Hello everyone. Today's presentation is on the topic of sustainable innovation. And I'd like to start with the definition from Martin Charter. Martin Charter is the director of the Center for Sustainable Design, based in the UK. And this definition of sustainable innovation Connects very closely to the definition of sustainable development. That is often referred to as the Triple Bottom Line. This was promoted by John Elkington. And he talks about the Triple Bottom Line as looking at environmental, social and financial issues connected to development. And when you think of all those three in context, in conjunction with each other, you have sustainable development. So Martin Charter's definition connects to that really closely, because the way he defines sustainable innovation is this way. Where it's a process, where sustainability considerations, all three environmental, social, and financial, are integrated into company systems. So the entire organization thinks of these three things. Right from the beginning, from the generation of new ideas through research and development and commercialization, right? So the three big pockets or three big areas of any new product development. From imagining the ideas at the beginning. To doing all the R&D, or the research and development, on the idea to finally taking it to market, thinking of those three factors of social, environmental and financial aspects of sustainability throughout the process. And then it's something that applies broadly to everything from products to services to technologies, as well as new business models and new organizational structures. So it's a really, really comprehensive definition of what sustainable innovation means. The key thing to keep in mind for us is that's it a complete process, from idea to going to market. And also thinking about all three, social, environmental, and financial issues. This is a definition from Martin Charter for what sustainable innovation is. What I thought we would do today is to look at sustainable innovation from the perspective of a very specific project that was done by Philips Design. Philips Design is a fairly large organization within Philips that is based out of the Netherlands. And they have presence all over the world. So they took on this project which is refered to the low small chula or what can be referred to as a cooking stove that creates really small amounts of smoke. This was a really important project for Phillips to get on board with. They have significant emphasis on sustainable design and development. Phillips has been involved in a project called philanthropy by design and this project on the Los Mochula is a part of that approach and that process and that project that Phillips has taken on. So the overall idea for this project came from a substantial amount of research that Philips conducted earlier on in the process. Just a few basic things to think about. So, very often in rural areas all over the world, especially in the poorer nations in the world, people use bio mass. They might use things like cow dung and other waste products to use as cooking fuel. So for example, in India where this project was conducted, cow dung becomes a really popular resource for fuel in rural areas. People get the cow dung. They dry it out and then, that's used actually as cooking fuel. The biggest problem with this is the fact that this generates significant amount of smoke. That smoke stays inside these homes and that causes smoke inhalation and smoke inhalation can lead to death. And according to statistics, there's about 1.6 million people that die each year from smoke inhalation. Now this is a world wide amount. It's a world wide figure but it's a really, really high number of people. And so the project that Phillips took on was to see if they can address this by the design of a new stove. What's really fascinating about this project is the amount of user involvement. They did a significant amount of research and they talked to actual people who might be using this product. Got them involved in the process of research and actually designing the product with the people in mind, and not only created a product, but created an entire system that makes it a truly sustainable innovation from the perspective of a social innovation, perspective of an environmentally appropriate innovation. And thinking of the finances and affordability as well. So if you look at this diagram. On this slide you can see that Philips started off initially by looking at the premise. And the premise is what I just described to you. Which is the big problem of indoor smoke inhalation that leads to really poor health and significant amount of debts. Especially in rural parts of the developing world. So, what they did was, the context that they examined was, how are people living right now? What's the context of living? They did a ton of studies, so they did field observations, so they went out into the rural areas, they took photographs of people, of homes, of how cooking happens right now. They want to look at the context of use, so how are people actually using the product right now. What is the actual process of cooking in these rural areas in India right now? So what they did was they did a significant number of observations. And we will see later on in this presentation photographs taken by the Phillips design teams In the actual content of use. They made a list of stakeholder needs. So stakeholders essentially is a word that is used very often when you want to do design that is comprehensive when you want to do innovation that is comprehensive. So for example the user is actually person who will use the product or service that you are designing that you are innovating, right? That's the person who has direct contact with that product or service. But there are other people who are involved as well. If you think about it, there could be people who are the purchasers, in many cases or in some cases the person who buys the product, may not be the person who is using it. Think of a simple example like toys. Toys are often bought by parents or grandparents, for children, who are users. So the children are not buying the product but someone else is buying the product. So the purchaser is a stakeholder in this process. Then there could be people who could be the influencers. So you have users, you have purchaser's, you have influencers. Influencers can be anyone. The government could be an influencer. There might be certain policies they put in place. That influence the design, the innovation, the development, right? So, when you think about this, the users, the purchasers, and the influencers, it makes a broad range of people. This could be government, NGOs, or non-governmental organizations. They could be philanthropists, they could be for-profit organizations. All of these people play a role, and those are the stakeholders. So what Phillip's design did, is look at all the stakeholders' names. They also looked at Appropriate Technology. This is a really important thing for us to think about because sometimes