High Tech Crowdsoucing Driving Innovation and Opportunity

Prepared by Ryan Coleman and Kevin Walsh

The Global Catalyst Group revisits the reoccurring topic of crowdsourcing. Our guest for the call, Liam Cleaver is the Program Director of IBM’s Innovation Jams. Liam will share with us the background, technology and theory behind IBM Jams. Innovation Jams are online brainstorming events hosted over the course of 72 hours and synthesis the ideas, thoughts, recommendations and opportunities of thousands of participants across the world.  IBM hosted Jams that incorporated over 300,000 members of its global workforce and has dedicated more than $100 million to fund the development of ideas present from Innovation Jam  Events.

IBM’s InnovationJam 2008 took crowdsourcing to its truest form by “tapping the collaborative insight of leading thinkers from thousands of companies to help advance the vision of IBM’s CEO Study, “The Enterprise of the Future.” The event hosted 90,000 login’s and over 32,000 post over a 90 hour period.
Read more at: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/jam/

Objectives:

• Discover the fundamentals behind IBM’s Innovation Jams
• Explore the intrinsic benefit of companies hosting events like Jams on a) innovation and b) corporate culture
• Identify key attributes of successful crowdsoucing and corporate wide brainstorming sessions (Risk associated with/Opportunities/Key Management Principles)

Guiding questions:

• How can we translate internal or corporate crowdsourcing into consumer driven innovation?
• What opportunities exist by innovating through crowdsourcing in the high tech industry?
• Based on previous conversations and insight into IBM’s Innovation Jams, what business opportunities present themselves through platform creation to facilitate crowdsourced innovation in emerging industries (3D Printing, Nano Tech, Bio-Medicine)
• Based on the IBM case study what key lessons surfaced as essential to creating innovation programs like InnovationJams.

Can introducing a laptop to every child foster educational as well as economic growth in developing nations?

Prepared by Marcus Howard and Srujan Linga

There is no doubt that there is a large education gap between the established and developing nations of the world. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) attempts to begin closing this gap by introducing technology to students in rural nations through the implementation of a $100 laptop to every student. Started by Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Laboratory at MIT, their mission is to empower the child of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. Started in 2005, OLPC has provided just over 500,000 laptops to children in Africa, Asia, and parts of Europe.

While ambitious in their mission; their initiative has not been without setbacks. OLPC has been fraught with several financial, political, and structural pitfalls. First, widely marketed $100 price point for the laptop costs them just under $190 to produce. Second, while the technology may be present in many of the OLPC classrooms, there are few teachers trained sufficiently enough to utilize the technologies and/or to help students troubleshoot. Third, many object that OLPC’s approach to education does not take into account the varying cultural and political norms and attempts a “one size fits all” approach to education and technology. Finally, OLPC is facing an increase in competition by companies like Intel due to demands by consumers in developed nations for a cheaper laptop.

Education is quickly growing to be a priority not only in developing nations but in the United States as well. Given the vast availability of free technology that spans every area of education, providing a free laptop to children in developing countries can potentially provide great value to everyone involved. Is OLPC a viable solution to this very pertinent problem?

Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM77C2ejTw&feature=player_embedded

Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMeX2D4AOjM&feature=player_embedded

Finding a solution:

Education in developing countries should be a priority. While OLPC has served as an ambitious foundation to tackling the problem there is still more work to be done.

During our conversation, the Global Catalyst Group discussed:

• How can we further utilize open source software and technology to enrich the educational experience of students in developing countries?
• What are some ideas to combat the “One size fits all” approach that serves as one of the major objections to the OLPC model?
• Is there real “value added” in providing laptops to children in developing nations when the teachers haven’t the training or educational experience to masterfully navigate through the technology?
• Is technology truly the answer to the growing educational gap between developing and established nations?

Below are some additional resources to help with learning about the project, it’s progress, and some of its setbacks.

The OLPC website:

http://laptop.org/en/

Keynote by Nicholas Negroponte on OLPC

http://www.netevents.tv/video/nicholas-negroponte-presents-olpcs-100-dollar-laptop

What are the challenges and possibilities for foreign aid programs?

Prepared by Alex Johnston and Don Ball

For the video inclined, TED has two lectures which should open up the discussion about the needs which aid fails to meet:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/andrew_mwenda_takes_a_new_look_at_africa.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ngozi_okonjo_iweala_on_aid_versus_trade.html

The experts square off on the need for more foreign aid:

http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/ElMundoArticle_052607.pdf

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op sachseasterly8may8,1,3796907.htmlstory?coll=la-util-op-ed

How is aid administered?

