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Inexpensive Impact: The Case for Frugal Innovations
Over 4 billion people around the world lack necessities like food, water, energy, health care and housing. This represents not only a major social challenge but a major market, as low-income consumers have an annual purchasing capacity of US $5 trillion. Rajat Chabba and Sheena Raikundalia at Intellecap explore how entrepreneurs are developing innovative, frugal products to meet these customers’ needs – and why an ecosystem approach is needed to help them scale their solutions.
- Categories
- Technology
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Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
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Education + Technology = Equality: An Innovative Learning Platform Aims to Go International
All children deserve an equal education, and most people agree on that goal. Yet globally, tens of millions of children are not in school, and many schools struggle to retain qualified teachers. Suren Aloyan founded the social enterprise Dasaran to address these issues in Armenia, through an online platform that offers interactive learning content and communication and assessment tools to schools, parents and students. Aloyan explores the impact the platform has generated so far – and discusses its plans to scale up.
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- Education, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- global development, SDGs
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Financing the Energy Access Revolution: Three Technologies That Are Driving Africa’s Momentum
Technology has become central to the energy access story in Africa. It’s an essential part of all the key stages of an enterprise’s work – from raising the initial capital and financing the equipment, to designing and delivering the final product itself. And the new possibilities opened up by technology are increasingly seen as potential game-changers, in a region where some 590 million Africans – around 50 percent of the population – are still without access to electricity. Ben Good, the CEO of Energy 4 Impact, explores three areas in which tech-driven approaches – from crowdfunding to cryptocurrency – are making an impact.
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- Energy, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Running Out of Gas: Can This Innovative Solar and Battery Electric Generator Fight Energy Poverty – And Climate Change?
The electric generator market is predicted to grow to US $27 billion by 2023. But as the industry grows, so too will the need for fuel to power it – a major challenge in a world struggling to reduce carbon emissions and climate change. Portable Electric believes it has found a solution: a portable generator that can be powered by solar and wind to provide completely renewable, mobile energy – at three times the efficiency of traditional generators. The company's founder, Mark Rabin discusses the technology, and its uses in everything from micro-grids to disaster relief.
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- Energy, Technology
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Big Problem, Small Solution: Can Do-It-Yourself Processing Machines Help Combat Plastic Pollution?
From the viral video of a diver swimming in a sea of plastic, to National Geographic’s major focus on the topic this year, there’s growing public attention on the problem of plastic waste. So there was plenty of excitement when a Dutch engineer’s do-it-yourself plastic recycling machines started gaining traction around the world. Could the devices empower a global army of small entrepreneurs to turn plastic waste into revenue-generating products? The solution sounds appealing, but when Bali-based social enterprise Kopernik assessed its effectiveness, they came across one small problem.
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- Environment, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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The Missing Link in the Blockchain: The Need for Trust in a ‘Trustless’ System
Blockchain has become the ultimate tech buzzword, and development organizations are seeking to apply it in projects of every stripe. But as Rose Davis discovered in researching the technology’s social impact applications for Stanford, reliable digital identification is an essential precursor to many blockchain initiatives. Does a distributed ledger that has supposedly transcended the need for centralized oversight actually require some form of verification from trustworthy authorities? And if so, who should provide it? Davis explores these questions in this thought-provoking post.
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- Technology
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Refrigeration Off the Grid: An Innovative Solution to Food Spoilage for the Billions Without Electricity
Home refrigerators, essential appliances in much of the world, remain out of reach to over one billion people who, as social entrepreneur Quang Truong puts it, must plan their lives around eating rather than vice versa. Without access to reliable grid energy, families are not just inconvenienced – they’re also contributing to climate change as their rotting foods emit greenhouse gasses. In this post, part of our “Offline Innovation” series, Truong puts the spotlight on his Fenik Yuma cooler, which solves this dilemma through low-tech evaporative cooling.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise, Technology