A few years ago I was swept up in a wave six-degrees-of-separation invitations from the professional networking site Linked In, most of the invitations coming from old b-school classmates at UNC.  As a good little networking MBA, I sent out as many invitations as I could too, feeling a certain thrill in seeing the breadth of my professional and social network. However after that initial rush I pretty much forgot all about it.  “Who actually uses this thing?” I remember thinking.

Then a week ago I got another invitation from an old colleague of mine at Rockwell International who wanted to reconnect and to share the news that a patent application of ours had finally been accepted (I have two patents in my name, officially making me an “inventor”, albeit the kind that doesn’t make any money for his inventions).  This old colleague wrote, “I always wondered what happened to you after you went back to school, sounds like you’re doing some interesting things!”

Those words sent me back into the Linked In universe, searching for other old colleagues that I had missed.  And after the excitement of reaching out to old acquaintances had passed, I decided to go poking around my Linked In network. It didn’t take long before I started looking for other people who also worked in the Base of the Pyramid. About 65 connections came up, interestingly enough most of them at 2 least degrees away or more: meaning I have few direct connections working in my own field.  

However, I was thrilled to find so many interesting people working in the BoP. Five year ago when I started working on BoP projects with Stu Hart and crew it was hard to find anyone that knew anything about it, but today there are numerous consulting organizations, start-ups, corporations and universities employing people to focus on the BoP. I even found a life coach! Many of these positions have been created in the last year or so, and it’s nice to see so many people branching out on there own.

Beyond the link I have listed some of the interesting people and organizations I found on my BoP traipse through Linked In. If you’re already a Linked In member, try clicking on the “badge” in the top right of this article and seeing which “Base of the Pyramid” folk are in your own network. To make future searches for BoP compatriots on Linked In easier, I’ve also asked Linked In to create a BoP Group for professionals working in the BoP. Stay tuned for the launch of that group (you can always join the BoP Working Group on Yahoo in the meanwhile).

Patrick

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I’ve often said that one of the greatest joys of my work is the exceptional people that I get to meet and to develop friendships with. Whether or not it’s Salim Mohamed and Sammy Gitau in Kenya, Murali Ramisetti in India, or Theresa Williamson in Brazil, I have been blessed to know so many people who are busy painting their visions of a better world into reality. So I’ve often wondered, “What it would be like to just go on a pilgramige to find and learn from such people?”

Well Exceptional Lives, the blog of Dublin, Ireland’s Clare Mulvany, is chronicling such a journey.

Clare describes her trip:

I am currently embarking on a ten month journey around the globe to interview ‘people who change our world’ about their life stories. I’ll be meeting ’social entrepreneurs’ working in a range of fields from education to business, dedicating their lives to making the world a better place for us all to live in. Nairobi is the first port of call, and from there I’ll travel overland to Capetown. It is then on to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and the USA.

Clare’s journey has taken her to many of the places where I’ve lived and worked on BoP projects, and she beautifully describes her encounters with social entrepreneurs through both written word and photography. Clare just finished the latest leg of her trip - 7 weeks traveling through India - and she summarizes the experience in her latest post:

Seven weeks in India. Seven weeks of what?

Of colour, lots of it. Colour as iridescent saris blaze around every street corner. Then the glossy black and yellow of taxis and the glaring orange of festival flowers. The piquant green of tea plantations. The lush green of coconut plantations. The lazy green of cardamom trees. The black of a girl’s oiled hair, the black of men’s moustaches, the pupils of eyes (you staring at them, them staring at you). The chorus of colour as Diwali swings into fare; fireworks painting the sky like a circus. The pink of pickle. The night blue of night trains. The bright light of bright days.

Seven weeks of bright, busy days.

There’s a lot of great material on Exceptional Lives, so much more than I’ve had the time to go through, but Clare’s stories and pictures are certainly worth immersing yourself in. After all, every exceptional life we touch makes our own more exceptional. As for me personally, it’s always inspiring to see someone put into words what you yourself have experienced but have been unable to express.

I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been exhilarated. I’ve been learning. I’ve been trying to make sense of it all.

Travel does this to you. It enriches as it shakes. Perceptions start to shift and alter. You start to shift and alter. You take a step and the world unfolds with colour and learning. You take a step and the world takes the next ten.

