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Open2012 global-jugaad-commons
1. The Global Jugaad Commons
Cross Pollinating Concepts Across Cultures
Shruthi Baskaran, Gunjan Malekar, Khanjan Mehta
Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) Program
The Pennsylvania State University
2. HESE: Convergence for Impact
Affordable Greenhouses Solar Food Dehydrator
Mashavu Wishvast
8. Global Jugaad Commons
• Youth perceptions of innovation
• Cultural and contextual mechanisms influencing innovation
• Perceptions across communities, cultures and countries
• Creating repository of indigenous innovation s
9. Methodology
Country Number of Interviews Region/Partner
Tanzania 120 Tumaini University, Makumira Campus
Kenya 109 Children and Youth Empowerment Center, Nyeri
India 27 Maninagar, Ahmedabad
Nicaragua 25 Universidad Catolica Redemptoris Mater, UNICA
University
Coding Review and
Interviews Transcription Final Coding
(2 Members) (2 Members)
Semi Structured Interviews
11. Basic Demographics
Gender Distribution Formal Schooling Levels
> 12 years
Male
8 to 12 years
Female < 8 years
Age Distribution Categories of Innovation
Science/Tech
18-21 Social Science
22-26 Commerce
27-30 Arts
Other
13. Rationales for Innovation
Helps make/save money Fish Rearing
Helps solve problems Local Medicine
Livelihood Simplifies work Sawing Machine
Saves time Mobile Phones
Reuses resources to produce value Bone Necklaces
Reuses resources to produce value Banana Bark Plates
Convenience and Quality of Life Saves time Computers
Improves accessibility to resources Biogas
Preserves Culture Banana Wine
Social Development
Improves community Community Sports
Entertainment Lawnmower Racing
Pure Knowledge Advancement NASA
Environmental Recycling
Aesthetics Maasai Clothes
Self-Actualization Mentoring Youth
8 Themes | 15 Rationales | 300 Innovations
How do we know what the various rationales for innovations are? We read through all the narratives and came up with a coding scheme.
Diversity of Innovations: Example M-PESA, Biogas, Local Medicine and Banana Alcohol – General Overview; No family or household level biogas systems – picking it up at the school but its not really a practical innovation.
Among the 230 participants across East Africa, only 12 participants mentioned time as a constraining factor that made something innovative in their eyes, and of those, 10 participants mentioned it in the context of improving their quality of life – not a function of livelihood. It is also interesting to note that 10 out of these 12 participants were from Kenya, and all 12 were from urban areas. From experience working in East Africa, time has been a really fluid concept and our research only served to reinforce our opinions. Value Propositions
Strong influence of “western culture” on urban youth – validated in all four countries. Youth in urban areas were more likely to talk about large, community-scale innovations as opposed to youth in rural areas who talked about more local innovations. The interviews conducted at university campuses proved that with the more formally educated respondents, an obvious “occidental” influence was felt with more people talking about technological innovations. For instance, respondents from Nairobi talked about BMW concept cars running on hydrogen and water fuel, and about solar-powered cell phone chargers.
It was observed that men were more likely to talk about innovations that they had come to know about through mass media or outreach whereas women talked about innovations that were more close to heart. For instance, in Kenya, out of 71 semi-urban and urban respondents, only 10% of female respondents spoke about large scale innovations that pertained to the larger community whereas almost 60% of men spoke about such innovations. The statistics are really similar for Tanzania. We expected that this divide would exist given the traditional roles assigned to women in society, and we are analyzing this data further to really reflect on how the average East African woman’s perception of innovation varies from men’s.
Livelihood vs. Culture – Reflects on the historical background of Kenya and Tanzania. With a predominant focus on business development larger investments in infrastructure development, Kenyans often talked about livelihood related innovations – Tanzania talked more about innovations pertaining to culture. In a manner reflecting tribal identity and cohesion, Tanzanians also attributed to hearing about innovations from family and ancestors and often took a vehement stand to protect their family secrets, whereas Kenyans adopted a more mass media outlook.
Rural area has a focus of resource constraints.
A particularly interesting trend noticed in India pertained to the distinction of corporate and individual innovation by the respondents. Not a single respondent in India gave an example of a technology innovation and when prompted with a question pertaining to the iPhone as an innovation, the respondents said that they didn’t consider the iPhone a real innovation since it was made by a company and hence represented corporate innovation, which they distinguished as a separate form of innovation. Corporate innovation was somehow considered second-hand or inferior to individual/community innovation.
A strong link was found between the youth perception of innovation and the concept of indigenous knowledge. Often youth spoke about methods their grandparents and ancestors had passed on to them as a means for solving a common problem. For example, producing chicken coops with grass instead of steel when steel was too expensive to produce, or using food coloring as a substitute for eggs in baking cakes when eggs were scarce. Youth often protected this information fiercely and guarded them as family secrets and were often unwilling to disclose details.
9 out of 12 participants who considered several forms of local medicine to be innovative considered them to be innovative because it helps them save money that they would spend in going to “western” doctors.
Though several respondents talked about material innovations, few of them discussed what we call thought innovations. For instance, a juakali worker in Kenya told us that cross-cultural communication was the most innovative thing he had come across – the very fact that an international multi-racial team could be talking with him in his country and inquiring about his point of view was, to him, extremely innovative. Roughly 1 in 5 Kenyans also spoke about a community-related innovation instead of individual innovations. This was consistent across both men and women respondents.
When we were conducting interviews, we observed a group of children who would create toys such as the “barudi,” a miniature explosive that uses a matchstick head to pop and make a “bang” sound, and the “bundooki,” a toy gun made from a wooden stick, the cap of a pen, a piece of string and a rubber band. These toys were made by watching and learning from their friends, and these innovations were meant to be sources of entertainment, which was a theme of innovation that was seldom observed amidst the youth participants of the study.
When we were conducting interviews, we observed a group of children who would create toys such as the “barudi,” a miniature explosive that uses a matchstick head to pop and make a “bang” sound, and the “bundooki,” a toy gun made from a wooden stick, the cap of a pen, a piece of string and a rubber band. These toys were made by watching and learning from their friends, and these innovations were meant to be sources of entertainment, which was a theme of innovation that was seldom observed amidst the youth participants of the study.