(see attached, “The Future of Aid”),

(see attached, “Why Foreign Aid is Hurting Africa.”  (in particular “A constant stream of “free” money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do — it doesn’t need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn’t have to take account of its disgruntled citizens. No matter that its citizens are disenfranchised (as with no taxation there can be no representation). All the government really needs to do is to court and cater to its foreign donors to stay in power.”)

Aid and debt, trade, and accountability.

(see attached, “Too Big to Fail.”)

• Under what circumstances is aid necessary or beneficial?
  Under what circumstance can it do more harm than good?
• Does foreign aid undermine accountability?

Consider some of the primary motivations behind aid:

• Altruism, humanitarian, pr, trade promotion, soft power/political favors, political stabilization, investment opportunities, economic ties, military alliances, tax benefits,etc?

What are the best vehicles for aid and under what circumstances are
they appropriate?

• Government to government (traditional infrastructure,
  trade/custom/quota agreements, peacekeeping, disaster relief, etc)
• Private to private (private investment, NGO-driven
  health/education/infrastructure programs, etc)
• Government to private (health research, subsidies or insurance for investment, etc)

Closing discussion:

What parties are most capable of raising, managing and distributing aid? What are some case studies where different forms of aid have been successful? What are some case studies where different forms of aid have been detrimental?What can we learn from these case studies? How does the emergence of new investor and donor nations (e.g. China) affect the aid landscape?What alternative are available to aid-based development strategies?Given growing public sector debt and private sector frailty due of the financial crisis, can we expect to see big changes in the aid  landscape?

What are great teachers and programs doing to engage students?

Prepared by Don Ball and Justin Tsang

Framing the problem of Education:

“Education is the most important thing to get right.”
-Bill Gates

Watch: (starting at 7minutes 59 seconds to end of video):

Key takeaways:

The top 20% of students have gotten a good education in the United States. These are the best educations in world and these students have gone on to create the revolutions to keep the US in forefront. Those top 20% are starting to fad and the balance of education is getting worse. Furthermore, the economy is only providing opportunities to for those with advanced educations.

Over 30% of children never finish high school. For minorities this percentage is over 50%. If you graduate from HS and you also come from a low income family you have less than a 25% chance of completing a college degree, and a higher percentage to go to jail then get a four year degree.

Key takeaways: Students must begin using engaging technologies in collaborative, inquiry-based learning environments, with teachers who are willing and able to use technology’s power to assist them in transforming knowledge and skills into products, skills, and new information.

The next generation wants to:

• Create
• Consume
• Remix
• And share information with each other

Building a solution to the problem: Looking forward

• Who are the teachers that you have that are great? What makes them different?
• What is the best way to reward great teachers?
• How would you retain great teachers if you were an administrator?
• What could be done to replicate great teachers?

Watch: Clip from 60 Minutes: http://www.kipp.org/videos/60Minutes.cfm

“KIPP is not just a school, but a way of life…”

“Today, more than 80% of KIPP students are going to college.”

KIPP Schedule: Monday through Friday 7:30 AM – 5:00 PM, Saturdays, and even school in the summer…KIPP students spend 70% more time in school than other students.

• What is KIPP’s education model?
• What is KIPP doing differently?
• How does KIPP instill accountability in students, teachers, and parents?
• Do you know similar models whether domestic or international that have similar success to KIPP?

Optional: Redefining the Possible: http://www.kipp.org/videos/ThePossible.cfm

The Twitter Revolution

Prepared by Liz Nugent and Don Ball

GCG discusses the recent presidental elections in Iran, focusing in particular on the role new media (twitter, blogs, text messaging, facebook) played in the elections – facilitating the opposition and student movements, increasing the ability of protesters to organize, and allowing candidates to communicate directly with their constituencies. Below are some links that will provide background on the elections.

Results of the election:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/iran-election-results-ahm_n_214975.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-election-results-ahm_0_n_215169.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-j-stone/how-the-iranian-election_b_216882.html

Protest coverage

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/day-of-mourning-protests-called-by.html

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/most-elegant-scene-mass-protest-in.html

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html

Obama’s reaction to election

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/washington-and-iran-protests-would-they.html

Example of twitter accounts that were constantly updated during the protests and chaos that ensued after the elections:

http://twitter.com/persiankiwi

http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi

http://twitter.com/change_for_iran

Role of new media:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100002576/irans-crackdown-proves-that-the-twitter-revolution-has-made-things-worse/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/17/DI2009061702232.html

Recent developments

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/05/iran.election.clerics/

As mounting concern about the ramifications of climate change presses global leaders to look for viable means to reduce carbon emissions, all attention has come to focus on the United States. As one of the largest overall emitters, both in volume and per capita, the decisions made here over the next year will determine the shape and pace of global climate policy over the next decade.  Most have come to agree that linked carbon markets are one of the most feasible ways to price and constrain emissions, though consensus on specific measures will depend heavily on how OECD and industrializing nations are able to reconcile their conflicting perspectives on what is fair, and what is reasonable.  This Sunday evening, our conversation will focus on the primary policy vehicles under consideration, the roadblocks and the possible avenues for collaboration in addressing what may prove to be the most important international issue and diplomatic challenge of the 21st century.

