-
When you grow up in a developing country
like India, as I did,
-
you instantly learn to get more value
from limited resources
-
and find creative ways to reuse
what you already have.
-
Take Mansukh Prajapati,
a potter in India.
-
He has created a fridge
made entirely of clay
-
that consumes no electricity.
-
He can keep fruits and vegetables
fresh for many days.
-
That's a cool invention, literally.
-
In Africa, if you run out of
your cell phone battery, don't panic.
-
You will find some
resourceful entrepreneurs
-
who can recharge your
cell phone using bicycles.
-
And since we are in South America,
-
let's go to Lima in Peru,
-
a region with high humidity
-
that receives only one inch
of rainfall each year.
-
An engineering college in Lima
designed a giant advertising billboard
-
that absorbs air humidity
and converts it into purified water,
-
generating over 90 liters
of water every day.
-
The Peruvians are amazing.
-
They can literally create
water out of thin air.
-
For the past seven years,
-
I have met and studied
hundreds of entrepreneurs
-
in India, China, Africa and South America,
and they keep amazing me.
-
Many of them did not go to school.
-
They don't invent stuff in big R&D labs.
-
The street is the lab.
-
Why do they do that?
-
Because they don't have the kind
of basic resources we take for granted,
-
like capital and energy,
-
and basic services
like healthcare and education
-
are also scarce in those regions.
-
When external resources are scarce,
you have to go within yourself
-
to tap the most abundant
resource, human ingenuity,
-
and use that ingenuity to find clever ways
to solve problems with limited resources.
-
In India, we call it Jugaad.
-
Jugaad is a Hindi word
-
that means an improvised fix,
a clever solution born in adversity.
-
Jugaad solutions are not
sophisticated or perfect,
-
but they create more value at lower cost.
-
For me, the entrepreneurs
who will create Jugaad solutions
-
are like alchemists.
-
They can magically transform
adversity into opportunity,
-
and turn something of less value
into something of high value.
-
In other words, they mastered the art
of doing more with less,
-
which is the essence of frugal innovation.
-
Frugal innovation is the ability
to create more economic and social value
-
using fewer resources.
-
Frugal innovation is not about making do;
it's about making things better.
-
Now I want to show you how,
across emerging markets,
-
entrepreneurs and companies are adopting
frugal innovation on a larger scale
-
to cost-effectively deliver healthcare
and energy to billions of people
-
who may have little income
but very high aspirations.
-
Let's first go to China,
-
where the country's largest
I.T. service provider, Neusoft,
-
has developed a telemedicine solution
-
to help doctors in cities
remotely treat old and poor patients
-
in Chinese villages.
-
This solution is based on
simple-to-use medical devices
-
that less qualified health workers
like nurses can use in rural clinics.
-
China desperately needs
these frugal medical solutions
-
because by 2050 it will be home
to over half a billion senior citizens.
-
Now let's go to Kenya,
-
a country where half the population
uses M-Pesa, a mobile payment solution.
-
This is a great solution
for the African continent
-
because 80 percent of Africans
don't have a bank account,
-
but what is exciting is that M-Pesa
is now becoming the source
-
of other disruptive business models
in sectors like energy.
-
Take M-KOPA, the home solar solution
that comes literally in a box
-
that has a solar rooftop panel,
three LED lights,
-
a solar radio, and a cell phone charger.
-
The whole kit, though, costs 200 dollars,
which is too expensive for most Kenyans,
-
and this is where mobile telephony
can make the solution more affordable.
-
Today, you can buy this kit by making
an initial deposit of just 35 dollars,
-
and then pay off the rest by making
a daily micro-payment of 45 cents
-
using your mobile phone.
-
Once you've made 365 micro-payments,
the system is unlocked,
-
and you own the product and you start
receiving clean, free electricity.
-
This is an amazing solution for Kenya,
-
where 70 percent of people
live off the grid.
-
This shows that with frugal innovation
-
what matters is that you take what is
most abundant, mobile connectivity,
-
to deal with what is scarce,
which is energy.
