Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Opening your eyes to cost limitations and your potential market

As simple as it is, "Make it inexpensive" was the 'secret' of social innovation that resonated most with me. Due to an innovation competition that I've recently been attempting to take part in, I've spent a lot of time in the last couple weeks coming up with new ideas that would combat climate change in one way or another. One of the aspects of our favorite design (I worked with a partner) that I didn't consider until most of the other details were worked out was cost. In my defense, this was largely because the particular product I'm thinking of wouldn't be very expensive to begin with. However, by reducing the cost of our design even further, we realized that we would be appealing to an entirely new market of people, and thus our product would just be that much more effective.

Then I joined Evoke, and read the blog post linked to for this first mission (Innovation in Africa tips). Talk about a game-changer. I realized that the vast majority of our ideas that we thought were so special (humble, I know) would only be effective in extremely developed countries. Oops.

That's why "Make it inexpensive" is my pick out of those 33 suggestions. When you're talking about people living on $2 a day, "inexpensive" has an entirely new meaning. And that's something I think I need to absorb.

Views: 26

Comment by Mita Williams on March 25, 2010 at 8:08pm
I'm glad that the Evoke Network is already helping out your design process. As disappointing as your realization may be, at least it happened at the design phase. Thanks for sharing this story. +15 for Entrepreneurship!

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