South-South Design

Jonathan Greenblatt reports on the recently concluded International Development Design Summit (IDDS) at MIT:

Teams devised their own projects based on their market knowledge and insights. Many expressed the intent to return to their local communities after IDDS to spread their innovations among their neighbors and peers. These individuals were empowered to drive the front-end of the process as well as to earn the downstream reward. It's a rare thing to see a Western institution that directly engages its intended beneficiaries from the Global South, not as passive recipients, but as active partners. Other organizations would be well-advised to emulate this model...IDDS put forth incredibly basic design criteria. Teams were required to create innovations to serve a clear development need, to use locally available materials and to do so at a low cost. Students were not asked to create business models for their inventions, but simply to use the four-week period to create working prototypes and demonstrate proof of concept.