EMTECH INDIA 2009 – My raw notes.My interest is in the BOP angle, so that’s what I dropped in for. Here are my majortakeaways for BOP:

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BOP where does it fit in India’s future? - 4 classifications. better fastercheaper - bpo. Localizations of global business model - amazon. India’sgrowth story – hotels, airport. Disruptive innovation – most exciting and BOPis here. (I am missing this in my four sub-economies analysis of China)

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Big ifs for India’s future – primary education failure. Water. Biofuels.Disparity and strife between urban and rural.

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Time running out - India cannot ride on its IIT dividend much longer. There isa so called demographic dividend of 500 mil young (check numbers) by2020/25. India can be the world’s knowledge factory, as China is the world’smanufacturing and Brazil the world’s farm. But this dividend is a millstone if they cannot capitalize on educating the young. BOP plays a role in education,healthcare in a sustainable, constrained resources manner.

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BOP framework? - Works because very cheap, satisfy one wide need, createvalue – earn money, more productive, big bang marketing so you have to haveit, simple to use, universal esp non educated and illiterate, work well from dayone, services added regularly, walked into a vacuum. Is this the formula forBOP? Answers 4C needs – communicate, consumption, compete, care.

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BOP energy – Fuel crisis of future will affect all societies. India’s potential isto move away from farm jobs into newly created jobs for agribusiness,biofuels. It’s sadly easier to export than sell inside India.

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BOP healthcare – no new ideas. Seems to be able to tap on maybe middleBOP, but not BOP.

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BOP education – not impressive. They are feeling in the dark. Having cheaplaptops is noise, no starter. No new ideas. Seem to blame govt.

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BOP Investing – microfinance mchek’s way interesting.

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BOP ICT – spoken web. Crossing the chasm, no early adopters. Govt shouldplay this role, but it isn’t and gets in the way. Lack a whole support ecosystemto allow solutions to scale.

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BOP media – billion cameras. Interesting tag ‘power of computer to power of network to power of people’, enabled via cameras and mashups. People‘sousveillance’ of government.

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BOP technology – cannot take mainstream technology and scale it down.Doesn’t work. Have to create from scratch with BOP as end market. Even if you start from selling at top of pyramid.

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BOP entrepreneurs – are NOT bottom of innovation pyramid. But as IIM’sexample shows, they lack the platform to scale, or crowdsource. If you cannotstandardize it and sell, no infrastructure to reward innovation.Overall view – Lots of innovation, but BOP is not a source of growth yet due to lack of govt framework, policy, scalable infrastructure to cross the chasm. None of theabove seems to be scalable within India. Better instead to source IP for export toChina to manufacture. Oh dear.Get

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IIM’s Discovery channel ‘My Technology’ ads for amphibious bicycle, treeclimber etc. Good clips.

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Youtube mchek Is it worth attending next year?

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Yes, one more chance. Who else is looking at India’s future?Followups

