At the end of the day, time is powerful

At the end of my days, I have the impression that what happened this morning happened yesterday. I get so many things done within a day and yet, I don’t get enough done. And I (almost) never get tired of this. That’s because electricity is in the air of MIT.

…and MIT students are powered up

In hindsight, “Time is your most precious resource here”

Our MSMS program manager, Chanh, told us time would be our most precious and scarce resource at MIT. And now that 7 months have gone by, I agree that I couldn’t have said it better… 24 hours per day and two semesters are just too short. There are so many interesting things to do and to explore on campus, in Cambridge (I am taking classes at the Harvard Kennedy School, I couldn’t resist…), In Boston, and in the U.S. that I wish I had more time. A few decades more as an MIT student is all I’m asking for.

And at any time of the day, there will always be time for one or two geeky jokes

Because time is the object of this post, I couldn’t resist showing you this:

The two geekiest clocks I have ever seen in my entire life…

The mathematician clock

The ‘I don’t understand clock’

And if you think that this is geeky, let me tell you these clocks are at our Entrepreneurship center. I should go to the Engineering and Science Departments to see what kind of jokes they would be able to come up with.

But, for now, I’ll leave you with an extract of the list of 101 things to do before graduating from MIT, just to give you an overview:

2) eat liquid nitrogen ice cream
77) wander around campus underground
89) count your steps down the infinite corridor

And the list is long…

He’s also an astounding orchestra conductor. The concert he gave Sunday was pure mastering and was sublime.

Maestro, let the music start!

Prior to the talk he gave tonight, he invited 70 of MIT students to attend the Boston Philarmonic Orchestra concert he conducted last Sunday. As he always does, prior to a concert, he gave a talk to explain the program and the music we were going to hear. Maestro Zander believes classical music should be for everyone and, since 1979, has been conducting the Boston Philarmonic Orchestra, which vision is ‘passion of music making without boundaries’.

After the talk, the music began and took our breath away.  My attention was focused on the stage and the musicians all the time. It seemed I couldn’t concentrate on anything else but the music. I couldn’t think about my shopping list or the topic thesis that had been torturing my mind lately, even if I wanted to. The musicians were taking all the concentration I had and concentrating it in their performance. That’s what makes Maestro Zander exceptional to me: taking your mind on a two hour journey with Sibelius, Profokiev and Strauss and forbiding any parasitic thoughts to embark on that journey with you.

Hypnotization at the Sanders Theater, Harvard University

Maestro Zanders was once the professor of Stefan Jackiw. The 28-year-old musician was interpreting Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63 by Prokofiev last Sunday. I can’t find the words to express how moving his music was and how he managed to transport me from my seat to his harmonious world. Here’s a performance I came accross on YouTube that talks for itself.

He has genius, undoubtedly. But I suspect Bejamin Zanders’ Art of Possibility has something to do with it…

The Art of Possibility

Let’s skip to tonight and the talk Benjamin Zanders was giving on MIT campus. What was this talk about? I was expecting he would tell us about classical music. He did, for the first last minutes. And for the remaining 1 hour and a half, Maestro Zanders talked about the Art of Possibility.

Benjamin Zander’s father was Jewish and had fled from Germany under the Nazi regime. He was interned in a camp on the Isle of Man during WW-2 for two years. Seeing his inmates so desperate, he decided to start a university in the camp. The next thing he knew, 40 classes were running weekly, without books, blackboards, papers or professors. “People were simply talking to each other and sharing their knowledge in one of the most desperate conditions”. It isn’t the circumstances that are crucial but the opportunities we see in them. That is the art of possibility Benjamin Zanders is talking about.

And what has this to do with the role of an orchestra conductor?

Leadership and shining eyes

When he was 45, Benjamin Zanders had a revelation. The conductor doesn’t make any sound. The power of the conductor comes from its power to awaken possibilities in the musicians it conducts. And to measure this, Maestro Zanders has a good monitoring tool: he looks at how shiny his musician’s eyes are. And his goal is to conduct a shiny eyes orchestra, and empower his musicians to tell the story he wants to tell through their instruments.

How does he measure his success at the end of the day? He recalls all the eyes he made shine. And then he asks us: “Who am I being if my musicians’ eyes are not shining?”.

Benjamin Zanders expresses unconditional trust towards his musicians. He gives them As even before hearing them for the first time. In this way, his musicians feel they are able to accomplish anything he envisions. He creates an excellent relationship with them and empowers them to take risks, to exceed their own expectations and to overcome their fear of failing. And, from what I have seen (and heard), it seems to be working pretty well with the musicians he conducts.