what happens especially in situations where large companies might want to solve a problem in a rural part of the world or a developing part of the world or a poorer nation. They might introduce a technological solution that might not really work in that context. So, appropriate technology essentially means something that's locally feasible, something that can be locally manufactured but also something that can be locally maintained and improved upon, right? So one of the things that was important for Philips design was to make sure that they used appropriate technology. Then what they did was they did something called co-design. Co-design, or alternative of it was participatory design, is when you actually engage the people that were going to be using your product in the design process itself. So designers, innovators, engineers, developers, businesspeople working hand in hand with The users themselves. They bring them in they work with them and this process of co-design hopefully ends up in a solution that is a lot more appropriate to the context of views in which the product will eventually go. They refined the design they made lots of modification and changes. The prototyping, testing and feedback so they build a few, they install them in peoples’ homes. Let them use it. Observe the use of the product, got feedback, went back to the drawing table and redesign made changes so it could be improved upon. So one thing to keep in mind is though you see this diagram as going from step to step to step, it looks a linear. What actually happens was lots of rework. Lots of rework. So going back and forth making sure that it's not just a straightforward process but it's iterative, right? That's way important to keep in mind with any innovation, it is never completely linear. You always have to go back to the drawing board, start again, that's a best way to improve your solution, improve your design. So some image, pictures of the context, so designers and other participants in this project from Philips Design went to villages. They looked at the context of use, and what you can see down here in the bottom righthand corner is one of the existing chulhas, or stoves, as it seen right now. You can see that there's a lot of soot around it, there's ash. And you can imagine the amount of smoke that exists in these indoor spaces. On the left you can see, again, the same sort of situation where you have an indoor cooking and stove situation. So this continues, you can see more context. What they wanted to do was they wanted to design something that actually is appropriate for the situation in which it will be used. So this is something very important to keep in mind, especially if you're doing what's called human centered innovation. Innovation that's inspired not by a specific technology, or not by a market need, but a specific human condition that we are trying to solve. And that's what Phillips design was trying to do. So what you see in these set of images, is some of the conditions and the situation of the context for which this product was design and would be designed. Then they made this chart and this could be something that looks like all the stakeholder needs like we talked about earlier. So if you look on the left hand side what you see here is the end user, SHG was an NGO, a non-government organization. The entrepreneurs would be involved in, maybe billing these products and other NGO so what's you see here is this other stakeholders, right? And then what are some other concerns, it has to be reliable, economical, relevant, easy to use, efficient and it has to be about this product. And so what Philips designed it was a mapped out on this all the things that are important. For example, things like easy to install and repair, right? This is where appropriate technology plays a very big role that if there is something that is impossible for you to fix, it will be used for once and then it will be thrown away. So it's very important to do this. Finance options, really important. If this is going into a rural area, it's going into a family that doesn't have that much access to income, how can we use this product? That's important right. Basic overall thing this is kind of the primary goal. Durable, no smoke, and high quality right. So you can see that this map, or this stakeholder needs analysis give Phillips a good ground base on which to develop the design. Then they started the design process and what you see here are examples of ideas from something that's really compact, something that's accessible, flexible, so it's modular, it accommodates several needs. And so this is just an example of some of the ideas that the team came up with. What happens in the process of innovation is there are sometimes tens of maybe hundreds of ideas that come out. What you see here is just a few of the ideas that are slightly more defined than the earlier sketches. And this is how they started developing the idea. They had two versions. The one that you see on top is the name that you see here is Seral which means in the local language where they were working which means straightforward, easy, and the other one is. Basically means something that is very complete. So what you see here is two variations on the design as they were developing the project stage by stage. Here you see a close up rendering of the finished product. You can see in the overall design that it's made of components and these components and these parts can be modular, can be replaceable. So, if something breaks, one part breaks, it's easy to replace that one part. So here you see, several things happening. For example, on the top left-hand side, you can see that a worker is taking one the products out of the mould. Then what you see is the installation in process. Here you see the women of the household using the product, you can see there is fire in the in the choola, you can see utensils on top for they are cooking the local foods. What you also see here, and you can see this on the bottom right image there, is some localization, right? What you see here is local decoration that's been done on the product to customize it for the home. So in these four images, what you see is from manufacturing of the product, to the actual, what often referred to as indigenization. How can something that is in a sense a mass-produced product become something that's personalized, and customizable, and specific to that household, to that family? Here again you see two images. On the left you see the Saral, which is the straightforward, easy to use. And on the right hand side you see the Sampoorna, which also has some additional capabilities like steaming. So you can do in the Sampoorna, you can also do some steaming of the product as well. So again some more examples of some more details of the products on the left side. You can see the modularity of the design one interesting this to note is in both cases, though there are variations in the design there are some shared components. So for example this part actually here is the same as this component