BREAKING NEWS - It's raining ships!

Sometime back (http://entersection.blogspot.com/2008/06/bangla-chronicles-day-15.html) I had blogged about how excited I was to see a ship breaking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh. I think I had failed to mention how dangerous it is to be in a ship breaking yard and also how difficult it is to get in since they have been getting a lot of international flak on thier inhuman working and environmental conditions.

Four out of five of us that entered a ship breaking yard by sweet talking the manager, walked in with cameras in their hands. A stupid mistake! The manager immediately wanted to kick us out for bringing cameras with us and so everyone kept their cameras back in the car. I for one, had smartly placed the camera inside my pants, good thing that digital cameras are small and light. :-)



This place was a graveyard of ships from all over the world; ships were dry docked to the beach and there were people on all of these ships using hammers, saws, and metal cutting torches, tearing away each portion of the ship and selling metal scraps and other useful equipment like kitchen furnaces, lifeboats, etc. found on them. I don't need to highlight their working condition, which is generally common to find in any developing country, but I would like to describe the beach. I'm maybe used to seeing murky sea waters in Bombay, but the water here was beyond murky. It was frothing with white stuff and the beach sand was bright red (rust) in color. Definitely not the water you want to swim in.

So, as crazy as I am for action, I convinced everyone that we should take one of the boats that these people use to get to the ships. It turned out to be a truly crazy idea! We were passing between these two ships and generally watching large chunks of the ships falling into the water, when we heard a huge crackling sound like the sound of thunder ripping through the air. The back section of the ship to our right suddenly tore away and came crashing into the water. It was like watching a piece of an iceberg falling into the water. As the part sank into the water, it created a huge waves that came towards our little boat. Everyone freaked out as our boat got rocked by the waves and could have easily overturned if we were any closer to the ship. Everyone panicked and we asked our boat guy to quickly get us back to shore less any other ship pieces fell on us. True story!! Check out the video to listen to the shocked reaction.



This was truly the wildest part of our summer trip in Bangladesh. And we had our professor along with us to acknowledge how crazy Angie and me were when it came to exploring the country. LOL!

Biomimicry and Social Intrapreneur

While at the recently concluded 2008 Net Impact conference (http://www.netimpact.org/), I attended a session on biomimicry. Off the three speakers, one of them spoke on using biomimicry in business. He explained concepts such as biomes (example deserts and rainforests) as a metaphor to describe various industry sectors and how a business should understand and adapt to its biome. Being pleasantly surprised, I asked the speaker after the session to point me to papers and articles on this new and developing concept. (I'll blog more on this session later)

And as I sit here reading a paper for my class tomorrow I come across an entersectional idea on social intrapreneurs. This picture taken from the report by SustainAbility on "The Social Intrapreneurs: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers" is describing the taxonomy of social intrapreneurship. It states that an intrapreneur seamlessly moves through two tactical roles as defined by a donkey and a wolf and two strategical roles as defined by a giraffe and a beaver in order to be successful. For more on what these descriptions mean go to page 30 of the report http://www.sustainability.com/search/results.asp?searchtext=social+intrapreneurship&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0)

Here's a brief description of each animal type:

Donkey - by the very nature of business there are loads to be borne and an intrpreneur reportedly carries out some pretty basic tasks as part of their work.

Wolf - lone wolf, akin to lone voice; intrapreneurs are champion lone voices responding to issues as they arise.

Giraffe - "my head in the clouds to inspire sustainable innovation, but with my feet firmly planted on ground, alongside the elephants."

Beaver - Intrapreneurs have the potential to profoundly reshape their landscapes and to create whole cascades of new opportunity for those around them.

There couldn't be a better way to make a sticky point on an intrapreneurs skills than this!

“Yes, we can!” – A Better World by Design

A first of its kind conference hosted by students of RISD + Brown University, and for students and professionals from industrial design, graphic design, social sectors, international development, architects, entrepreneurs and educators and this is well represented in this slide presented by Steve Daniels.

In true ‘entersectional’ spirit, these students of design, organized a conference for intersectional dialogue on design for social good, where designers asked social entrepreneurs how they could help in their cause and educators from various disciplines discussed the possibility of collaborating on special projects. “I always tell students that if you cannot afford to go to a conference, then organize one and bring the participants to you”, said Denise DeLuca in awe of the conference. In doing so, these students gained goodwill and developed networks with professionals in this industry space. Brilliant!!

In the spirit of this country’s recent political triumph, the Master of Ceremonies opened the event with the “yes, we can” pitch. YES, designers can have a social-good impact; YES, collaborations bring out the best results and change for good and YES, this student collaboration put on a good conference. The conference had a good energy and a high level of passion. It was as if the recent political change had given everyone a new voice. Voices of Cameroon Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, Bernard Amadei of Engineers without Borders and Clarice Odhiambo of Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions (ACESS) were loud and passionate.

