies’ playground from which I “graduated” to a more serious – but not less fun – business.

In 2000, I started Pozitron, an R&D-based firm that develops enterprise, networking and security software applications for other companies. It took me a while to bring together the executive team — experienced senior managers are in short supply in Turkey. Once I did have executives in place, I was able to focus on the mobile telecom industry and do what I do best, which is come up with innovative solutions. One of Pozitron’s first hits was a mobile-phone application for the country’s only official sports betting game – Iddaa. Since developing that, we’ve broken into international markets with mobile-phone banking applications developed for Turkey’s largest private bank – Türkiye İş Bankası. The applications allow users to transfer money, trade stocks, pay bills and check balances from anywhere in the world.

In 2007, I was selected a high-impact entrepreneur by Endeavor, a non-profit that identifies and supports influential entrepreneurs. A year later, Pozitron won the Global Business Plan Contest organized by the Harvard Business School for a plan that focused on an integrated, mobile-banking product. It was launching this application in the same month a large U.S.-based multi-national bank released its own version that gave me a huge satisfaction.

As more people are starting businesses or doing trade, mobile telephone communication has even a more significant role to play in helping them overcome obstacles and grow their enterprises. Brand new applications and services are emerging, including Pozitron’s mobile airline ticketing and check in. My ambition is to participate in shaping the future of this industry and, together with my Turkish friends and rivals, dispel the myth that the high-tech sector in Turkey doesn’t exist.

Elmira Bayrasli

Elmira Bayrasli

Elmira Bayrasli:
As the daughter of Turkish immigrants, I spent much of my childhood visiting Turkey. It was a place I didn’t want to go. There were many reasons for that, including rolling blackouts and no television. The most important was no telephones.

The telephone was important to me. That’s how I kept in touch with my mother and my father, who wasn’t able to stay with me for the duration of our summer-long trips. “I’ve got to go back to work,” he’d tell my teary five-year old self. “But I’ll call you, okay?”

Except he couldn’t call us. My grandmother, like most Turks, didn’t have a phone – not because she couldn’t afford one, but because Turkey’s infrastructure didn’t allow for it. Phone calls could only be made at the post office. Even then there was no guarantee of securing a working line. Thankfully that is no longer Turkey’s situation.

Today, Turks are creating technologies that have attracted world attention. Pozitron is one of those companies. And Fatih Isbecer is one of those entrepreneurs helping redefine entrepreneurship in Turkey.

With a highly educated work force and globally oriented citizenship, Turkey is home to promising young talent, a strategic geography and tremendous resources. Fatih Isbecer recognized it and started his own high-tech company. It worked not only to create jobs, but to inspire other Turks to see themselves as innovators. Turkey used to turn to the West for the latest technologies. Today Turkey is at the cutting edge, pioneering new solutions not only for Turks, but for the world as well.

Mentor, Mentee Change Society Through Business

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New Enterprise is pairing entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26 & 27 with American business experts. But these delegates, from Bangladash and Pakistan, have lots in common. In fact one mentored the other; we decided to put them together — no American this time.

Professor Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh is founder and director of Grameen Bank, chairman of the Yunus Centre, and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Roshaneh Zafar is founder and director of Kashf Foundation, a microfinance institution in Pakistan. The organization has grown from 15 female clients in 1996 to 301,000 today and is the first microfinance institution in Pakistan to achieve financial self-sufficiency.

Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus

Professor Muhammad Yunus:
In the mid-seventies, I was back in newborn Bangladesh, and out of frustration with the terrible economic situation in my country, I decided to see if I could make myself useful to one poor person a day in the village next door to the university campus where I was teaching. Since I did not have a road-map or a mentor, I had to fall back on my basic instinct to do that. I stubbornly went out to find my own way. Luckily, at the end, I found it. That was microcredit, Grameen Bank, and most recently, “social business.”

The social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal. It is a business where an investor aims to help others without taking any financial gain himself. At the same time, the social business generates enough income to cover its own costs. Any surplus is invested in expansion of the business or for increased benefits to society. Take a look around you; there is no dearth of problems in this world.

Focus on a social issue. Build a social business around it.
I encourage today’s young people to take a pledge that they will never enter a/the job market to seek jobs from anybody. They’ll be job-givers, not job seekers. Every single human being is capable of changing the world. It can start as a tiny little action. Even the biggest problem can be cracked by a small well-designed intervention. That’s where you and your creativity come in. You are born in the age of ideas.

You will take your grandchildren to the poverty museums that you helped create. [Poverty will be history.]

Yunus and Zafar

Yunus and Zafar

Roshaneh Zafar:
Dr. Yunus told me 15 years ago, “Roshaneh if you make a mistake and you don’t succeed, just tell the world it was Dr. Yunus’s fault.” I reckon if Dr. Yunus had not given me the confidence, I would have never had the courage!

I often remember Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ words that if we were to wait for the ideal circumstances we would never bring about change. When one is in the business of transforming lives our greatest challenge relates to changing mindsets.

Low-income households and particularly women are often cowed down by daily survival. Our biggest challenge at Kashf Foundation has been to instill a belief that tomorrow will be different, that poor families too can hope and plan for a better future. Women at first resist taking loans and investing in their businesses, after years or perhaps centuries of patriarchal thinking. Yet once they get convinced of the idea of microfinance, women are unstoppable.