here so. One of the things that they've done and this plays a very big role introducing cost is to use standardized components. Standardized parts that as you saw in the earlier slide later on can be customized to each one as well. So in a sense they've used the process of standardization to drop down cost but still allowed customization at the family level. You can see on the top two images you can see the shelves installed in place, these are renderings. And on the bottom you can see all the components that lead up to the final design. And here you see all the components laid out. As you can see there's, right here you see that your product itself but this is the chimney. You have to find some means which the smoke has to. Exhaust from outside the house up into the atmosphere, though there's extremely low smoke. The other thing that's interesting to see here is you see this component here? What they did was, it's not one continuous pipe, but you can open it up and this allows for cleaning of the chimney as well. All right, so all of these maintenance and use considerations are a part of the overall design. You can see all the components laid out in one image. That shows the construction and installation of the stove itself. Now this is where the innovation becomes really interesting, and it becomes extremely comprehensive. So what we’ve seen so far is you’ve seen the process. How Philips' design looked at the user needs, looked at the stakeholder needs. They did lots of observational research. They involved participants in the process of design. They got feedback later on. But they also designed an overall system that was put in place. So, for example, what you see here is you see this process that follows. Number 1 is starting up. Kind of setting the ground work to get this project going. So imagine there's a certain family, as a household, in a village, that would like to install one of these low-smoke chulhas. This is where you start up process. You have your initial meetings. Step 2 is thinking of finance. How do you start financing this? So again, it's a really low-cost affordable product but you still need some amount of funding, so how do you get funding to get this project off the ground? Another important thing also is promotion. How do you get the word out? How do you increase awareness of two things? One, increasing awareness of the existing situation which is that existing chulhas and existing stoves are dangerous and damaging to health. It can lead to deaths, and people need to be made aware of that. And then at the same time, they need to be made aware of this new solution, that there is a solution to the problem. You do not have to stay indoors, you do not have to inhale all the smoke. So promoting the idea, making demonstrations, explaining to local people how this works, is a key part of the solution as well. Then once that is done, once the family has the financing, they understand how this thing works, they're aware of the problem and the solution. The next step starts off actually starting to install. So the first thing is getting the mold. If you can get the mold, these molds are made out of what's called FRP, or fiber reinforced plastic. And these molds can then be used to actually make and produce the chulhas. So what you see in step 5 is the production of the chulha itself. So you have the molds, you need cement, so it's all made out of cement. You get the molds and you start casting. So this is an extremely low tech process. And it can be done very easily with minimal amount of tools, very limited amount of skills, thereby making it appropriate to a whole range of situations. So you don't need any specialized knowledge, tools, and skill sets to be able to install and produce one of these in your homes. So these are all the stakeholders. Who are all the people involved? Local entrepreneurs, people who might want to be a part of the business, [INAUDIBLE] involved in making the production runs, NGOs who might have some funding and be able to support the process. And then the users themselves, who would actually be installing this in their homes. Then installation happens because now you have the production. All the parts are ready, the components are there, you have to install it. It's a pretty simple process. User maintenance, this is where the user takes control, right? Because a product is easy to install and easy to use and maintain, they can take care of this themselves. And then the last step is feedback and more ideas. What happens with any innovation that's rolled out into the marketplaces, rolled out into the world? This process is referred to as diffusion of innovation, right? It gets out into the world, people start using it, and very often they have ideas. As you use a product or a service, you start discovering that if this was slightly different it could be a lot better. You can come up with incremental innovations as a user. And those ideas can be really important feedback for designers, for innovators. So in a sense, step number 8 actually can feed back and go back into number 1, thereby closing the loop. So what happens here now is those ideas from the users go back, and you can start this process all over again. So what we have seen is that in this specific sustainable innovation, clearly it has a big component of environmental responsibility, because it reduces the amount of smoke that is coming out. It uses local materials, that makes it a lot easier. It requires less transport and by itself it becomes more sustainable. All the manufacturing is happening locally, it's done by appropriate technologies. It does not require immense amount of heats and energy, so it's environmentally a lot better. Socially it also makes a big impact, because by using these low smoke chulhas, you can reduce the amount of debts. You can help families improve their quality of life. You can help improve the internal environment because there's no more smoke in the home. So it's socially a really responsible thing to do as well. And financially, it's extremely affordable for families to be able to do on their own. And you can get local entrepreneurs and NGOs involved as well. So, thinking of the three aspects of a sustainable innovation, which is environmental, social, and financial, this overall system, this is not just a product but it's an entire system of innovation, plays a really big part in making that happen. So, Phillips Design has put together a website, which is what you see on this image, it's called lowsmokechulha.com. And you can go to this website and all the images and all the explanation and renderings and photographs that you saw in this presentation were from this website. So if you'd like to know more about this specific sustainable innovation from Philips Design, you can go to the website and learn a lot more about it. So what we've done today is we've learned about a specific form of sustainable innovation through an example of the Low Smoke Chulha from Philips Design. And I hope you can go to the site and learn a lot more about it. Thank you.
