L-RAMP attends the J-PAL 'Evaluating Social Programs' course

From the 28th of July to the 1st of August, L-RAMP was fortunate to be part of an executive education course dealing with 'Evaluating Social Programmes' held at the IFMR in Chennai. The course was organized and delivered by MIT's J-PAL lab, the base of a network of development economists advocating the use of randomized trials to conclusively determine the impacts of social programmes. J-PAL (or the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab) is in some ways the epicenture of a new movement in economics, focussing on micro-level studies to impact macro-level policies.

Taught by 4 faculty members from MIT (A. Banerjee), Harvard (S. Cole, R. Pande) and New York University (R. Hanna), the course covered topics relating to understanding and designing randomized impact trials.

Innovation at General Motors? The Volt.

General Motors (GM) has been pursued for decades by competing automakers but in recent years, the news has turned exceptionally bad. Just today, they reported a 3 month loss of $15.5 billion USD, a staggering amount even considering that many of the charges are one-time charges relating to their ongoing restructuring efforts.

Losing money, stock value plummeting, their public perception poor and their product mix unsuited to the world conditions, in 2006 GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz began work on an uber-ambitious project to take on the sector of the automotive market which the other market leaders were not attacking and which they said was not possible. The 'plug-in' car, today called the 'Chevrolet Volt' had no competitors because other companies, notably hybrid leader Toyota, said it wasn't possible, and especially not possible in the 2010 model year as announced by GM.

This article discusses in very interesting detail the various ways which necessity has forced GM to change in order to allow the development of the Volt in such a short time span and the myriad innovations necessary to bring it to today's point in its development. In short order, most other leading automakers announced their own plans for plug-in cars, following GMs lead shortly after poo-pooing the idea.

I find the parallels between GM (with the Volt), Apple (with the iPod and OS X) and the grassroots innovators we work with interesting, each innovating when faced with difficult situations. It will be interesting to see if GM'ss push with a 'game-changing' product (if such cliche is permitted) will be the harbinger of a turn-around and perhaps they will return to their glory days, using innovation to maintain their automotive leadership.

Food for thought

It's not the genius who is 100 years ahead of his time but average man who is 100 years behind it.

-Robert Musil, novelist (1880-1942)

Sixth Pre Incubation Programme

The sixth pre-incubation programme for grassroots innovators will be conducted on Saturday 26th of July 2008 from 10am to 4pm at hall 1, IC&SR, IIT Madras. The purpose of this programme is to enable the innovators to innovate with market perspective and also to think through how they can address the existing problems in the society with their innovations. It also helps them to have better understanding of the challenging journey from idea to market. The programme will be led by a number of experts from various fields to conduct a series of skill and knowledge building sessions on creative thinking, the mistakes to be avoided by an innovator for making the innovation successful, intellectual properties and rights, licensing and technology transfer, investment for innovations etc. We believe that this programme will definitely help the potential innovators in bringing their innovations to life by making use of their capabilities effectively .

L-RAMP and Shaastra 2008 begin collaboration

Shaastra, an annual event celebrating the spirit of Engineering, will again be held at IIT-Madras from the 1st to the 5th of October, 2008. Coinciding with the Golden Jubilee celebrations for IIT-M, this year's event listing include the Shaastra Conclave, 5 Golden Design challenges (addressing key problems facing India) and Engenious, a design challenge event. Over 30,000 students from over 800 of India's best Engineering colleges are expected to attend.

L-RAMP is keen to support this initiative and, as a first step, has contributed 2 of the 4 challenges for the Engenious event. The challenges are:

1. Find a way to make a non-kerosene based lighting system for Rs. 100/-
2. Design a small-scale, cost-effective de-husking machine for minor millets (these include ragi, thinai, samai, kambu). The machine can be manually operated, or use a single-phase motor of no more than one HP. An innovation of this nature would help farmers add value to millets in their village, while at the same time enabling them to make nutritional, delicious snacks such as biscuits using these grains.
3. Develop a soil nutrient analysis kit which can provide information regarding the availability of 12 nutrients vital to plant growth. The participants are required to design a prototype of the kit, keeping it simple, at a reasonable cost for its provision to farmers.
4. Design a low-cost rainwater harvesting system including the water collection and storage components, suitable for a single family and costing less than Rs. 200.

Stay tuned for further announcements of collaboration between L-RAMP and Shaastra 2008.

Mark your calendars, get out your slide rulers and we hope to see you there, along with your ideas.

Press Release

As part of our services offered to innovators, L-RAMP is organizing a quarterly review meeting and a parallel session on capacity building for all the 18 incubatees on 15th July, 2008. The idea is to review the innovations, achievements, impact and plan of action in next quarter. As part of capacity building session, innovators will also get a chance to interact and share each other’s learning. L-RAMP will, too, share strategies on marketing, commercializing products and raising funds for business.

Our goal is to facilitate interaction between innovators and thus to help them take their innovations further, faster.

Fear of innovation or change

I received this word in my email inbox this morning as part of my 'Word of the Day' email from wordsmith.org

I thought it was a useful word to know as we go about our work promoting innovations and building an innovation ecosystem.

Misoneism - A hatred, fear or intolerance of innovation or change