Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor – New York Times

It is a luxury right now to sit back and peruse articles about economic topics that interest me. Economic development has been a passion of mine yet I have not had the opportunity to share my passion about economic development with my current AP students. The AP syllabus does not cover this topic and the Lorenz curve is about the closest that my AP student came to learning about income distribution and poverty. This was not an authentic study of or discussion about effective economic development.

So, I was pleased to read the article by Donald McNeil in today’s (5/29/07) New York Times which highlighted a show at the Cooper –Hewitt Design Museum where designers displayed the products that designed to serve the needs of the world’s poor. These products were created to enhance the quality of life of poor people world wide. They were designed as products that would assist the world’s poorest people in climbing the “self sufficiency” economic ladder.

“A billion customers in the world,” Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently, “are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house.” The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis. “We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.

The designers created new ways to transport water, created human powered water pumps to enable planting during the dry seasons, and designed an apparatus to clean water for drinking as you sip it directly from streams, rivers and lakes. So many inventors spend so much time designing goods and services for the rich that if in this ‘new revolution” were to take hold, the world’s poor might just find ways to make themselves richer.

What I like about this approach to economic development is that it involves giving the poorest members of our world community the tools that they will need to become independent entrepreneurs who will build their own economic success. This is not a “give them some food to eat”, “give them a dam that they don’t need” or a give them some “charity” type of economic development. It is much more than that…The artists and inventors themselves knew that:

“Interestingly, most of the designers who spoke at the opening of the exhibition spurned the idea of charity.

“The No. 1 need that poor people have is a way to make more cash,” said Martin Fisher, an engineer who founded KickStart, an organization that says it has helped 230,000 people escape poverty. It sells human-powered pumps costing $35 to $95.

Pumping water can help a farmer grow grain in the dry season, when it fetches triple the normal price. Dr. Fisher described customers who had skipped meals for weeks to buy a pump and then earned $1,000 the next year selling vegetables.

“Most of the world’s poor are subsistence farmers, so they need a business model that lets them make money in three to six months, which is one growing season,” he said. KickStart accepts grants to support its advertising and find networks of sellers supplied with spare parts, for example”

Now that is the kind of economic development revolution that I want to be part of. For more information about a truly successful worldwide economic development program for woman, check out the Grameen Bank and/or the Grameen Foundation. Both programs combine the power of microfinance, technology and innovative solutions to defeat global poverty. They too put tools in the hands of poor women. The Founder, Muhammad Yunus just won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work and for his foundation. His work inspires me..

Andrew Leonard of Salon.com writes an interesting piece about the implications of a bicycle friendly future on the global economy.

A bicycle built for a better world – Salon.com

People who know me know that I’m a bike guy. Here in China I own five bicycles. This may sound crazy, but allow me to explain: One is only for riding the 400 meters between school and home, this is my city bike (it’s name is Genghis). One is strictly for off-road, cross-country and downhill mountain biking, one is for strictly on-road, fast-paced, long distance riding while one is for touring (on or off road), and the last, my personal favorite, is not for riding at all, it’s only for looking at: that’s my Shanghai Yong Jiu bicycle, better known as the Forever.

So what do bikes have to do with economics? John Burke, president of Trek bicycles, made famous by Lance Armstrong who rode a Trek to six Tour de France victories, believes that that the future is bright for the bicycle industry:

“Looking at a United States plagued by obesity, traffic congestion,
urbanization and environmental woes, he sees “an incredible
opportunity” to sell bicycles.”

Growth of the bicycle industry may seem a simple, more localized alternative to the incredibly complex global automobile industry. In fact, the bike industry today is nearly as complicated in its global integration as that of automobiles. Leonard writes:

“A bicycle made in Taiwan by Giant or Trek or Specialized is an integral cog of the global economy, even when it is being ridden by a hippie in Berkeley pulling a Burley trailer full of locally grown organic produce behind him. You may help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by riding a bike, but you’re a long way from opting out of the world-annihilating industrial megacomplex. Bikes are high-tech products manufactured according to the latest advances in metallurgical and plastics sciences in robot-run factories connected to globe-spanning supply chains and taking advantage of the differentials in labor costs between the developed and developing world. There’s nothing at all simple about the role Taiwan plays in the world economy, or how modern manufacturing processes enable precision machined parts from scores of countries to be assembled together and delivered to a bike store near you. I’m all for a more bike-friendly world, where every road has a bike lane (or at least a wide shoulder) and every city goes the extra mile to welcome bikers with open arms. But let’s not pretend that there’s something simple, or bucolic, about what we’re doing. It’s darn complicated and only getting more so.”

While I agree with Leonard that most of the bikes being ridden by Americans come from factories in Taiwan with components from China, Japan, and other Asian countries, I have to make an argument that growth of the bike industry presents more opportunities for entrepreneurs, craftsmen, and community stakeholders at home than continued growth of the automobile industry ever could.

I personally own two bikes that were built in the United States, one which was built in a welding shop in my tiny hometown in Idaho by a guy named Toby. How many people know the name of the guy who built their car? In fact, as cycling increases in popularity across the US, thousands of individuals who are passionate about the art of bicycle design and construction have tapped the growing market for tailor made, custom bicycles. Several of these garage-based welding operations have grown into large, economically competitive firms producing thousands of bikes each year for domestic buyers and for the export market (Cannondale, Titus, Seven Cycles, Moots, and many others).

While a world of Trek riders may not fit the Utopian image of local, home-grown, hippy, organic society Leonard imagines, more demand for bikes does mean greater opportunity for the re-emergence of an industry that with the growth of the auto industry over the last thirty years has slowly disappeared from America’s economy; that is, locally designed and hand-crafted vehicles for transporting people and products within and between communities.

By the way, If you doubt the utility of bikes for transporting products, visit Shanghai sometime, where bikes are used for FAR more than just recreation!

Bikes hand-made in the US of A:

Custom Bicycle Builder Portal: Listing over 40 builders
North American Hand Made Bicycle Show 2007

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