People valued brick houses for their solidity and durability long before the Brothers Grimm wrote down the story of the wise pig who kept the wolf at bay while his brothers had their straw and wood homes blown down. The denizens of Tamil Nadu state in India are no different. Yet the kilns they need to bake enough bricks for a decent home require up to 15 tons of firewood—both an economic and an environmental hardship.
Development experts might have suggested that residents switch to a less resource-intensive building material to sustain the region’s booming housing sector. But George Eapen, a local inventor, knew that the brick houses held an unshakable allure. And so instead of trying to change ingrained attitudes, he changed the kiln. His new design bakes bricks with alternative fuels like agricultural waste, thereby reducing pollution and lessening the demand for firewood.
Eapen’s idea might have remained just that—a concept stuck on the drawing board. Instead, he received both financial support and mentoring from the Indian branch of the Portland, Ore.-based Lemelson Foundation’s Recognition and Mentoring Program (RAMP). With local partners Indian Institute of Technology and Rural Innovations Network, RAMP helps grassroots inventors “create enterprises that meet basic human needs in a sustainable way,” according to the organization’s Web site. “Life is tough enough for dreamers and innovators,” says Eapen. “But if you have to sink in your own money, time, and passion, most give up at some stage for want of even moral support.”
Since founding its Indian program in 2004, the Lemelson Foundation has developed two additional RAMPs: one based in Jakarta, Indonesia, and another based in Lima, Peru. The Indian RAMP has supported 37 inventors, the Peruvian RAMP 19 inventors, and the Indonesian RAMP 10 inventors. “In many places, particularly in the developing world, inventors are seen as weird or nutty. They’re quite isolated,” says Julia Novy-Hildesley, executive director of the Lemelson Foundation. “We seek to elevate the stature of inventors through public prizes, to show that society is validating and supporting innovation and thus encourage more inventors to come forward. That’s why the program emphasizes recognition and mentoring in addition to financial assistance.”
Local Genius
By definition, inventors everywhere are fated to struggle against the status quo. They rebel against conventional wisdom and overturn comfortable routines. Failure is an inevitable part of the job description. When questioned about the results of his experiments, no less an inventor than Thomas Edison replied: “Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
Though less famous than Edison, Jerome Lemelson also had a successful career as an inventor, earning more than 600 patents. Lemelson and his family started a foundation to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. In the United States, the foundation has established centers for the study of innovation and created prizes such as the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which “recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions and innovations that improve the world,” according to MIT’s Web site.
In the 21st century, the foundation is turning its focus toward the developing world. “Jerome Lemelson believed that innovation and creativity were distributed evenly throughout the world, but that in many places, there are barriers that prevent individuals from realizing their creative potential,” says Novy-Hildesley. “Our RAMP programs emphasize a strategy of nurturing local innovators, based on the belief that these people often have a better understanding than outsiders of the obstacles and their sociocultural context.”
Trying to airlift inventions from one context and plop them into another is often a recipe for disaster, agrees Jackie Khor, managing director at Imprint Capital Advisors, an organization that advises foundations, families, and individuals on developing mission-driven investment portfolio strategies. Khor previously worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is involved with the Rural Innovations Network that partners with RAMP to assist Indian inventors.
“It is logical that the innovations that would be most useful in addressing unmet needs in a particular context would be the ones developed in that context,” says Khor. “Solutions need to be context specific, and local innovators are best positioned to understand and take into account climate, culture, and the particular needs of their innovation’s local end users.”
For instance, outsiders would probably have not been able to decipher the complex web of relationships and transactions that govern the lives of nomadic shepherds in the southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Yet a local innovator named G.V. Sudarshan saw that shepherds were in dire straits, struggling with shrinking herds, scarce pasture, labor shortages, and sickly lambs. With money and mentoring from RAMP, Sudarshan developed a nutritious sheep feed that uses farm waste products such as corncobs and straw. The feed not only reduces the amount of land the sheep need to forage, but also improves their health.
Sudarshan combined his product with a service innovation, giving the shepherds access to preventive veterinary care and livestock insurance—both previously unheard of in the community. To encourage shepherds to use his pellet feed, he offered both the product and service at his own cost, later recouping his expenses by purchasing the lambs at a discount and then selling them to urban meat processors.
Similarly, on the island of Java in Indonesia, RAMP inventor Ir. Ari Purbayanto developed a machine called the Suritech, which separates the bones and meat of small fish, turning bycatch fish from waste into edible (and profitable) food. And in Peru, an innovator funded by RAMP named Luis Coronado Lira devised a ventilation system to prevent the spoilage of perishable foods, potentially increasing farmer profits and simultaneously giving urban dwellers access to more nutritious options.
Although Lemelson does have a full-time consultant working in India, the foundation works hard to make RAMP programs local and resource-light. In all three locations, the foundation relies on partnerships with local organizations and volunteers, many of them academics, to identify and support grassroots innovators. RAMP inventors receive what the foundation calls “tailored catalytic support”—prototype facilities, marketing experts, and other specialized resources that can make the difference in helping an innovator turn his or her idea into reality. In Chennai, India, RAMP also sponsors an annual awards ceremony where hundreds of inventors can network, share ideas, and build a sense of community. Promising inventors that the awards process identifies are encouraged to apply for formal RAMP support.
Sharing the Smarts
Khor also praises RAMP’s model of giving inventors both funding and mentoring for entrepreneurship and commercial development. Early-stage venture capital firms have proven this model to be successful for profit-seeking companies. The biggest challenge in a nonprofit context, notes Khor, is to develop appropriate and cost-effective distribution strategies.
That’s a problem that RAMP is still trying to solve for Dr. Sathya Jeganathan, a physician in a rural Indian hospital in Tamil Nadu. In the neonatal ward where Jeganathan works, expensive, complicated, and scarce baby warmers often break down, with deadly results for newborns. After a dreadfully cold night contributed to the deaths of six newborns, Jeganathan began working with local craftspeople to invent a reliable, low-cost baby warmer. They devised a simple construction that can be built and maintained entirely with local materials and expertise.
With help from RAMP, Jeganathan developed a working prototype that lowered infant mortality rates in her hospital by approximately 50 percent. RAMP is now trying to help her mass-produce the warmer, as well as to convince the Indian government to purchase and distribute enough of the warmers to replicate Jaganathan’s lifesaving results at rural hospitals throughout India.
Novy-Hildesley says that the Lemelson Foundation is exploring the possibility of starting a RAMP program in East Africa. She also notes that RAMPs are considering taking small equity stakes in some of their inventors’ projects. That way, if a particular innovation succeeds, the RAMP would have more funds.
Meanwhile, RAMP-supported innovators are hard at work around the world. One inventor in Peru is developing a plant oil-powered cooking stove that will reduce indoor air pollution. Another innovator in India is refining a portable spice powdering machine, which will reduce the distance that Indian villagers would otherwise travel to procure finely powdered chili and coriander.
“Once an idea has gotten off the ground, many foundations and even venture capital (VC) firms are interested in helping, but not many organizations are willing to work at the early high-risk stage,” says Novy-Hildesley. “As a foundation dedicated to invention, we feel that this is an important niche. We incubate ideas, help our inventors cultivate relationships, make sure they can negotiate properly with VCs and other traditional investors, and then hand them off when the time is right.”
Aaron Dalton is a New York-based journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in Wired, PC Magazine, and Popular Mechanics. He also authors the blog 1GreenProduct, where he reviews eco-friendly goods and services.
Read more stories by Aaron Dalton.