The world? Well, it’s the people you meet along the way who point you in the right direction. Or a book you read which clarifies a point. Or a film you see which sparks a train of new thought. Or that kid you play football with. Or that mother you make eye contact with. Or that beggar you pass on the street.

Seven weeks. I know. I can hardly believe how much can be packed in. A lot has happened, and there is still a lot more to come.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

I’ll share a couple of quick anecdotes that Clare’s stories bring to mind. The first is simply something a young man in Kibera (Nairobi’s largest slum) once said while we were living there, "To me you are like birds, you can land and then fly away when you want. But we are stuck in the mud." The second is from a homestay I did in the Indiramma Nagar slums of Hyderabad, India. I distinctly recall the moment when I - a supposed veteran of homestays in villages and slums - finally opened myself up to the poor Muslim family that had been hosting me… it was like the sun had risen, how much more I could see when I finally let them see me!

Clare Mulvany’s journey therefore reminds me that our ability to pass through so many lives is an incredible freedom that comes with great responsibility, not only a responsibility to pay respect and to bear witness, but a responsibility to touch and be touched. She seems to be doing that quite well.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

Words worth repeating. Here’s to all of us touching more exceptional lives.

-Patrick

Links:

• Exceptional Lives
• Clare Mulvany’s photo stream on Flickr.com

Much thanks to Jean Russel for introducing me to Clare’s journey.

Things have been pretty quiet around the BRINQ Workshop, only a few posts in the last six months, so what have we been up to? Well, besides trying to get things started in Brazil again, I’ve been doing a lot of work for other folks, most particularly Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW), a new organization started up by Cornell University professor and Sustainability guru Stuart Hart, whose book “Capitalism at the Crossroads” we covered here before. Stuart Hart was an old professor of mine at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School (before he headed north to Ithaca) and along with CK Prahalad is one the founders of business strategy in the Base of the Pyramid. Stu’s approach to the BoP is one of deep listening and participation; he advocates that by looking beyond poor communities as just places to “sell more stuff” companies will gain access to greater benefits: disruptive innovation, strong market relationships, better reputations, and yes, market growth. Stu is also one of the people who invited me to particpate in the Base of the Pyramid Protocol pilot in Kenya… and of course to hire me to work at ESW and to join the new Protocol team in India. I’ve also been working with Stu & co. designing the web sites for ESW and the BoP Protocol, in addition to a Drupal-based project management site to support Protocol teams in the field. You can also browse a web-version of the BoP Protocol, previously only available as a PDF. Check them out!

BoP-Protocol.org	e4sw.org

[For the technically inclined, BRINQ.com has also switched hosting providers (twice) and the Workshop has been upgraded to Wordpress 2.0!]

We love a good idea when we see it, especially when it’s just like one of our own! Check out World Play, a non-profit founded to share the diversity of toys and play among communities throughout the world. Sound familiar?

See more at www.WorldPlay.org

WorldPlay is a nonprofit corporation supported by a coalition of organizations whose main goal is to celebrate the creativity of children through the toys they invent. It is our aim to promote a better understanding among children of the diverse cultures throughout the world, using creativity and play. WorldPlay presents an outstanding collection of toys created and designed by children throughout the world. Through various media, a book, a video, a newsletter, traveling exhibits, and through this site, we wish to expose others to the creativity of children around the globe through their hand made toys. By spreading the knowledge of these various toys, our goal is to promote an understanding of different cultures from around the world through the toys that children make and play. No matter the economic status, education, or physical abilities, a child’s creativity is universal. We fervently hope that through play, children will gain respect for each other.

Don’t forget to check out World Play’s library of toy designs, complete with directions on how you can make them yourselves!

Catalytic Communities (CatComm), our community partner in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, announced the launch of its new community empowering site www.CatComm.org. CatComm is a huge inspiration for us here at BRINQ, their insights in cultivating and capturing local innovations have been critical to us in our early years and their active work with communities generating solutions has taught us that stronger relationships lead to more viable innovations. In a world of people content with "asking the hard questions", Catalytic Communities is a refreshing example of an organization actually looking for the hard answers.

See the full Catalytic Communities Press Release

Frustrated with the poverty-stricken conditions in which the children of her community, Acarí, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro lived, Ivanilde Araújo Pinto began sharing her knowledge with them beneath a tree in the community. A piece of wood served as a blackboard and a chunk of charcoal as chalk. This was 20 years ago. Today the Little School of Love operates out of a community church and is proud of its notable accomplishment: not one of its kids, after 20 years of service by Ms. Pinto (50 children per year have been served), has returned to the streets.

