Energy experts now confidently predict that by 2040, solar and wind will drive no less than 60% of global power; natural gas will replace the lion’s share of the burning of coal, and the market for electric cars will soar. Nassim Taleb, on the other hand, questions the ability of experts to predict just about… Read More »
From Concept to Market: How to Design for Impact
Responding to Martin Herrndorf’s (@Herrndorf) blog post titled All That Glitters is Good on NextBillion.net “How do we commercialize university and do-it-yourself projects for the Other 90%? Too much sits in research.” Paul Polak’s video response is below: “The Appropriate Technology movement failed because it was peopled by technocrats rather than hard-headed entrepreneurs, and technologies were designed to… Read More »
Death of Appropriate Technology II : How to Design for the Market
by Paul Polak The single biggest reason that the appropriate technology movement died and most technologies for developing countries never reach scale is that nobody seems to know how to design for the market. Over the past 30 years, I’ve looked at hundreds of technologies for developing countries. Some provided elegant solutions for challenging technical… Read More »
The Death of Appropriate Technology I : If you can’t sell it don’t do it
by Paul Polak The appropriate technology movement died peacefully in its sleep ten years ago. Launched in 1973 by Fritz Schumacher and his lovely book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered in 1973, it inspired politicians as different as Pat Brown in California and Jawarhal Nehru in India, thousands of middle-aged dreamers like… Read More »
Design for the Other 90% and Wild Blueberries
by Paul Polak Many people see design as creating new mechanical tools – better widgets for controlling space, flight, or grinding corn. For me, design is creative problem solving. Designing new mechanical tools is often a critical first step, but far from sufficient for creative problem solving. On our quest to help poor smallholders improve… Read More »