What’s next?

This seems to be working extremely well in his case.

How about applying this vision to other professions? Could we apply this vision to CEOs of companies? Benjamin Zanders has his idea on the matter. He gives talks to C-level executives who are inspired by his experience as a conductor and his capacity to achieve astounding results with his musicians and students. He gave a TED Talk in 2009, participated in several World Economic Forum conferences, travels around the world to disseminate his vision.

Finally, here are a few next steps I will follow and I recommend:

- Watch (again and again) Maestro Zander’s TED Talk and this amazing Shining Eyes Talk. These are 34 minutes very much worth of your time,

- Order The Art of Possibility Benjamin Zander co-authored with his life partner, Rosamund Stone Zander, to start practicing the art of making eyes shine,

- Continue the conversation through classical music. Maestro Zander suggested Mahler Symphony number 9. But there are millions of options. The world is full of possibilities, I have been told.

Speaking of possibility… a next concert to come

Today, a week after I first published this post, I received a call from Benjamin Zander. He asked me to invite the MIT community to the concert he will be conducting on Sunday, November 18th.

A few words on the concert, in Maestro Zander’s own words: “The program is so riveting and powerful that I cannot imagine that you will not  be transfixed by the experience. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is one of the  most moving statements of courage in the face of oppression ever composed. The  other work on the program is the single most popular piano concerto, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with George Li, a genius young pianist who is causing a sensation in the music world. I will be explaining the music in the pre-concert talk, as I always do, at 1:45, with the concert beginning at 3:00.”

The possibility is all yours to decide now. Especially since MIT students are offered a special discount and can attend the concert for $8. You can call the Boston Philarmonic Office to book your ticket ( 617.236.0999) or follow this link to the concert booking. Feel free to contact me if you need the special MIT code.

I already have my ticket, how about you?

We were all standing in front of this wonderful piece of art, while trying to understand how studying in MIT could possibly be related to drinking from a firehose…

And then, I became an MIT student and started to understand what Jerome Weisner, MIT’s President from 1971 to 1980, meant by alluding to the fire-hose…

MIT stands for Madassussetts Institute of Technology

Only such an Institution would have students building a water fountain with a fire-hose…

The mission statement of MIT states: “We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind”.

This statement sounds ambitious. And I agree it is. But so is MIT: its facilities, its ressources, its dedicated staff, its passionate professors, its entrepreneurial spirit… all of these components make the students crazy enough to believe in the statement.

Studying at MIT feels like being on a treasure island

I wouldn’t be able to list all the treasures I have found so far at MIT. I feel richer everyday, even though my bank account says the contrary.

Choosing my classes felt like choosing five or six items from an island that has infinite treasures. I was spoiled, I knew it. But I didn’t feel satisfied. Worse than that: I felt frustrated.

MIT is frustrating because you can’t drink all the water from the fire hose

You wish you had more time, you wish you were given the chance to have more than 24 hours within a day, you wish your body could commute within seconds in this huge campus, you wish an MIT neuroscience student could come up with an invention enabling you to study or work on your business plan while you sleep. …And, as a business student, you wish you would partner with this engineer to commercialize that invention.

I remember Giacommo, an MSMS alumni, telling me studying at MIT felt like being a child in a huge candy shop:  he wanted to take all those candies back home. And he was right, it really does feel like being in a candy shop… or drinking from a firehose!

MIT is intense, just like the fire hose’s pressure

MIT is frustrating at the beginning. And then, you make tough and wise decisions and drop this class, decide to focus on your goals and do all that’s in your power to reach them.

And that’s when it becomes… intense

And it feels like living several days within a day.

Going from that class to the other, conducting this interview with my marketing team mates, attending this workshop on networking, handing in that system design assignment we spent half our week-end working on, giving that improvised pitch in front of the New Enterprises classmates, bumping into this computer science PhD that studied in HEC with me, learning great tips from him,  trying to convince my classmates to work on my business idea, finding the time to eat and sleep… All this in the very same day.

Being a student at MIT won’t happen twice, that fire hose will help me make the most of it. No wonder MIT is such an amazing place to be, the fire hose drinking fountain was invented there…

Coast of Rio in 1992 and in 2012

Since I have been to the Rio+20 official launch in Paris a week ago, I don’t know which voice I should listen to: the one who is optimistic and still believes some important measures can be taken in favour of the environment (voice 1) or the disillusioned voice who’s been working on the topic for 6 months and doesn’t have many expectations regarding the outcomes of this Summit (voice n°2).