Ms. Pinto’s example is not uncommon. Thousands of other community-driven efforts are succeeding in addressing local challenges in Rio de Janeiro and across the world. "These amazing people are out there and no one knows about them. As a result, they get very little support and have a hard time maintaining their efforts," explains Theresa Williamson, Executive Director of Catalytic Communities, "And the work of people like Ms. Pinto, if publicized, can inspire innumerable others to develop projects to better their own communities."

For this reason, since 2000, Williamson has been developing Catalytic Communities (CatComm), a not-for-profit to bring visibility to initiatives like Ms. Pinto’s and many others, around the world. Today CatComm is announcing the launch of its upgraded Website, www.catcomm.org, where visitors can consult, include, or search projects like the Little School of Love in its Community Solutions Database (CSD), which now features over 100 projects from 8 countries on 5 continents.

Catalytic Communities has also issued a fund raising challenge to its network of partners, volunteers and supporters.

"CatComm does all this with very little. Supporters have often told us it is one of the most efficient social investments around," CatComm Founder and Executive Director Theresa Williamson proudly announces. "In fact," she challenges, "if everyone who reads this line visits our Website and donates $10, then asks a friend to do the same, our 2006 budget would be cared for. That’s all it will take to empower and inspire hundreds of community solutions across the world in 2006."

We wish Catalytic Communities the best of luck! If you’re interested in supporting them you can click on the buttom to the right.

For more coverage of Catalytic Communities see:

• BRINQ - Side Effects - A Day in the Community
• BRINQ - Learning to Swim - Back in Brazil

 

The World Resources Institute has officially launched NextBillion.net, an online community focused on the intersection of business, innovation and poverty. We were lucky enough to get an early look at NextBillion, and WRI was kind enough to quote our impressions in their press release. See for yourself! New WRI Blog Targets ‘Next Billion’ Consumers Dollars WASHINGTON, May 27, 2006 - The World Resources Institute has launched an interactive blog focusing on business’s role in eradicating world poverty. The organization hopes to position its new “NextBillion.net — Development through Enterprise” blog as “the world’s premiere online water cooler and conference room” for socially responsible business development. Previously, there have been e-mail lists for such business developers, but NextBillion.net allows development and poverty reduction to reach a new level by offering a bottom-up educational resource and threaded-discussion tool for everyone from multinational executives to small-business entrepreneurs. Representatives of companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Pitney Bowes, DuPont and SC Johnson (as well as many innovative individuals) have already begun posting comments and discussions on the blog. For instance, noted author Stuart Hart posted exclusive content this week detailing issues highlighted in his new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems. Additionally, with today’s official launch, NextBillion.net’s creators expect to quickly establish the site as the top news feed and content resource for corporations, foundations, the business-school community, poverty NGOs, development organizations, and many others. (more…)

Well, it looks the folks at the World Resources Institute (WRI) have put together yet another great resource for the rest of us. WRI is behind a litany of world-changing best hits, including Beyond Grey Pinstripes, which tracks business schools on the leading edge of sustainability, the Digital Dividends progam, identifying and promoting solutions to the global digital divide, the New Ventures program, investment for sustainably oriented start-ups in the developing world, and the fantastic Eradicating Poverty through Profit conference, first held last December in San Francisco.

NextBillion.net, WRI’s latest resource, was born of the fabulous community that came together for the Eradicating Poverty conference: close to a thousand aspiring and accomplished world changers, entrepreneurs and representatives of multinationals, NGOs, universities, governments, and local businesses from throughout the developed and developing world.

Rather than explain much more, I’ll just let WRI do it themselves.

Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens. Linking the pursuit of profit with the goal of economic development creates a new lens through which traditional business and development models can be viewed. Through this lens, we explore the “next billion” - the next billion to rise from poverty, who are also the next billion customers currently underserved by markets worldwide.

NextBillion.net emerges from the successes of “Eradicating Poverty Through Profit: Making Business Work for the Poor,” a conference held December 12-14, 2004 in San Francisco, California. It is an opportunity to continue, and to expand upon, the relationships and conversations begun there.

Our goal is to create a new forum for the discussion of best practices, new research, and on-the-ground activities related to business engagement with low-income communities, and private sector-led development. It is a place where development professionals, business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, academics, activists, and practitioners - from both North and South - can convene every day to access each other, and build on their own, and others’, work.