With ever increasing levels of carbon emissions and their threat to global warming, a fiercely deliberated issue has been around what is the best way to structure a global environmental policy. With Clinton’s recent visit to India and China’s hard stance during the G8 talks clearly showing the unwillingness of the developing countries to accept limits set by the developed nations, an interesting and timely topic for GCG members to discuss would be the issue of international environmental policy. In specific, we would like to discuss the following questions:

• 1) Is it fair for the developed nations to impose carbon emission limits and increase tariffs on goods imported from developing countries and hence hinder their industrial development?
• 2) What would be an effective & fair policy which would both not hinder industrial development of the emerging nations and at the same time limit carbon emissions?

The following articles will serve as guiding material for our discussion:

1) Poor countries wrangle with rich ones about who can burn what and when? (http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14009113)

2) How to Set Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets for All Countries?

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19315/how_to_set_greenhouse_gas_emission_targets_for_all_countries.html?breadcrumb=%2Fproject%2F56%2Fharvard_project_on_international_climate_agreements

Our guest speaker, Allison Shapiro, is a carbon markets specialist that has spoken to audiences across the globe on these looming issues.

Allison Shapiro Bio

Allison Shapiro is a Program Associate in the Carbon Markets program of the Ecosystem Marketplace. At Ecosystem Marketplace, she has contributed to the 2008 and 2009 ‘State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets’ reports, writes for the V-Carbon News, and updated the second edition of the book Voluntary Carbon Markets: A Business Guide to What They Are and How They Work. She was also a contributor to an Ecosystem Marketplace study on conservation banking in the United States for the information clearinghouse SpeciesBanking.com. Before joining Ecosystem Marketplace, Allison worked at ICF International, where she provided environmental management support to US federal government and foreign clients. Allison holds a BS degree in Science, Technology, and International Affairs with a concentration in Environmental Studies from Georgetown University. She speaks English and Spanish.  This coming year she will be attending Michigan Business School.

This week’s guest speaker will be Andrew Cedotal, Director of New Media Strategy at Abrams Research.

This week’s topic:

The recent Twitter/Techcrunch leak controversy has put the issue of transparency in new media and technology companies front and center. Despite the Internet’s supposedly democratizing effect on society at large, it is arguable whether or not this trend is effecting the companies that, for lack of a better term, are “running” the internet.

Is new media itself making new media companies more or less transparent? And, for companies on the leading edge of social innovation, is transparency necessarily a good thing?

Possible avenues of discussion include:

• New media companies frequenly deride old-model public companies (General Electric, Coca-Cola) as relics of the past…but is there any way that the industry’s relationship with venture capital can make corporate governance into anything other than a smoke-filled room?
• What effect is cloud document storage having on corporate security issues? And how does this effect corporate cultures, where sharing strategic plans or revenue projections with lower-level employees is just a click away?
• Even when new media companies books are laid completely open, due diligence hasn’t prevented disasters like Bebo and The Learning Company. Is there any way to make new media businesses truly transparent to non-new-media businesses?
• Google and Microsoft are both publicly-traded companies, and yet their backroom anti-trust fencing on search has taken on the character of palace intrigue in 15th-century Florence. In an era where the average investor, journalist, or bystander can’t be expected to understand all the issues facing tech conglomerates, how can “real” transparency translate into “effective” transparency?
• Long ago, new media was supposed to put content distribution back into the hands of the masses, However, Hulu has succeeded wildly with the backing of Fortune 100 media companies, and while the music industry hasn’t come up with a viable alternative themselves, they’ve at least been able to crush opponents like SeeqPod under litigation. Even the Pirate Bay is nominally corporate now! Did crowdsourcing the content revolution really fail, and if so, why?

Official Bio:

Andrew Cedotal is currently designing a content network for Dan Abrams’ Abrams Media, one which will reinvigorate the now-stale medium of blogging, just as sunlight causes toadstools to shrivel, die, and blow away like so many cheap corsages. In this capacity, he is a Contributing Editor at Mediaite.com.

He attended Yale University, where he double-majored in Hipster Crap and Server-based Gaming. Before that, he was forced to learn QBASIC for “Computers,” the Boy Scout merit badge.

Some readings:

In Our Inbox: Hundreds of Confidential Twitter Documents

Will Twitter Sue TechCrunch?

Twitter Breach Revives Security Issues with Cloud Computing

Mattel Learns Hard Lessons with The Learning Company

Google Argues it Really Isn’t So Big