Personally, this is how I felt about the conference and I’ll borrow Jerry Seinfeld’s sarcasm to express this as clearly as I can. If you are an analytical person like me, either an engineer or a business person, you would feel like you’ve walked through a “design wash” sort of like a car wash. Imagine watching your car going through each cleaning cycle only you’re the car and the cleaning cycles are instead these awesome presentation slides, flashy computer graphics and vivid story-telling, all being controlled by a series of mac books and mac pros. Towards the end of all the brain-cleansing process you feel that “yes, you can” be a designer too or even better you might feel like you’re a designer already. The risk of going through such a design wash is when you attempt to make such cool presentation slides with awesome moving graphics. I tried it in my class yesterday. At the end of it I realized that in the process of delivering nice looking slides, I missed out on making my point! So people, stay away from designers!! (just kidding)

Talk about design having a social impact! Just being among these self-proclaimed creative thinkers where the free space of unconnected neurons in their brain is a commodity more valuable than my combined engineering and business degrees is a freeing experience and can as well be a reason for frustration. How one draws inspiration from this, is their own challenge? For me it was both. It was especially challenging since most of the language of design was alien terminology to me, which I had to quickly learn in order to make meaningful conversations. So, without further adieu, and in anticipation of a report I might be asked to write from one of my professors, here are the conference highlights for me. I feel that the conference can be placed into three buckets or better yet themes: Acupuncture, Design Thinking, and Open-source.

Acupuncture does for you what it does to a society’s social fabric - cures by creating small and accumulative ripple effect through the entire system. The following were the acupuncture points from the event.
• Architecture for Humanity (http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/about)
• African passion, check out Claricie’s vision and voice for change in Africa, an opportunity for GSSE students (http://www.cusgsse.org/) to build on the third leg of her mission i.e. to develop successful enterprises (http://acess.engineeringafrica.org/vision.php)
• “… birth of an idea is a phone call away”, Cameroon Sinclair
• “…. change .. only through … creating business activity”, Paul Polak
• Design Matters, a UN-registered non-profit housed at the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, California that has a program specifically dedicated to social entrepreneurship
• 9/11 graphic novel (http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/features/2006/08/911/911.pdf)

Design Thinking was the buzz word throughout the conference. Every designer I met or that presented talked about the importance of change in the role of designers in the development process of social projects. They talked of moving from being involved at the backend of the project to being involved at the frontend instead.

• Strategic process, a new change in designer’s involvement in any project• IDEO + Bruce Mao, were definitely the big stars of this event and sort of the lead voice in this direction
• World Bike (http://www.worldbike.org/)
• “design process starts once it is handed off”, Emily Pilloton, the director of Project H Design (http://www.projecthdesign.com/)
• “… use children to re-confirm statements made by adults”, Cameroon Sinclair’s pitch for another important strategy when designing
• Humantific, an interesting tool that profiles people for their creative process thinking, I guess a Myers Brigg’s test for designers (http://www.humantific.com/)
• Mushroom wall panels, Greensulate formula (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1637012,00.html)

Open-source – speakers at the conference were proponents for open-source software and ideas as the next revolution in computing in order to affect social change.

• “What happens when you leave”, a comment by Ross Evans
• Design competition from Architecture for Humanity (http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/challenge2009)
• Frontline SMS (http://www.frontlinesms.com/who/) developed by Ken Banks, uses the widespread use of cell phones in the developing world to let NGOs have a two-way interaction with their clients
• Ushahidi, a Kenyan phrase that means “testimony” is a platform created so that people can report news as it happens through the internet portal or even by SMS’ing (http://legacy.ushahidi.com/)
• “Customers, not consumers”, Niti Bhan requesting the change in reference to people at the lower economic bracket


I request the readers who were part of the conference to add their observations to this post.

A Better World by Design (RISD conference)

I'm at the Denver airport waiting to hop on my flight to Providence, Rhode Island for a conference on design for a better world (www.abetterworldbydesign.com).

A lot of good speakers and panelist on the schedule and I expect to learn a lot from this community of folks who want to make better and meaningful products for the poor or not so well-to-do folks.

I have been slow on updating my blog, but so much has been going on since I got back from my trip to Bangladesh. There's more to update from the summer trip and since school got back in session.

The blogger gets back on. Look forward to more posts from the conference and from the summer as well.

Cheers.

Humbleness - a virtue to understand the poor

“What is your daily income, Sir?” That was me talking to my riskshaw driver. It’s interesting how a little courteous gesture goes a long way. One question leads to a series of questions and answers. Although I don’t speak or understand Bangla (the local language) too well, we still end up having a decent conversation.