I have decided to let both voices speak. We can then wait until the end of the Summit to figure out which voice (if any) was right.

So what is Rio+20 all about?

Voice n°1: “Rio+20 is a UN-organized Summit focused on Sustainable Development that will take place at the end of this week in Rio de Janeiro. It’s going to be the biggest international Summit ever, since more than 194 countries will be represented to discuss about a common agenda on Sustainable Development. Many things have evolved in the past 20 years: back in 1992, when the first Earth Summit took place in Rio de Janeiro, many countries were denying the ‘global warming’ issue. Today, negotiators from all countries are discussing about ‘green economy’ and about limiting our impact on the planet. There is consensus that we cannot keep on following the same pace of consumption and model of development”.

Voice n°2: “Are you talking about Rio+20? Did you mean Rio plus 0? Because many say that not much has been done in the last 20 years in terms of sustainable development. Ok, today the UN is talking about the ‘green economy’ but what is behind that? It seems governments and participants in the official conference are trying to make this concept as light as possible because their concerns are elsewhere: the crisis is looming in Europe, many developing countries are starting to thrive and don’t want to hear about slowing things down or going ‘greener’,  elections will be held in the U.S., etc. How do you think significant steps can be taken without political endorsement? Mr. Obama, Ms. Merkel, and Mr. Cameron said they wouldn’t attend. That’s a strong message.”

Voice n°1: “Well, they won’t be there but they will surely be represented. And what is special about this event is that not only the powerful have a say in the debate. The UN has put in place a participative method to write the final text (called Draft Zero-’The Future We Want’) and animate the debate: it has invited civil society to make propositions for the Draft Zero document, and invited Major Groups (representing civil society) to participate to the negotiations and hold conferences during the official Summit. Not only politicians that are invited to participate. For the first time in history, civil society has a significant role to play in the official negotiations and debate.”

“The Future we want” : the official logo for the conference

Voice n°2: “If you hear what civil society says about the ‘participative’ process, it doesn’t seem to satisfy them at all. The Major Groups have complained since January that their voices weren’t listened to. And for several months, members of civil society have been voicing their concerns about the turns of events that could take place in the Rio+20 official Summit. This extract from a letter cosigned by Greenpeace, Oxfam and other big NGOs is pretty eloquent: “The Rio+20 Summit looks set to add almost nothing to global efforts to deliver sustainable development”.

Voice n°1: “I think you cannot only listen to organizations whose role is to emphasize what is wrong about the process, not was is right.”

Voice n°2: “But the General Secretary of the Conference himself recently asked the negotiators to accelerate the process and to “overcome narrow and short-term interests”. At the end of the ‘3 days last chance negotiations’ that took place last week-end, they had only agreed on 38% of the content of the corrected Draft Zero and that they disagreed on fundamental issues. The negotiation process is so far from its initial objective that Brasil has decided to take the leadership. The Brazilian Committee has written a new document from scratch, letting aside all points of disagreements. The European Union has declared that this text “lacks ambition”. What else do you need to be convinced?”

194 states and members of civil society were invited to negotiate

Voice n°1: “I guess your arguments are strong. However, I’d like the turn of events to prove you wrong. Rio+20 has caught a lot of media attention, billions of eyes are focused on the Rio+20 Summit and this attention might have an unexpected impact. More importantly, Rio+20 is going to last 3 days. Not all the problems will be solved then, that’s obvious. We’ll need to wait a while and see if it triggered a positive dynamics”.

For those who can’t wait to wait, the People’s Summit organizers are calling for a day of global struggles today. Let’s see how they will voice their concerns and if those voices reach the official Summit, starting tomorrow.

After discovering TED about a year ago, I was impatient of seeing one in real and I was not disappointed.

TED has something magical

Attending a TEDx conference is like being at a play: the speakers are usually very well prepared and are telling you a story that takes you out of your chair. And from there, you travel on another planet, in another dimension or in someone else’s shoes.

But what’s magical about TED is that there is no fiction. You travel out of space, you travel with new lenses and with very different point of views but you stay in the real world.

“Stop thinking something small isn’t big”

The first speaker at this TEDx conference made me think a lot. His company, which employs 90% of disabled people, currently involves 70 people in the South of France. After explaining his concept and his vision, he paused. “You will ask me what is my initiative compared to the financial and industrial giants that surround us? and I will answer: stop thinking something small isn’t big. That’s when you can start making a difference”.

