卦Trigram 2.0

There’s an interesting article over on Harvard Business Publishing that touches many of my current areas of interest.
India’s Rural Innovations: Can They Scale? by Navi Radjou discusses his initial findings from a research trip to India. There are three key points that strike me:

1. That businesses are “single-mindedly targeting the rural market”;
2. That rural farmers are fantastic innovators – what Niti Bhan calls jugaad, and here in China would be called shanzhai;
3. That there is already a database recording these innovations, the Honeybee Network.

Radjou points out that many of these innovations don’t travel far; the knowledge is never available to help other communities in India. He wonders how this can be changed, and promises some ideas – but can I flag up my view that this is already too limited in scope? Instead, let’s ask how farmers in Hebei Province, or Lesotho, could access these ideas….

For an example, Radjou points us to the Mitti Cool terracotta refrigerators. I wonder if similar ideas are being used in Xinjiang province – or could be? How about Lesotho?