“This country is poor. It is overpopulated. There is no hope.” This was a comment coming from another conversation I had later in the day with a well-to-do businessman (let’s just call him John) in a prominent location of Dhaka city. I was trying to highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor and was giving him examples of ideas that this community was generating in order to feed their family daily.

I have a question for you folks out there, “What is it about us well-to-do class of people and our attitudes?” Why is it that we assume so much about the poor in our world? Here in Bangladesh, every lay person you talk to tells you how poor their country is. Many of them come from middle-class, well-to-do backgrounds, but yet, whenever I get into a conversation of eradicating poverty, all they like to project is the hopelessness of the poverty situation.

“International Development Enterprises (said as IDE)? What do they do?” On explaining that IDE is an NGO that works on poverty alleviation among farmers by helping them generate higher incomes, the response I get is “Why don’t they advertise or write articles in the paper informing the people of what they do, if it’s such good work?” Now here’s an idea for you IDE folks. Break away from the mold of an NGO and think of yourselves as Pepsi, Microsoft, LG or even Grameen Phone and start a massive advertising campaign.

Anyways, let’s get back to the point. The issue I’m trying to highlight is that we all like to pose questions or prove the uselessness of interesting and out-of-the-ordinary ideas. Not even giving the idea the time to mature into a more workable form. Instead, the reply I get is, “ohh…you cannot serve the poor like this”. Only if corruption is removed from this government can this country and the poor’s condition be improved. No wonder that every time I ask a Bangladeshi, “What is your opinion of Mohammed Yunus” I get strong opinionated responses such as “He has done nothing for the poor.” Or “How can you even think of providing the poor with credit? They will only sink into more poverty.” Or “He is exploiting the poor in the name of helping them.” Wow, these are pretty harsh comments coming from people who seem to only live in self-apathy.

I am amazed at the foresight and ingenuity shown by some of the people living in poverty, for example my rickshaw-wallah. This young guy managed to setup exclusive deals with the expat community in Gulshan-II (duyee), to shuttle them back-and-forth from their residences to their offices on a daily basis. He even had a cell phone and forced me into giving him my phone number so he could set up the same deal with me. When I offered this example as a possible solution to John, he merely shrugged it off saying, well this creates a class difference among the riskshaw folks and is not really taking care of poverty.

The irony of the situation is that all the above-mentioned proponents; the rickshaw-wallah, John, the well-to-do businessman and IDE, have their business influence in the vicinity of a circle (or roundabout) in Gulshan II, an area where most of the expat community lives, i.e. people who work for various NGOs and government agencies that provide relief to the poor. On this same circle, you will find poor women carrying babies or disabled people coming up to your car window begging for money. Wait a minute, did anyone stop to think of the irony of this situation? In one location you have hope, despair, goodwill, and failures. The locals talk passionately about poverty but no one wants to heed to any solution if provided to them. And yet, you have others in this same area who show determination to do something about their situation.

I guess right now, I feel like a movie screenplay writer. “Three individual stories of hope, faith, despair and ridicule. See how each one living in the same neighborhood perceives the other’s existence and eventually get to meet one another after reading one person’s blog.” My point is that it’s very easy for all of us to discount another person’s work or life without having to experience it ourselves. Here was an opportunity for me to see this. And you didn’t need to read about it on the front page of the newspaper since it was all taking place in the same neighborhood.

You guys reading this could have many opinions and comments on this. I accept them all in advance. I am merely the messenger!

Cookstoves on Boats

While on our survey of the Sundarbans, we got an awesome opportunity to check out the traditional fishing methods. The simple boats were wonderful to watch and the blue nets provided a very calm and peaceful landscape of the region. Upon inquiring we found that these farmers spend almost a week in the waters, fishing and then traveling back to the port to drop the catch and claim their money.

Ok, the point of this story is that when we saw smoke coming from the boats, it wasn’t that they were on fire. They were simply cooking. Check out the picture. A clay cookstove on a boat! It’s impressive. I had to take this picture and also comment that we saw many such cookstoves as we visited many villages in Bangladesh. None of them used the latest in rocket elbow technology that my friends at Envirofit ( http://envirofit.org/clean_cookstoves.html ) are developing. My fellow classmates of the Powermundo team ( http://www.biz.colostate.edu/ms/GSSE/ProgramOverview/Projects.htm ) should also consider Bangladesh as their next market.

The Many Faces of Grassroots Business Development

Enjoy watching our many faces from one focus group to the next and from one village to the next, as we interview 100s of farmers to identify if small engines is a business opportunity in Bangladesh.

Bangla Chronicles - Day 27

Ever since I got back from our last trip, I havn't had a chance to write about it. This trip was definitely the most gruelling and difficult, so far. More details coming later, but in the meantime here is the map that shows our next trip (zoom out to view the whole journey). We spend the next one week on our last field trip. We plan to also visit the Sundarbans (the only natural habitat of the Royal Bengal Tiger). We were told that we will also get to see some crockys and river dolphins. Hope we do, so we can share pictures with you all.


