Brian Chatterton's Blog (10)

If you want to start a business you have to be have a good foundation in a number of different areas - managing relationships, budgeting, accounting, negotiation, legal requirements and so on.

My dream is a platform where anyone with a good idea can go and with minimum cost find and hire a team of experts to do all the 'non-core' work while they work on developing their business. A baker can focus on baking, rather than invoicing and debt collecting. A book-keeper can focus on…

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What is money?

Money is a way of measuring and storing value.

Sound too simple? Well break it down. Why do I get paid in money instead of, say, pebbles? Simply, because I can be reasonably confident about how many dollars I need to pay rent, bills, buy groceries and so on through the month (although sometimes I still get that wrong).

From a price I can quickly decide if I think it's good value (a bargain) or bad value (what a rip off). If I had my paysack…

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A coupld of thing I would like to see:

1) Do we all have to make huge, world changing aceivements to be social innovators? I realise the game is based around epic wins, but reading A.V. Koshy's 'Neverland' blog, it occured to me that there is something epic in not saving the world to spend time with your family instead.

2) Into the real world - maybe physical socail networking…

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Women Of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) is a group of women whose aims are:

• Provide women, from all walks of life, with a united voice to speak out on issues affecting their day-to-day lives.
• Empower female leadership that will lead community involvement in pressing for solutions to the current crisis.
• Encourage women to stand up for their rights and freedoms.
• Lobby and advocate on those issues affecting women and…

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Growing up in Bulawayo, we seemed to have a drought more often then not. The years we did get rain it was far too hard and washed the top soil away and the erosion causes all sorts of problems on the infrastructure.

Monitoring

Drinking water

1) Municipal drinking water capacity - how much do we have left?

2) Municipal consuption - how much are we using?

3) How long will it last? (1)/(2)

4) Pipe…

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How do you effectively distribute information in a mass panic? TV and Radio wouldn't be as effective as in western societies as a much smaller percentage of the population has them.

Most families or villages will have at least one member who lives and works in a city centre. Cell phone penetration is very high, some estimate as high as 93% of the population own a cell phone.

SMS messaging is relatively cheap and bulk messaging facilities are already used…

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It's strange, this week's mission has reminded of an experiance I found deeply touching and inspiring at the time, but had completely forgotten about.



I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, so I may be biased but I still think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Besides the tourist trap of the Victoria Falls there are thousands of truly magical places. From Hwange, a game reserve the size of Wales, to the rolling green hills of the Eastern Highlands. Gonarezhou has some of… Continue

I think Life Straws are the most innovative solution to a water crisis.



Even in cases of drought there is normally there is normally water available, the problem is that the water isn't safe to drink. It is possible to find underground water and dig wells by hand and many people have the knowledge to do so. The problem is making sure the water is safe to drink. Some water borne deseases may pass though meters of sand quite…

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Vegawatt is a device for restaurants which filters waste cooking oil and burns it to produce electricity and hot water. With a projected ROI of 2 years, it seems a no-brainer.



Used cooking oil has long been seen as a source for biodiesel. I think this is a better solution for a number of reasons:

• It doesn't use caustic chemicals to refine the oil.
• There isn't any collection and transportation needed. The oil is converted at…

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When considering social innovation it is natural to think solely in terms of a totally new system, of the way things should be. It's natural to want to start from a white piece of paper and start without any constraints.



Thinking big, and I mean humongous big, is a good thing. Brain-storming without any limits is without a doubt the best way to get the innovation and ideas flowing.



However, it's a mistake to think that you should always think 'out-the-box' or 'blue-sky… Continue