-
With frugal innovation,
the global South is actually catching up
-
and in some cases
even leap-frogging the North.
-
Instead of building expensive hospitals,
China is using telemedicine
-
to cost-effectively treat
millions of patients,
-
and Africa, instead of building
banks and electricity grids,
-
is going straight to mobile payments
and distributed clean energy.
-
Frugal innovation is diametrically opposed
to the way we innovate in the North.
-
I live in Silicon Valley,
-
where we keep chasing
the next big technology thing.
-
Think of the iPhone 5, 6, then 7, 8.
-
Companies in the West spend
billions of dollars investing in R&D,
-
and use tons of natural resources
to create ever more complex products,
-
to differentiate their brands
from competition,
-
and they charge customers
more money for new features.
-
So the conventional business model
in the West is more for more.
-
But sadly, this more for more model
is running out of gas, for three reasons:
-
First, a big portion
of customers in the West
-
because of the diminishing
purchasing power,
-
can no longer afford
these expensive products.
-
Second, we are running out of
natural water and oil.
-
In California, where I live,
water scarcity is becoming a big problem.
-
And third, most importantly,
-
because of the growing income disparity
-
between the rich
and the middle class in the West,
-
there is a big disconnect
between existing products and services
-
and basic needs of customers.
-
Do you know that today,
-
there are over 70 million Americans
today who are underbanked,
-
because existing banking services
-
are not designed to address
their basic needs.
-
The prolonged economic crisis
in the West is making people think
-
that they are about to lose
the high standard of living
-
and face deprivation.
-
I believe that the only way we can sustain
growth and prosperity in the West
-
is if we learn to do more with less.
-
The good news is,
that's starting to happen.
-
Several Western companies
are now adopting frugal innovation
-
to create affordable products
for Western consumers.
-
Let me give you two examples.
-
When I first saw this building,
-
I told myself it's some
kind of postmodern house.
-
Actually, it's a small manufacturing plant
set up by Grameen Danone,
-
a joint venture between
Grameen Bank of Muhammad Yunus
-
and the food multinational Danone
-
to make high-quality yogurt in Bangladesh.
-
This factory is 10 percent the size
of existing Danone factories
-
and cost much less to build.
-
I guess you can call it a low-fat factory.
-
Now this factory, unlike Western factories
that are highly automated,
-
relies a lot on manual processes in order
to generate jobs for local communities.
-
Danone was so inspired by this model
-
that combines economic efficiency
and social sustainability,
-
they are planning to roll it out
in other parts of the world as well.
-
Now, when you see this example,
-
you might be thinking, "Well,
frugal innovation is low tech."
-
Actually, no.
-
Frugal innovation is also
about making high tech
-
more affordable and more
accessible to more people.
-
Let me give you an example.
-
In China, the R&D engineers
of Siemens Healthcare
-
have designed a C.T. scanner
that is easy enough to be used
-
by less qualified health workers,
like nurses and technicians.
-
This device can scan
more patients on a daily basis,
-
and yet consumes less energy,
-
which is great for hospitals,
but it's also great for patients
-
because it reduces the cost
of treatment by 30 percent
-
and radiation dosage by up to 60 percent.
-
This solution was initially designed
for the Chinese market,
-
but now it's selling like hotcakes
in the U.S. and Europe,
-
where hospitals are pressured
to deliver quality care at lower cost.
-
But the frugal innovation revolution
-
in the West is actually led
by creative entrepreneurs
-
who are coming up with amazing solutions
-
to address basic needs
in the U.S. and Europe.
-
Let me quickly give you
three examples of startups
-
that personally inspire me.
-
The first one happens to be launched
by my neighbor in Silicon Valley.
-
It's called gThrive.
-
They make these wireless sensors
designed like plastic rulers
-
that farmers can stick
in different parts of the field
-
and start collecting detailed
information like soil conditions.
-
This dynamic data allows farmers
to optimize use of water energy
-
while improving quality
of the products and the yields,
-
which is a great solution for California,
which faces major water shortage.
-
It pays for itself within one year.