And the speaker that followed proved us that small CAN be big. She has been working on the Wikipedia project since 2001 and showed us a screen print of what the website was like back then. Wikipedia was small and ugly.

And today, well, Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website in the world. It’s not that small anymore.

This reminded me of a quote: “Start small, fail small, learn big”

I often think about this quote and truly believe the most important step is to start. I read Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the start long back and that’s what I recall in substance: don’t theorize too much, experiment and learn from what reality tells you.

Wikipedia was small and ugly but it was there: contributors could start working on it and make it beautiful.

Start to start by prototyping

This is one critical step when you are designing a new concept or idea: prototyping. Prototyping confronts your idea to the reaction of the real world.

Did you know TED was created in 1984 and that its first event, despite its high quality speakers, was a financial loss? It took 6 years for its founders to launch a second event. By then, they had found the right formula and the audience was ready.

Now imagine TED founders had decided to start big without going through this prototyping and adjusting episode. They would perhaps have organized events in various cities, spending much more and therefore reducing their chances of recovery from this testing phase.

The first TED prototype was not a success. But their founders, like many changemakers knew the following:

Impossible is temporary

And when you think about it, before becoming successful, most of the things were completely impossible: flying (take a plane), seeing the invisible (use X-rays), fit an orchestra in your pocket (put your mp3 player in there), …

The conclusion of my encounter with TED is the following: think HUGE, start SMALL, fail SMALL, learn BIG and reiterate the process until impossible is TINY and your project becomes REALITY. As simple as TED.

]]> http://creatingbridges.org/2012/03/26/how-i-met-tedx-in-paris/feed/ 0 zcoralie Before the magic started Testing your idea is a good one... http://creatingbridges.org/2012/02/28/ekgaon-bridging-i-t-and-indian-farmers-through-the-cloud/ http://creatingbridges.org/2012/02/28/ekgaon-bridging-i-t-and-indian-farmers-through-the-cloud/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:13:33 +0000 Coralie http://creatingbridges.org/?p=437 Continue reading →]]> Ekgaon means ‘One village’ in Hindi. Since Ekgaon’s playground is India, you will soon understand this is not any kind of village.

The first time I heard about Ekgaon was through Ashoka. I contacted its (Ashoka fellow) founder, Vijay Aditya, early July, just before leaving France for India. I liked the project so much that I was ready to do an internship there. But SELCO’s call was strong and off I flew to Bangalore. Nevertheless, I was determined to meet Vijay and to learn more about this great initiative.

Vijay is very busy and, since his playground in India, not always at his Delhi office. My stay in Delhi didn’t match his agenda. But I met Vijay by chance. We happened to be at the same place (IIM-Ahmedabad) at the same time (late November). And I was ready with my pen and notepad to capture all the information I was so curious of asking.

What does Ekgaon do in 20 words?

“Focusing on affordable and appropriate solutions, Ekgaon designs and develops technologies and information systems to meet the needs of developing communities”

What led Vijay to start Ekgaon 20 years ago?

During his postgraduate Forestry Management studies, Vijay became passionate about I.T. And his first job was here, in IIM-A, focused on Information Technologies. He was working with Anil Gupta (if you don’t know who he is, follow this link). At that time, Vijay knew he wanted to start something, although he was not exactly sure what it would be. “Two years and a half after graduation, I started Ekgaon with T. Parikh. We were both very enthusiastic, our parents a little bit less.”

How could Vijay be as bold so as to think his ICT-based project would be able to reach farmers?

Vijay can’t explain it but he had the intuition cell-phones would spread all around India and would reach the rural populations. And today indeed, India has more than 600 million cell-phones in use. Out of a population of 1,2 billion, the coverage is quite remarkable.

He predicted a revolution. According to him, his venture ‘simply’ succeeded because of this environment uncertainty that created an opportunity. To me, he had a great intuition and showed a lot of courage and boldness.

In which context does the Ekgaon project evolve?

80% of Ekgaon’s customers can’t read. But Vijay refines his statement: ALL its customers are number litterate: “trust them, they know how to read banknotes and therefore are able to type numbers”. So Ekgaon’s services are mainly in the form of audio systems where customers can type numbers to get the information they need or transfer money, for example.

Ekgaon’s key mission is to make its solutions appropriate and affordable: “You have to make sure the solutions you provide are user-friendly” (and affordable, since the company’s targets are low income rural populations).