View Larger Map

Bangla Chronicles - Day 15

View Larger Map


The next field trip has finally been scheduled and our plan is to visit the Eastern (north to south) regions of Bangladesh. This will cover the areas of

1) Sylhet - Srimongal (tea garden region), Sylhet (hilly areas) and Sunamganj (called Haor in the local tongue, which means that this region is completely flooded during the monsoons),

2) Comilla - Chandpur and Noakhali (both Char regions) and

3) Chittagong - this is where I'm hoping to see some ship breaking (see pix), follow this link for videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZiKBKnesnU).





During this trip, we will be joined by one of our professors from CSU. This trip will cover a diverse geographical region of Bangladesh from the low lands that get flooded to the high lands where the mountains start to rise as you head towards India.

Design for Affordability or for Quality

For a very long time now (almost two semesters) we have been told continuously that the poor need products that are affordable. I get this and I think that we all get this. The poor cannot afford a car, so we sell them a bicycle. But over time, they no longer want a bicycle and they come back demanding a car. Why? Simply because it troublesome to drive 30 km or ~15 miles carrying a heavy load to make money delivering goods to the market. Now they want a car. Fine…we will give them a car that is a Toyota corolla but without air-conditioning and all the other fancy accessories so that it is affordable. Well…really… a four-seater car for a poor person who wants to deliver goods to the market. This is exactly where our team comes in. Before I go ahead I want to inform you that I used the car analogy to describe our situation of working with diesel engines and their need by the farmers.

We spent the entire last week interviewing 100 odd farmers in the northwestern region of Bangladesh asking them what they wanted. The unanimous answer is that they want a smaller car not a Toyota corolla. We took a step further and conducted an exercise with them. “All of you claim that you want a smaller car, but what should this small car be? Please tell us what features you would like this car to have?” So we went through an exercise called Building a Super Engine (my teammate Angie’s brainchild idea). In this exercise the farmers built the type of diesel engine they wanted with features like intended horsepower, weight, size, water pumping capacity, land irrigation capacity, utility, price, etc.

What ended up happening was that farmers were desiring an engine that is 1-2 hp, small in weight (25-30 kg), irrigated 2 acres of land (at least), lasted for 15 years (at least), priced at 6000 – 7000 Taka ($80 - $100 using $1 = 68 Taka conversion factor) and could be used for irrigation mainly but also for post-harvest activities. We asked this of all the farmers we interviewed and consistently this was their response.

Wait a minute; I was under the impression that poor people desired affordable products only. Where did all these other requirements for quality come from? Well, turns out they are people too and they too like all of us desire the most for the least. So, this means that a product needs to be designed that is not only affordable but has quality as well. Why is quality important? According to them, if they can use the product for 15 years straight without major repairs and lower fuel consumption, that is their operational costs are low; then they have the potential to increase their income even more.

It then seems that products for the poor or the base of the pyramid (BOP) market have to be designed not only for affordability but for quality also. Well then here’s a question for you, would rather buy a mp3 player from a Chinese company or from a Japanese company like SONY, the difference being the former is affordable and the later is durable. I guess you might answer that it depends; maybe it depends on its functionality, which is to listen to music. If the same question were about buying a car, you would go with a Japanese manufacturer and not a Chinese one because now you want durability and efficiency. In our diesel engine case then the need is for both functionality and durability i.e. a Japanese product made in China.

Bangla Chronicles - Day 10

We are back from a long and exciting journey to the Northwestern part of Bangladesh called the Rangpur Division (see google map in last blog). In total, we visited 6 villages, met with at least 100 farmers (women and men), visited manufacturers of pumps and retailers of engines and lastly met with a government organization called Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC). We took tons of pictures and videos, conducted various focus groups, watched engines and treadle pumps being operated.

There were some frustrating, sad and happy moments. It was sometimes frustrating to get information from farmers because our perception and their perception of the questions or the answers was always different and getting through the communication barrier was not always a smooth process. This required asking similar questions in different ways. Plus it was a learning experience for us since we had to understand the land, the people and the environment being that it changed village to village.

One particular interview was a sad moment for us. There was a group of women and a group of men. All the men owned their own land and worked on it, while the women did not own land so would work on other people's land. When we would ask any questions, only the men would talk and provide opinions. Many times we had to ask the men to keep quiet in order to get responses from the women. This part was not the sad aspect. The sad aspect was that because the women did not own land, they did not want to provide any opinions or comments. To them, our interview was of no use to them because they were under this constant fear of losing their jobs every season. Because of their lack of a sustainable job, they did not show any intent to buy an engine that could help solve their problems. When you don't own land, why would anyone want to invest in a new technology? This was sad to see. And no matter how we put the question to try and understand their situation better to find an appropriate solution, it always felt hopeless.