-
Second example is Be-Bound,
also in Silicon Valley,
-
that enables you
to connect to the Internet
-
even in no-bandwidth areas
where there's no wi-fi or 3G or 4G.
-
How do they do that?
-
They simply use SMS, a basic technology,
but that happens to be the most reliable
-
and most widely available
around the world.
-
Three billion people today with
cell phones can't access the Internet.
-
This solution can connect them
to the Internet in a frugal way.
-
And in France, there is
a startup calle Compte Nickel,
-
which is revolutionizing
the banking sector.
-
It allows thousands of people
to walk into a Mom and Pop store
-
and in just five minutes activate
the service that gives them two products:
-
an international bank account number
and an international debit card.
-
They charge a flat annual
maintenance fee of just 20 Euros.
-
That means you can do
all banking transactions --
-
send and receive money,
pay with your debit card --
-
all with no additional charge.
-
This is what I call low-cost banking
without the bank.
-
Amazingly, 75 percent
of the customers using this service
-
are the middle-class French
who can't afford high banking fees.
-
Now, I talked about frugal innovation,
initially pioneered in the South,
-
now being adopted in the North.
-
Ultimately, we would like to see
-
developed countries
and developing countries
-
come together and co-create
frugal solutions
-
that benefit the entire humanity.
-
The exciting news is
that's starting to happen.
-
Let's go to Nairobi to find that out.
-
Nairobi has horrendous traffic jams.
-
When I first saw them,
I thought, "Holy cow."
-
Literally, because you have to dodge cows
as well when you drive in Nairobi.
-
To ease the situation,
-
the engineers at the IBM lab in Kenya
are piloting a solution called Megaffic,
-
which initially was designed
by the Japanese engineers.
-
Unlike in the West, Megaffic
doesn't rely on roadside sensors,
-
which are very expensive
to install in Nairobi.
-
Instead they process images, traffic data,
-
collected from a small number of
low-resolution webcams in Nairobi streets,
-
and then they use analytic software
to predict congestion points,
-
and they can SMS drivers
alternate routes to take.
-
Granted, Megaffic is not
as sexy as self-driving cars,
-
but it promises to take Nairobi drivers
from point A to point B
-
at least 20 percent faster.
-
And earlier this year, UCLA Health
launched its Global Lab for Innovation,
-
which seeks to identify frugal healthcare
solutions anywhere in the world
-
that will be at least 20 percent cheaper
than existing solutions in the U.S.
-
and yet more effective.
-
It also tries to bring together
innovators from North and South
-
to cocreate affordable healthcare
solutions for all of humanity.
-
I gave tons of examples of frugal
innovators from around the world,
-
but the question is, how do you go about
adopting frugal innovation?
-
Well, I gleaned out three principles
from frugal innovators around the world
-
that I want to share with you
-
that you can apply
in your own organization
-
to do more with less.
-
The first principle is: Keep it simple.
-
Don't create solutions
to impress customers.
-
Make them easy enough to use
and widely accessible,
-
like the C.T. scanner we saw in China.
-
Second principle:
Do not reinvent the wheel.
-
Try to leverage existing resources
and assets that are widely available,
-
like using mobile telephony
to offer clean energy
-
or Mom and Pop stores
to offer banking services.
-
Third principle is:
Think and act horizontally.
-
Companies tend to scale up vertically
-
by centralizing operations
in big factories and warehouses,
-
but if you want to be agile and deal
with immense customer diversity,
-
you need to scale out horizontally
using a distributed supply chain
-
with smaller manufacturing
and distribution units,
-
like Grameen Bank has shown.
-
The South pioneered frugal innovation
out of sheer necessity.
-
The North is now learning to do
more and better with less
-
as it faces resource constraints.
-
As an Indian-born French national
who lives in the United States,
-
my hope is that we transcend
this artificial North-South divide
-
so that we can harness
the collective ingenuity
-
of innovators from around the world
-
to cocreate frugal solutions
-
that will improve the quality of life
of everyone in the world,
-
while preserving our precious planet.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(Applause)
Retired user
At 07:49 the question mark is missing
There's a typo at 11:34: it says "calle" instead of "called".