The Onefarm program: customized offer for Indian farmers

Ekgaon has launched a farm advisory package three years ago that consists in customizing information that will be useful to the farmer in his day to day activity. For example, Ekgaon provides information (vocal or text) on when is the best time to plant crops, how to mix pesticides and fertilizers…

And the magic of this offer is that it is adapted to the customer’s type of soil: Ekgaon uses the cloud coumputing system to tailor its advice to specific soil, crop and weather condition.

The service is distributed through franchisees and, last November, when I interviewed Vijay, Onefarm had 12,000 customers. Ekgaon’s target is to have 15 million in five years. Easy. The service costs approximately 5 dollars a year and more and more farmers seem ready to pay for it, as it enables them to reduce their costs and be more efficiet in their farming activities. Have a look at this video, it tells you about OneFarm in two minutes.

Using cloud computing to customize Ekgaon's offer

What are the next steps for Ekgaon?

When asked about his main challenges, Vijay first thinks of the Human-Resources/capital issues: “Some of our work is capital intensive; especially, we need capital to recruit people who fit our company and who can help us to scale up”.

During my SELCO experience, I realized very few services existed for rural people to ask for information. I though about developing a call-center in each village where a person could answer all the villagers’ questions using internet or about Ekgaon developing a system enabling its customers to actively ask information they needed rather than wait for the information to come to them. To me, this is the next revolution Ekgaon will have to face. But perhaps they are already facing it, and I would like to know more…

Wouldn’t you?

Before going to the Thematic World Forum in Porto Alegre for one of my work’s mission, my colleague and myself stopped in Rio de Janeiro. We took advantage of these two days to discover the city and investigate for other missions.

The latter brought us in front of Santa Marta’s favela this morning, at 9 am when the sun was already hitting hard. Our interpretor, Renata, met us between the Shell gas station and the tourist booth. Before starting the ascension of Santa Marta (it IS an ascension), we asked her to give us an overview of the favela’s situation.

So why is there a tourist booth at the entrance of Santa Marta?

That’s what shocked us most when we arrived: it was not the luxurious and huge 19th century style buildings at the very bottom of the favela, nor the beautiful colours of the favela houses (the paint was a donation and they used it well..). No, it was this tourist booth.

Tourist booth at the bottom of the Favela

Santa Marta is the first favela to have experimented the Peace Keeping Unit system (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora) in 2008. The Unit is composed of Police as well as Military forces. According to the UNDP, in implementing this policy, “Brazil adopted a human rights approach to combating violence in which policy began to respect, protect and fulfill the rights of its citizens”. This unit is supposed to protect the favela dwellers from violence and illegal trafic, starting from drug trafic. Today, Santa Marta is considered drug free and, as we were told later by a small bar tender in the favela, that was far from being the case a few years ago.

Today Santa Marta dwellers feel safer and have access to more services that enable them to earn a decent living and to no longer be second-class cariocas: they have free wifi access with computers they can use, they are quite well integrated to the rich neighbourhood (some work as maids or cooks there) and Lula’s social policy has helped them gain a bigger purchasing power…

So we have the answer to our question: Santa Marta has become a relatively safe favela and hence an attraction for tourists who want to see how a favela looks like (or, unfortunately, simply say ‘I’ve visited a favela in Rio’ when they go back home).

Santa Marta seen from the Shell station where we met our translator

Is this “model favela” all pink?

When you start climbing the favela, you realize it is not bad indeed: the favela has a sanitation system, several shops and services and houses in concrete (for the big majority) that are painted in beautiful bright colours.

But the situation is not that simple: the dirt is everywhere, the smell is quite difficult to stand in some places and the rat we met in a small passage didn’t look too friendly. You can also see a lot of young people in the favela that are at home on a Monday morning (which means that they probably won’t go to work today). My colleague and myself were also quite surprised by the young aspect of pregnant girls we met.

To sum up: the favela is not that bad for a three hours visit but very little tourists would be willing to spend more time there.

View from the top of Santa Marta

How about asking Santa Marta dwellers how life is at home?

Conducting our study, we got to interview several shop keepers to understand how their business worked. In the favela, you will find many kind of shops; Like Marujo’s Mini Bazar where you can buy carnival disguises, cell phone chargers and plumber’s tools. Like the family-owned Bakery that has bread, branded food products and toilet paper. Or like Claudio’s small shop offering everything you could ever think of…and more.