There were happy moments as well primarily when farmers would say that they want to buy our product now if available. We saw a lot of interest for our product and were encouraged by the response we received.

Overall, our stay was smooth. The last three days, however we stayed in a hotel that wasn't very clean. I was fine with the living condition, but Angelina was grossed out. She also had a tough time dealing with insects since this city had a lot of flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and other bugs you would normally not see. The temperature was pretty hot the whole time. And humidity was high also. When we sat with the farmers, we would be sweating profusely. One particular day the temperature was easily 37 C.

Life here is the same as it would be in India. But Bangladeshi people are very different. Not a lot of work is available so people generally gather around any new event or phenomenon and constantly stare at you. You feel like asking them, "kuch aur kaam nahi hai kai" (translated - "don't you have any other work?") ....lol.... but you tend to realize that this is the situation all over the country whether in the city or in the villages. And it doesn't matter if you are a tourist or a local, they will still behave like that.

I'm having fun and enjoying my stay here. We are now going to be in Dhaka for the whole week, preparing for our next trip. We plan to visit all the regions of the country. This week we will also try to meet with government agencies, institutions and private organizations.

Bangla Chronicles - Day 2

There's lots to talk about on day 2, but for now here's a map of what we have planed for our field trip to the northwest region of Bangladesh. See google maps link below.


View Larger Map

We leave on Sunday (it's the start of the week here) and come back on Friday spending two days in Bogra and Rangpur and a day in a place not identifiable on the map called Kurigram (Chars region). Chars refers to the river islands that a river makes along its path and Kurigram is a place close to the river Brahmaputra (or Jamuna in the local tongue).

Bogra is known for its rapid industrialization of agricultural products including diesel engines. This is where we hope to meet with retailers and manufacturers. Rangpur also has a similar industry but here we hope to meet more of the farmers and the same is the case for Kurigram.

More detail stories on why these being the choice for our first field trip and more interesting tales from Dhaka to follow.

Allah Hafiz.

Bangla Chronicles - Day 1

We made it to Bangladesh this morning at 6:15 am. I have to say, I felt like I was arriving into Bombay airport; the same look, feel and even smell…that smell of moist air inside a damp building.

However, unlike Bombay airport immigration and customs went real smooth, in fact so smooth that the customs guys were drinking chai in one corner not bothered about passengers leaving or entering the airport building.

OMG…. another reason why I felt like I was home was because of the roads, the people, the cars, buses, trees all lined in the same way, traffic maneuvering the same way, double decker buses made by the same company as in Bombay; everything’s the same except the language.

My teammate Angelina on the other hand is meeting her first challenge, the HEAT. It was 6am and the captain on the British Airways flight declared that the outside temperature was 23C, which is like 86F…yes can you imagine temperatures above 80F and its only 6am. She’s already drinking tons of water, getting paranoid. She’s asking around the IDE staff about malaria, Internet access, electricity, etc. It is interesting to observe someone asking a lot of questions, trying to cover their bases when they are not local to a region. Me on the other hand, I feel like I know this place already. Let’s see how long this feeling will last for me…lol.

Our first interaction with the IDE staff and I’m already worried. Information is being thrown at us, suggestions are being made and judgments are being passed. I’m feeling the pressure of heeding to their statements instead of focusing on what our team needs to achieve. On this first day I realized something that I had forgotten about that is people in the developing world have strong opinions that can alter your thoughts and plan. Our goal now is to stick with what we believe in and to achieve what we came out to do here.

Our first task will be to organize ourselves, plan our trip and share this schedule with the IDE staff.

In case if you're curious to know where I am exactly...here's a link to the map.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=115636423745751691386.00044dcca19d1db4ecaca

Onward to Bangladesh

So the time is finally here when we head out to our countries of interest. My team of 4 is breaking up into two to conduct market study in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. We spend 6 weeks there to meet with farmers, conduct focus groups, meet with distributors and retailers and to meet with potential manufacturers of micro-diesel engines. That's right, we're doing all this to find out if we can sell our 1 horsepower micro-diesel engines to the poor farmers for irrigation purposes.

My team, then gets together in India to meet with some other successful organizations to learn about their business models of selling products to the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market for two weeks.

Exciting times. I hope to keep everyone abreast of our activities in Bangladesh (since that's where I'm going). Pictures and exciting stories coming up.

Cheers.

Simply Enterprising

A Grameen Bank project called Village Phone in Uganda.

Why Fly?

As I’m flying back to Denver and look out the airplane window into a quiet and vast field of clouds, I’m taken back to my several trips home. Home in this case being both Doha and Bombay.

The choice of music playing in my ears: Motorcycle Diaries, “Apertura” (http://www.last.fm/music/Gustavo+Santaolalla/_/Apertura).