The next challenge for the microfinance industry is to embrace responsible finance. Many markets in the world are now reaching maturation while economic circumstances for the bottom of the pyramid have become extremely straitened. Against this backdrop, microfinance institutions need to practice truth in lending and establish a sound eco-system for the sector as a whole.

The most rewarding part of my work is seeing real-life changes. Only a few weeks ago I was visiting a long-time client in Kasur whose name is Baji Sharifan. Six years ago, Sharifan bought a small spindle machine second hand for U.S. $150. Now she has four such spindles working simultaneously, with 10 women packaging the thread. Her husband, Masood, left his job as a small time-clerk to work for her.

I was lucky for I had a range of teachers – my father who taught me about social justice; Dr. Yunus, who taught me that poverty is created by institutions and that the poor are not poor not because they are inherently weak;, my board members, who have guided me throughout the careening turns as we grew our institutions; and my clients, who have taught me to laugh even in the worst of situations. I have learnt from so many people to learn from my successes and, most important, from my mistakes.

Medical Innovation by Way of Helping Poor

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Christine Kurihara is the manager of special projects in the Stanford Biodesign Program at Stanford University.

Experts and entrepreneurs from around the world discuss what governments can do to promote high-tech entrepreneurship and what the shape of technology entrepreneurship will be in the future.

Many academic programs that focus on health care innovation in developed countries have begun to explore ways of reaching overseas underserved populations with low cost devices and diagnostics. We primarily focus on domestic U.S. needs, but try to find synergies between domestic and overseas components of our Biodesign Program.

In 2001, we launched a fellowship and a course that teach the process of inventing medical devices and accept 8-12 fellows and 50-60 students per year since. The focus has been on training, but several companies launched by graduates of the program actually develop medical devices.

Two independent programs we operate prepare fellows for designing inexpensive medical devices that meet the needs of rural health care in underserved areas of India and East Asia. (First India fellows came to Stanford in 2008.)

We see potential in creating synergy among different parts of Biodesign. We want to see whether the frame of mind developed to find low-cost solutions in India can be recreated in different economic environments. If the cost constraints applied to the India projects affect the thinking of U.S. students and fellows, they may come up with less costly solutions when they design devices for the U.S. market, in a small way helping to address the rising costs of U.S. health care.

To explore that potential, we partnered with the California Healthcare Foundation. Some of our second-year U.S. fellows study needs in Safety Net health centers, hospitals and clinics which serve uninsured or medically underserved patients. The needs identified by fellows drive a new kind of development process that aims at lower cost, simpler design, the use of basic materials and a quicker lab-to-market process. This is not to say we are dumbing down the technology. We simply try to find a way in which cost considerations play a major role in designing new devices.

We have learned much about what that means and how to approach related issues. For example, pediatric needs almost always represent a small market segment and thus rarely drive innovation in the traditional model, the creation of a startup supported by angel or venture investments. Instead our second-year fellows have created a website where they post the needs they discovered during visits to pediatric hospitals. These needs are visible to the entire community of innovators, physicians, parents, engineers, and others, who may have ideas on how to solve related issues. The hope is that the website will help parties identify ideas they have interest in and provide a platform for them to work together on developing the most promising concepts. Those parties could include special interest groups able to fund the development of a particular product.

We have little to report on results as the Web-based project began only recently. However, we continue to explore ways to engage key stakeholders through this platform.

Accelerate Innovation: Engage the User

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Thomas Jelle is the managing director of Wireless Trondheim Ltd and an assistant professor in the Department of Telematics at Norwegian University of Science & Technology.

Experts and entrepreneurs from around the world discuss what governments can do to promote high-tech entrepreneurship and what the shape of technology entrepreneurship will be in the future.


Since the emergence of social media such as Facebook, consumers have a new way to share their opinions with providers of services and products. If enough consumers have similar interests and speak with a united voice, they are likely to be heard. They provide valuable feedback to producers, allowing them to adapt their existing products to new trends or user demands.

Across Europe users have been heard and have had influence on products and services. But why not use consumers in the product development process as well? It can be of great value if done correctly.

Developing new products or services, especially those involving advanced technology, can take years. Even if you have an idea for a product or service that is perfect the day you came up with it, that product or service may be obsolete once it hits the market as society’s and users’ needs change. By involving the consumer in all stages of product development, you will be able to adapt your product to the changing trends and avoid costly or impossible changes just before your product is ready. By keeping the processes open and involving the user, you can accelerate innovation while minimizing the risk of a product failure. Furthermore, this will ensure that when your product reaches the market, it will really sell, and that is what innovation is all about.

Governments that want to pave the way for innovative initiatives should help establish arenas for open innovation [making the boundaries between the firm and its environment more porous to facilitate two-way innovation transfer]. These are arenas, or “living labs,” where producers can develop and test products together with the consumer. Several living labs have been set up in Europe in the last few years, and they are starting to spread to other parts of the world.

I believe that the best way to utilize living labs is to link them with business incubation centers or universities, while maintaining close ties between the public sector and businesses. In Norway, we have set up Wireless Trondheim Living Lab as a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors, with the Norwegian University of Technology and Science as a key player. So far the results are promising, with new companies being established and new products being developed. Wireless Trondheim Living Lab and three other Nordic living labs have developed a toolbox that describes the experience of and techniques for user-driven innovation.