The little shop at the bottom of the favela is kept by Claudio. He has been in the community for 33 years (and doesn’t look much older than that) and has run his shop for more than 10 years.  He dreams of becoming big. He sells everything from coffee to havanaeïs (the famous flip-flops), plumbing objects or dog food. His model is Eike Batista, one of the richest man on earth who, like him, is Brazilian, started very small and grew big. He gets most of his products from the suburb, where it’s cheaper, and he carries them back to his shop by bus. He looks very optimistic and positive. He says he is thankful to Lula, who has done many things for him in the past years, and to God. As the translator will tell us later, ”if Catholicism cannot bring them (Brazilian lower class) the answer, they turn to other religious movements and create an interesting mix. That’s what helps them to go through hard times. They believe that going through this is a necessary condition to become a better person and to lead a better life”. Our shop owner doesn’t believe he needs to wait: his better life awaits him if and only if he works hard (and gets a little help from the politics and God…).

Claudio's small shop at the bottom of the favela

The person who we interviewed in the bakery is an employee from the prefecture working for the third age secretariat. Today, he is on holiday and that’s why he’s helping out his parents on their family-run business. The profit of this bakery is around 200 Reals a day (100 euros apprx.) and during our 30 minutes interview, we indeed saw a lot of customers buying their bread and other products. The bakery gets its products from an intermediary that delivers everything at the bottom of the favela. Needless to say that carrying those products up the hill is tiring and probably not a present for one’s back. But all the shops in the favela work like that, “it’s normal”. The shop is open from 6 am to 8 pm and the man who is on holiday will surely spend the whole working day behind the counter. He seems happy about it. Work is a value that many interviewees share: they  believe that they can grow and be successful only if they work very hard.

The bakery shop with the son of the owners

Another shop owner we wanted to interview refused to talk with us. He told our interpretor “People ask questions and then they write a book about what we say”. He’s not that far from reality, actually. He was quite hostile to our presence and we understood that it was not only us that bothered him: there are quite a few tourists climbing up and down the favela each day, sometimes accompanied by a professional guide that has nothing to do with the favela. In this case, tourism doesn’t benefit to our shop owner or the favela since all the money goes outside. All they get are people walking around, taking pictures of their homes and neighbourhood without even interacting with the local population. So, this kind of tourism is not really helping the community. However, we also saw a guide who was from the favela whose tour looked much less superficial than the others. This kind of tourism can have a positive impact on the community.

Do they care about us?

The shopkeeper who refused to answer our questions might think that people don’t care. After all, Santa Marta’s favela is the place Michael Jackson chose to shoot his video clip “They don’t care about us” (link as a reward for reading this post at the bottom).

But now that Rio will welcome the Rio+20 Summit (June 2012), the Football World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016), the favela’s issues need to be addressed and Rio’s population, the local authorities and the government have started to care about it.

The security issue is an important one in the favela. We visited one of the safest in Rio but others are said to be quite dangerous (I am cautious in saying that because I know that the violence in the favela has sometimes been over-mediatized). But reputation or reality, this violence issue needs to be tackled as soon as possible.

Apart from the violence, the inequalities in Rio are striking and need to be addressed. Even if I spent a few months in India where inequalities are strong, I have never seen such a geographical proximity between the very rich and the very poor. This doesn’t give the best image Rio can offer to tourists who will be visiting during the coming events.

Favelas are not only threats, they are opportunities

The favela is full of potential.  Starting from an economic point of view:

Many dwellers work outside. The average income of the dwellers is 1000 Reals (500 euros appx.), according to our translator. They have an increasing purchasing power that could be interesting for businesses.

The dwellers of Santa Marta have seen their purchasing power increase these past years

The favela has many services and facilities to help its dwellers live better and in a stable environment. Some people (mainly women) need to take care of their family but they have know-how and could work from home as micro-entrepreneurs (like the Asta model using communities to produce crafstwork) for local businesses.

From a cultural and human point of view:

Santa Marta’s favela has its own culture, its own history. Michael Jackson chose this favela to shoot his video clip in 1996 and Madonna and Alicia Keys also followed. Its people are friendly and proud of their home. They have their own story to tell and I can assure you that once you hear it, you will care about them.

As promised Michael’s clip is here. Enjoy!

Some of our ancestors predicted 2012 would be the end of the world while others (like me) believe in a better tomorrow.

We might not be living in the same time zone, or having the same ideals of life but we have one thing in common: we only have one home to share.

A few days ago, I was entering the amazing ‘Parque Nacional de Tairona’ close to Santa Marta (Colombian Coast) when I read the following:

“The Park belongs to the People of Colombia. Some have passed away, others are still living and the majority is still to be born. Please keep the latter in mind while you enjoy the Park.”

And this made me think.

This park, as this planet, is a jewel.