It’s a journey from my present to my past. The flight is the same, the white clouds are the same, but the feeling is different. How interesting it is, that just the thought of flying home vs. flying back to Denver evokes a different emotion.

In today’s time we have to dig deeper into our emotions to elicit the appropriate feelings. There was a time during my adolescent years when traveling in a bus would be associated with a certain emotion versus traveling in a train. And the type of bus or train I traveled in mattered, since each one would have a different feel to it. A specific space in that left brain (or right for left-handers) for a specific travel experience.

Track changes to “To be Fee” by Mike Oldfield (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd7vwA9kXEM).

I’m reminded of a book I read for a class sometime ago called The Clock of Long Now (http://www.longnow.org/about/). The premise of the book is that the concept of time in today’s society is quite lost. Sorry, not concept, but respect for time is lost. The earth’s rotation around the sun: 365 and 1/4^th days. Compare this to our natural lifetime; in the first 24 hours of being born we change from being listeners to the outside world to being a part of its voice. In 365 ¼ days we change from a hand-foot crawl (slow) experience to a walking (fast) experience. Are we supposed to lose sense of time or better yet respect that each experience teaches us to respect time more.

Track changes to “Mera Jahan” from the movie Tare Zameen Par (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rasW63-LL9A), a bollywood track that sings about the life, a disabled child sees and experiences.

Anyway, back to my plane ride story. In a couple of months I’ll be taking another plane ride, all the way to the other side of the world, to Bangladesh. I express the feeling of joy, excitement and maybe even a sense of home (??). That land is still my land where the people are still my people. I don’t have any friends or family there, yet there is a connection. I know that I’ll be treated as family and taken care of as one of them. Sorry if I digressed again. The point being that in preparation for our team’s summer trip for a field study, I initially wanted to travel to a number of countries to get a general idea of the needs of the farmers: 3 weeks in Bangladesh, 3 weeks in Nepal and 3 weeks in Ethiopia. But now I think differently. As I sit by the window looking at the clouds, I realize that the land beneath it has changed dramatically and I haven’t walked with the land to understand this change.

Yes, I come from a high-context culture and we tend to not get to the point immediately and yes, you are dying to know why I write this. So let me just conclude here as my song and playlist nears its end. I want to breath the soil, air and water of the places I visit in Bangladesh. I want to live under a $1/day for a week and feel life like the inside of my skin among these poor farmers. I want to slow time down and crawl like a child and get my hands and feet dirty playing in the fields. Be happy and give happiness.

Do give yourself that change and time to live a different life among a different culture and time zone. Maybe the time zones we have setup globally should be changed to accommodate the true time. If you travel to the US, you wear a wrist-watch; when you go down to the Amazon, you watch the sun rise and set and when you live among the poor farmers, you follow a crop cycle.

I had to change to a new song that fits this theme so well. Another bollywood song and, of course, a love song. But the concept of time fits in perfectly. Song: “Pehli Nazar Mein” from the movie Race (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiaV67y_bNM). The song asks you to come embrace the present, because only when you do so will time stop and last forever. Time will only begin again when you stop loving, enjoying and being happy. What do you think?

Yes, you must be wondering that the last paragraph was meant to be the concluding one. But remember, I come from a culture for whom time is circular. I stop to start again. My apologies to all the linear time keepers. But if you have read this far, then you will definitely enjoy reading further.

I consider New Mexico my home in the US. Why? Because it was there that time stopped for me. For four years I loved and lived every sunset, thunderstorm, climbing experience. I met women and grew my hair long. This child became a teenager there. But then the time came to move out of the house and become a more responsible person. The time has come to go after my true calling (yeah I actually used this term although it is taboo and doesn’t mean much). Time to make an impact in the world to empower my fellow world or global citizens (more on this phrase later) and myself.

My plane just turned, which means we will be arriving to Denver soon. In the end, I want to leave you with a few keywords: “LOOK OUT THE WINDOW OF YOUR PLANE, CAR or TRAIN or WHATEVER, Slow your time!!

I leave you with “Mi’Ma’amakim” from The Idan Rachel Project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0PWukxRV8U&NR=1), sung in Hebrew and an Ethiopian language.

Cheers!!

Wake Forest Competition

The Small Engines team just got back from an exciting business plan competition called the Elevator Competition at the Wake Forest Business School in the town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The setup:

· Two rounds of an elevator pitch up 27 floors of the tallest building in the city. That’s right…we actually are in an elevator (check videos of last year’s competition) with a social investor and pitch our idea and business to them within 2 minutes. There’s a timekeeper that monitors the 2 minutes. And no…it’s not a straight elevator ride. We go up 16 floors, walk across the hall to another set of elevators that then goes up to the 27^th floor. In this much time, you could also get interrupted for questions, which happened to us in the first round. On the second time up, a local television crew accompanied us.