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This crisis is an opportunity for nations to reinvent themselves. How is Indiareinventing itself? Future of India demand?Day one of Emtech India – TakeawaysPradeep Gupta, Technology review India publisher.India is taking up their ancient mantle of knowledge superpower in the present age. Inthirty years, India will be the third largest market in the world. No longer a consumerof innovation, but already now has a generator of new innovations. (to do: sign up forTechnology Review India, launch in June 2009. Maybe sign up for future annualEmtech India?)Jason Pontin, MIT technologyreview.com editor.This is the coming decade of India’s dominance in alternative fuels, biotech. VikramKumar, villagers can use portable set to diagnose each other. Tapan Parik, createdcellphone software for Kerala fishermen to get better prices for their catch.Technologies focus on BOP, the bottom billion. India has something specific to offerthe world. If world is to have the same standard of living, it will not be building outwasteful technologies as in the USA. It will be how to resources well, it will besustainable, and it is likely it will originate from India. India will be a leadingprovider of these technologies. Emtech and technologyreviewIndia will be the vehicleto showcase these technologies.Prof Menon, renowned physicist and policy makerProud of Warren Buffett’s possible successor, Indian born and IIT graduate. India hassome of the best brains, must continue to tap on them to make SGP home and base of operation. For technologies to succeed, the market must want them. Akio Moritaspeech at Royal Society. Science not equal to Technology, Technology not equal toInnovation. Innovation is not discovery alone, it relates to ecological system where itflowers. Si valley has combination of fresh technology from Stanford and people whoknow how to produce. Plus finance and law. And failure can be a success. No one isafraid of failure. Success is built on failure. So much of India’s success is built by thetip of the iceberg (the IITs, NRIs), what can we do to unlock the rest of the iceberg.India’s success in the future depends on this. Institutes need autonomy. Greenrevolution succeeded in India’s ability to bring together an irrigation system, new landholding systems together with technologies from overseas. Food is a concern,especially with climate change onset.Neelam Dhawan, MD HP IndiaBrazil, China and India are new originators of innovation. Blah corporate spiel. (Todo: Demos’ review of these three giant’s innovation should be posted up and maybe atwo, three pager or SCG is useful. Post it up when you get back.)

Fireside chat: Touching a billion lives through healthcare

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Telemedicine via village hospitals. About 2000 in India now. But not enough,Apollo is building a ‘health superhighway’. Good healthcare can easily add 3-5% to GDP. Pushing for BPP partnership. (healthcare is socially explosive, Idon’t think BPP will work.)

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Dupont’s point is to improve agriculture yields and let rising incomes takecare of healthcare. Nothing to dispute there, but also nothing new. Interestingexample, Dupont put one agro-nomist in remote states and it raised theproductive yields across the whole state, solving problem of informationdissemination solved thousands of smaller secondary problems. Dupont thinksthis is also possible for healthcare. What is the crux to raise productivity?

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Universal insurance will also help break the poverty-debt cycle.

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Lack of healthcare facilities. Add 100,000 hospital beds, add more nurses,doctors etc. But have to fund this. Also bring up the awareness of primaryhealthcare. US$200 bil roughly. Education. Don’t believe government shoulddo this other than subsidizing the poor. Make it a private sector deliveredinfrastructure.

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Universal e-medical records. Can create employment for 1 million people inIndia. Reddy’s health superhighway, not just Apollo-centric.Next Billion Cameras: MIT Media LabRamesh Raskar, Camera Culturehttp://raskar.info(check it out)

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Zero to a billion cameras on phones being sold every year, in six years. Howcan we get something like MIT Media Lab to be in SGP? Tracking new mediaculture for Asia? It’s industry-collaboration mainly, it can be done.

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New lab initiatives - Center for Future Banking sponsored by BoA, Center forFuture Civic Media, Center for Future Storytelling.

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Plymouth Rock Studios collaborating with Center for Future Storytelling tomanage tension between master storytelling and mass storytelling fromYoutubes etc.

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Smart Cities on synthetic neurobiology by Vinay Gidvaney. Check it out.

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Now use software to digitally refocus software. Cool. No need lens.

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Flutter Shutter Camera

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Hire artists to draw what can be photographed? Because it strips down toessential information as cartoons. Now with a cartoon camera, you can.

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Long distance bar-codes. Upgrade bar codes for the next billion cameras. It’sonly 3mmx3mm, called bokeh-based code. Beyond QR.

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Visual social computing. Inverse computing where it recognizes images.Powershifts from power of the processor to power of the network (SUN) topower of the people, where people ARE the computer. Crowdsourcing usingAmazon’s mechanical turk. Is it a business model for India? Outsourcing?

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Cameras in BOP villages work because they are illiterate, but visualcomputing makes it possible. New business model?

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Photosynth – take picture, upload, mashup with maps, updated daily map forcity planning, disaster management, health centers, schools, traffic jams etc.Interactive city management platform. Citizen groups will intervene to ask formore resources or plan.

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Citizen’s socio-political creator of media, different from old media andgovernment. A billion TV stations. Beyond text, but reaching out to BOP.