It is a jewel because of its pure landscapes

It is a jewel because of its biodiversity

It is a jewel because of its inhabitants

This Park is one of the purest places on this planet.

However, it is not an isolated ecosystem: even in Tairona, our footprints on the sand are not totally erased by the passage of the waves…

I found the plastic shoe of a doll in the sand

So even kids leave a trace with their toys?

Actually, it seems that the new generation is more conscious about preserving our ecosystem.

For example, during my short stay in Colombia, I have seen a kid scolding his own parents because they were not sorting the waste and I have seen similar things in France. The education they receive at school is critical for that.

I saw the following aquarium close to Cartagena with the following message (traduction below):

Si no cuidamos el mar esto es lo que veran nuestras futuras generaciones: un gran basurero

I wish you could see the whole gallery where this aquarium is because it is quite impressive. In the gallery, you have bright aquariums with multi-coloured fishes and exotic plants. Most of them, of course, are in peril of extinction.

At the very end of this beautiful gallery, you find this aquarium (picture above) that says: “If we don’t take care of the sea, this is what our future generations will see: a great trash-can“.

And while I was sitting on the wave of awareness trash-can bench (made out 3000 plastic bottles collected in less than 3 weeks in Tairona Park), watching this amazing nature that filled me with joy and peace,

I thought...

…that I would like my (hypothetical) grandchildren to see similar landscapes and to be able to enjoy the beauty of life as much as we are now.

And not only through a frame...

So my message in a bottle (not a plastic one) for 2012 is very simple.

Since Ban-Ki-Moon has declared this year to be the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All” and since the Rio+20 Summit will take place next June.

Let’s send our (hypothetical) grandchildren the following message:

We won't gamble with your future

Let’s be joyous for the New Year, let’s celebrate. For there are many good things that the future holds for us. And we know good things come to those who know how to provoke them!

Happy New Year to all of you!

But somehow, this “Thank you India” passage has been trapped in my mind these past days.

And now that I am back in Paris, I think thanking this amazing country will help me free my mind from this song.

Thank you Serendipity

Thank you Harish Hande for speaking at a conference I was attending in Paris and giving me the occasion to discover Selco

Thank you Ignorance for not knowing who Harish Hande was and hence daring to ask him straightforward about the internship opportunities at Selco

Thank you ‘I am not your boss’ Boss for giving me the opportunity to intern at Selco, for choosing such an interesting mission for me and for having great stories to tell

Thank you Selco

Thank you Colleagues for being so passionate about what you do, for your precious help, for making me discover India’s finest cuisine in Whitehorse, for helping me decipher Kannada, for teaching me how to wear Indian bangles, for your patience and help when I didn’t understand all the subtleties of working in India

Thank you Selco for being such an interesting and beautiful company to work for

And they mean it...

Thank you Incredible India for not letting one day pass without surprises

Thank you rickshaw drivers for your life lessons, thank you barking-all-night-dogs for waking me up so I could go back to sleep, thank you bumpy-and-everlasting-bus journeys, thank you contrasts

"Helping my fellow rickshaw is good karma"

Thank you fireworks, thank you optimism, thank you colours, thank you life

Cow waiting for her cowboy while he is shopping in a Levi's store

Thank you India for being the mother of such adorable people

Thank you for the great friends I met on the way and that I will never forget

Thank you for your people’s hospitality and generosity

And before I say goodbye, my wish-list to India…

I wish you take good care of all your children, they are your most precious ressource

I wish the train of growth stops at every station one day

And I wish to see you again soon…

A bientôt!

Once you cross the doorstep, you will enter ICP’s office comprised of three rooms, a kitchen, and a few interesting treasures to discover.

One of the treasures ICP is exploring

ICP’s mission is to improve the working conditions of the Indian urban poor as well as to increase their livelihood.

Hence, most of the action for ICP employees takes place on the field. It’s in the field they get their treasures from. And on the field I went with Roger, my co-intern at SELCO, who was interviewing the fish-sellers.

But before taking you to the fish market, a quick introduction of ICP…

ICP is a laboratory that aims at “providing innovative solutions for improved earnings, enhanced quality of life and working conditions to the (urban) poor”.

ICP was initiated two years ago by three organizations: SEWA Bank, Mahila Housing SEWA and SELCO (of course…). These three initiators still act as monitors and advisors for ICP.

Today, ICP wants to focus its efforts on energy efficiency, health and increase of livelihood.