· If you do well on the elevator rounds, you are then invited to the final 20-minute presentation round. Only 5 teams out of the 14 in the social category of the competition (which we were part of) are invited. We got in and then made our 20-minute presentation. We even passed around our prototype, which got everyone’s curiosity up and started a barrage of questions. The judges really started nailing us on the prototype/product. “What is the price point?” “If you sell it for $150, how can the farmer afford it?” “Why diesel?” “What is your manufacturing strategy?” “If you are going to license the technology and distribute it using IDE’s network, what are your margins like?” “What are the added costs for the farmer in order to change over to your product; hence what will be the total costs of the product to the farmer on top of the $150 for the engine?” “Is this a sustainable solution or model in the long-term?” Excellent questions!! We had answers for a number of these questions but we also left some questions unanswered since we are expecting our summer trip to provide us with answers to these questions. One of the judges advised us to in fact humor the judges next time and give them at least one scenario even though we don’t know if that will be the strategy we adopt in the future. Good point!!

In the end the judges were left with making a decision over who should be the ideal team to fund. The decision was over two distinctive points among the teams, early-stage vs. later-stage. We represented early-stage teams while Bonseye Guides represent later-stage teams who had a working product and an initial market test to show. The decision also boiled down to “should we fund teams that show large social impacts in the long-term or teams that seem to be more financially sustainable in the long-term?” We lost on both counts as per judge’s comments. They went with the team that had a proof-of-market and showed financial sustainability.

These glaring differences in such competitions are key aspects that make a strong team, a winning team. This experience definitely taught us how to improve our idea and further strengthen our business plan.

Max has a romantic evening with his Collective 'I'

On valentine's day my friends and I decided to have a romantic evening with Peter Senge! He's an MIT professor and the author of the book "The 5th Discipline". I must say that it was unlike any valentine evening I've had. It was a valentine evening between me and the Collective 'I'.

The topic was titled, “Collective Wisdom for Profound Innovation and Change”. Peter spent the entire one-hour of his talk defining what this topic meant and why it was chosen. The most profound words from Peter were his sticky one-liners. A few samples include, “Average market price of coffee is equal to half the cost of growing coffee” in reference to fair trade efforts in growing coffee, “Average pound of food in America travels 2000 miles” in reference to sustainability of globalization, “$500 billion is spent on subsidizing agriculture in the US and Europe” in reference to unsustainable agriculture practices, “An average American consumes 1 ton of extracted natural resources per person per day and 10-15% of it is discarded or wasted (not recyclable) to support their lifestyle”, in reference to the change we need to make in our present consumerism and my personal favorite “We dig holes in the ground and burn stuff” in reference to our current economic practices to manufacturing products.

Peter basically explained the 3 aspects of the topic, viz. Collective wisdom, Profound Innovation and Profound Change and I’ll try my best to highlight them here.

1. Collective wisdom: “What does collective wisdom mean?” was the question posed to the audience. There were a number of varied answers to the question. His explanation started with the statement that the natives have a philosophy of 7 generations. That includes you, your parents, grandparents and great grandparents and their combined knowledge becomes your collective wisdom. They would say that pay attention on what it means to be alive and you will be in the company of seven generations. Peter’s point is that in today’s business world, we spend too much time on the ‘here’ and ‘now’ whereas we should be mobilizing the creative wisdom of each one of us. He gave another example of a statement that a group of world leaders came up with sometime after Gandhi’s death, “It is not an era of individual leaders; there’s not enough of them.” We need that critical mass of collective wisdom and leaders if we are to be sustainable organizations, teams or societies.

2. Profound Innovation: The origin of the Indo-European word “leader” comes from ‘Lith’, which means ‘to step across the threshold’ and it is typically associated with death. Another meaning comes from the French word ‘Le Coeur’, which means ‘the heart’. You need the heart to lead, to innovate and to create a positive impact. Peter brings in the aspect of sustainability at this point and talks about what it takes to make a profound impact. But before that he asked everyone what sustainability meant. Following a number of right answers to the question, he then asked everyone “For what?” We all want to be sustainable in our actions and decisions. But for what? “To become a human being”, was his response; sustainability is a need or reliability in order to become a human being over the course of time. The natives say that you are born a body and become a human being over your lifetime. And the South Africans have a philosophy that we become a human being in relationship to other human beings. Our profound impact comes from our relationships to other human or nature; our relationship to our team and not our individual successes or needs.