The site is still in beta but already has a significant amount of content. You can sign up to submit your own content or subscribe to their news feeds. Enjoy!

Past “How to Change the World” articles:
Capturing the Unexpected Innovation – Tribal Lingo – Lighting Up the Crossroads – You Need More than Magic – Unleashing Competitive Imagination – The Model T Trap

At BRINQ, we promote the innovation and design capabilities of people in the Base of the Pyramid (BOP), with a particular focus on toy design in Latin America. One subject that comes up continuously in our discussions with top of the pyramid (TOP) designers is the importance of rapid prototyping, a need which is met here in the TOP by computers, CAD software, plastics, and well-stocked machine shops.

This brings up the question, how can rapid prototyping be handled by aspiring designers living in the BOP?

There are promises of future technologies for the masses, such as 3D Printing or Personal Fabbing but these are still experimental and expensive.

There are examples of current businesses which seek to lower the cost of prototyping for designers, such as eMachineShop, which will machine the object you designed (in plastic or metal). Read on USA Today for more. Other examples include MFGquote.com, a bidding site for custom fab jobs, and QuickParts.com. All of these businesses are centralized though and rely on a well-developed infrastructure to get parts to designers. Instead, the less developed infrastructure in the BOP may require functionality closer to the point of service, as the Multifunction Platform in Africa provides.

“ The multifunctional platform is built around a simple diesel engine, than can power various tools, such as a cereal mill, husker, alternator, battery charger, pump, welding and carpentry equipment, etc. It can also generate electricity and be used to distribute water.”

In the end, perhaps the most useful course is to teach design and prototyping methodologies as called for by Indian professor Sanjay Dhande in his paper “Designing for Handicrafts - A Socio-technological Perspective”. These skills could be offered with community level computing services to allow for a greater level of rapid prototyping. Reference sites: WorldChanging - A new world is here ThinkCycle - Open collaborative design

In our research and discussions we’ve come across a number of wonderful websites and blogs on sustainability and the Base of the Pyramid (BOP). We’d like to share them with you. We’ll keep updating this list as we continue to discover more of this fantastic work!

• WorldChanging: A NewWorld is Here - One of the best all around blogs on the web, in their own words "A group weblog discussing and analyzing tools, ideas, models, and technologies for building a better future."
• NextBillion.net - by the World Resources Institute, an online community and news site to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens
• IFTF’s Future Now - IFTF’s Future Now draws research and forecasting at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, CA think tank specializing in the future of technology, health, and organizational change.
• ThinkCycle: Open Collaborative Design - ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges facing underserved communities and the environment.
• The Timbuktu Chronicles - Emeka Okafor is a consultant and entrepreneur with a background in Finance and Information Technology who lives in New York City. His interests include sustainable technologies in the developing world and paradigm breaking technologies in general. His blog, Timbuktu Chronicles seeks to spur dialogue in areas of entrepreneurship, technology and the scientific method as it impacts Africa.
• WorldIsGreen.com - All things green!
• Enviropundit - articles on green buildings, green energy, and more.
• Alternative Energy Blog - articles on alternative, distributed, and green energy news and technologies
• Slashdot: News for Nerds - the uber technology news site, not specific to sustainability or the BOP, but at times discusses potential world changing technologies.
• Base of the Pryamid Resource Center - a blog started up by Thunderbird MBA student Matt Berg, the site was created “to help serve as a resource for the those intersted in serving the base of the pyramid”.

Favorite Community Organizations we know personally

• Catalytic Communities - providing space to document and share community solutions around the world, creating a global network of community leaders and solutions. CatComm provides both physical space (the Casa do Gestor Catalisador in Rio de Janeiro) and virtual spaces (http://www.CatComm.org/) and is based in Washington, D.C. and Rio de Janeiro.
• Carolina for Kibera - an NGO and community based organization in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, one of Africa’s, if not the world’s, largest slums. CFK provides programs to work with youths in Kibera, reducing ethnic conflict, and inspiring youth based solutions and change. CFK is run out of the University of North Carolina but is based locally in Nairobi, Kenya. CFK was the home for our work on the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot.
• Favelarte - a project by Brazilian photographer Maur√≠cio Hora, incredible windows into the world of Rio de Janeiro and the city’s favelas.