It is looking at occupational issues of various professions: vegetable-sellers, incense-makers, waste-pickers, fish-sellers, tailors and block-printers…

Off to the fish-market we go

This fish-market I am taking you to is special. It’s born from a recent initiative: SEWA decided to gather a group of fish-seller women in one selling-point, in Old Ahmedabad. This group of women has formed a cooperative. They used to be more vulnerable when they were selling their fish individually: the buyer could bargain as much as he/she wanted and they were not in a position to discuss too much.

Today, SEWA provides them with quality fish at a competitive price. As a cooperative, they can defend their prices more easily. As community members, they now feel more confident and earn a decent revenue.

As a cooperative, it's easier to defend their prices

But these women’s working conditions has been the same for generations: they work from 7 am to 7 pm in artificial light, surrounded by flies in a semi-closed room, confined in a little space that can only fit one person, surrounded by their tools, fish waste and… flies.

One of the fish-seller even told me she wish I would take her to France because she believes there are not so many flies there!

Their revenue fluctuates from a season to the other. During some festivals, they almost have no business (because most of the population is eating vegetarian in those times) and have to sell other things such as religious statues to survive. Also, during the peak hours, they are not efficient enough and lose some business as customers lose patience.

What can ICP learn from them?

Roger was interviewing those ladies and they shared some valuable information.

They would like two people to fit in the same working space so that they can collaborate and be more efficient during peak times.

If they increased their productivity, the younger fish-sellers (two of them at least were less than 18) could pursue another activity, or even study.

At the moment, ICP is getting to know more about the working conditions of these ladies.

Roger will have to come back at different points of the day (during peak or low activity moments) and even spend a whole day there to be able to have a broader picture.

Observing the field

What are ICP’s main challenges?

The challenges of the organization are threefold and could be summed-up in three key words: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Behavior.

Entrepreneurship

Once a solution/product is developed, ICP wishes to exit and have the community take possession of the project. The project should be driven by members of the community to be sustainable on the long-term and to impact the intended target.

Parag, who is currently designing and testing various business models on ICP projects, gave me the example of their Water filtration project in slum areas. The idea is to sell clean water to the slum dwellers at a very affordable price. But if the project is not carried out by the community members themselves, it cannot work on the long-term. ICP is trying to develop a business model where part or all of the slum dwellers would be stakeholders and would generate revenue from sales.

This reminded me about the ownership model 1001 fontaines has developed in Cambodia: one or a few members are elected by the village community to be “small private operators”. They become entrepreneurs and run the clean-water-business as their own. They are able to increase their livelihood while offering affordable drinking water to their co-villagers. This system is a success because of the democratic process and because the project is carried out by someone from the community itself. Such a model would enable ICP to exit while providing support to the community if required. If you want to know more about 1001 fontaines’ operator model, it’s right here.

Where are the entrepreneurs hiding?

Marketing

How can ICP reach its intended target once a solution is developed?

This issue is strongly related to the fact that the projects have to be community-driven. How do you reach your target? And once you have reached that target, how do you convince them that this product will better their working conditions and increase their livelihoods?

Most of the solutions developed by ICP do not show immediate results. The improvements are only visible on a longer term. Take the example of the incense-makers community. ICP has developed a table to increase their productivity and comfort. The results are only noticeable after a few months usage. Most of the incense-makers want immediate and visible results. Else, they don’t consider purchasing the product as a priority.

And being impatient is not a trait that is specific to incense-makers in urban India, is it? So what do marketers usually do in this context? They sometimes add immediate and visible benefits that the customer can get from the product. But what could ICP add to this table to create incentives to buy? Another interesting approach is co-creation with the community itself. If the community is more involved in designing the solution itself, marketing might be easier once the solution is available.

The last mile to reach the customers seems to be more a mental mile than a physical one…

Behavior

ICP’s last key-challenge is understanding its target Behavior.

First, ICP needs to create trust: most of the urban poor have been disillusioned by the government’s failed attempts to alleviate their condition. They are very skeptical that ICP can help them. Hence, ICP doesn’t present itself as an organization that wants to help them but as an organization that wants to learn from them.

Second, ICP’s targets are very reluctant to change. Their working conditions have been the same for more than 30 years now. Why should they change?

Why innovate when it has been the same and working for years?

Before inventing any revolutionary solution, ICP ‘simply’ needs to “understand the thinking-pattern trap they are into”, or the vicious circle they don’t feel the need to break.

]]> http://creatingbridges.org/2011/11/28/innovation-lab-for-the-urban-poor-from-the-field-to-the-mindset/feed/ 0 zcoralie Water bottle/solar light Weighing the fish Roger's notebook Where's Wally? A children's game