3. Profound Change: Change comes with its share of challenges, which is equivalent to being ‘not easy’. What is the change that is required in today’s world? This is where he shows everyone a simple chart with 6 graphs showing the reducing price of wheat, soybean, corn and three other agri-based products from 1950 onwards to 2000. A sample picture is shown here and you can see how low the prices had gone over 3 decades. The question put forth was, “thinking from the perspective of a whole system, how can we possibly support the farmers with such an economic system?” This means that we would have to continue subsidizing the cost of production in our farms. And this also means that, this drives increase in consumerism over time. The one interesting statement he made was that if we have to fight terrorism then we should change the way we do agriculture. People, who cannot support their life as farmers, leave their homes to move to urban centers and eventually you have large slums in big cities. And then the people who grow rich off this system, put money into charities to pay for the aftereffects of this system of globalization. A change is required in this system. Many corporations are taking up this challenge. For example, Costco is piloting a project to look at the totality of the food value chain and have established that three things need to happen and this includes transparency, giving face to who grew it and most importantly, a critical mass of benevolent and ethical demand i.e. people who care.
(picture source: http://burnickblog.sovereignsociety.com/global_markets/index.html)

He concluded by saying that we are born into relationships and if our standard of living is dependent on driving you to poverty then we cannot survive or be sustainable for too long. “You can’t buy Relationships, you can only give Relatedness”.

Spring is here

So, it's been a month since school got back into session. So far so good!! Yeah...I don't want to spend the next few sentences expressing my emotions about how I feel about this. But let's not digress. This is a new semester all over and exciting times to find the many intersections between the different courses, readings, assignments, and talks.

Last semester (Fall) was a huge high for me in this respect. This time we have classes in Law & Ethics. I'm particularly excited about this class only because the curriculum is so diverse from basic law to environmental to ethics issues and human psychology, and the readings are particularly from some of my favorite authors. Then we have an Entrepreneurship course that is focused on ventures in the green, environmental areas like wind, solar, biomass, natural foods, etc. What is of particular interest is that the 1st part of this will be focused on environmental economics. Then we move on to Computer Info. Systems. Everything from how to organize your projects to how to setup a e-commerce website is what we will be learning and putting together for our team projects. Awesome!! Finally my personal challenge, Finance. Need I say anything more. It is definitely the most important class since every investor in the world, social or not will look at these to check the sanity in my ideas (wish they would just trust me). Anyways..so I need to know their language in order to converse with them!!

Well...I'll end here with an 'e'ntersectional thought. When you go out there today into the world, whether you are an entrepreneur or an engineer or a doctor or a designer; doesn't matter, make sure that you follow your 'Tropism'.

Tropism - Take a potted plant and place it anywhere in your room. You will find that the plant or its flowers will start growing in the direction of the sunlight. This affinity of the plant to wards the light is generally defined as tropism. So, find your tropism; find that activity or aspect of life that draws you to it because it provides you with an avenue to growth.

Pay my toll !!

“WHAT? You paid someone else’s toll? Someone you don’t know?” was my loud shriek after I had just heard from my San Francisco friend. This has got to be the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. Have you ever heard of anyone paying someone else’s toll? The next obvious question any average Indian would ask, which I did, was “So how much was the toll?” “It was only $3”, my friend replied. So instead of asking another question or commenting on what she had done I wondered, if I would ever do something like that. Why would I ever want to part with my money for some random person whom I have never met or ever will meet?

I then anticipated a cool story from her. Something from that movie or book, “Pay it Forward”; maybe she happened to meet that guy whose toll she paid and he treated her to dinner, which turned into a date or maybe she was paid back for it by her boss giving her a salary raise. So I asked her, “What happened then?” “Nothing,” was her quick and boring response. “Well, then why would you do such a thing?” “Because it’s cool to watch people’s reaction after you do such a thing.” “What kind of reactions have you gotten then?” “This one time, there was a group of teenagers coming from a party and they raced quickly to my car and screamed out the window, ‘you rock’, ‘you’re awesome’, ‘that was totally cool, man”. And this other time, there was an old couple behind me and they stopped next to me at a red light and gave me their thanks and blessings. It’s fun to see how people respond.” “WOW!” was the only reaction I could think of. It started to slowly make some sense to me, if there was anything sensible about it. One could say that she was feeding her ego or she was showing off. But the people whose toll she paid did not think so. They must have been so happy and excited that they would have done it for someone else later or their day must have taken a higher and happier upswing.

I realized then at that moment that this was such a simple and easy way to make people laugh or happy on a daily basis. How many times in a day do we make a good and nice gesture for people we don’t know? Of course, there’s always that clerk behind the register who we say hi to and wish them a good day. But we do that only when we are on our feet and in contact with them. But today’s world is fast moving; everyone’s in their cars and the personal touch we should be having with people is missing. Paying someone’s toll was a good way to make that nice gesture while being in your car!! Brilliant!

Forget about those poor people in the developing world. Let’s talk about you and me. What can I do to make your day go better and how can you return the favor to me, all this while driving? Here’s an idea for intersectional learning (http://www.themedicieffect.com/ or http://www.themedicieffect.typepad.com/). If you have any other ideas other than paying toll, let’s hear it.