I had jumped in the small group meeting of Ken Banks's presentation held
at LSE yesterday, and I had a lot of influence and inspiration at the
end of the meeting.
Ken's presentation was really insightful, with a lot of deeper knowledge
which making me sure of what I had thought through the process of
understanding many cases, and also there was a new finding from him.

We should transfer designing division to the bop arena..... That means,
BoP people can also write programme or design their products by their own.

I had a same idea from IDE, International Development Enterprises which
I will work with, and my ideas about village enterprises will explode
with this concept. I think this means a lot to the schools and the
enterprises in rural areas.

I had felt that there had been just a small leap frogging these days
after finding micro-something business models, such as micro-franchising
or decentralized power generation, decentralized manufacturing at the
mini plants. But the programming or designing at BOP base will make a
boost ideas. And I had a lot of connections with the things which really
happened in rural areas.

Great inspirations and findings this week.

I had posted to the Next Billion website;
http://www.nextbillion.net/blog/2010/01/29/at-the-dawn-of-japanese-bop-business

At the Dawn of Japanese BoP Business

I think this is the first time for opening up the Japanese situation to
the world.

Ho, Ho, Ho-
We had come all the way long to publish "Design for the other 90%" in
Japanese language!!
I will make a attribute on this book and will have some articles on
this.

In the context of "SOCIAL DESIGNING" which includes urban planning or
decision making process design and also includes product designing for
the needs embeded very deep inside the community, I will focus also on
DESIGN issues.

In the talk with Ilona from Delft univ and a freelance product
designer, I had come to one conclusion at the end. She said "Designer
has a power to choose design and materials." This is the democracy of
designers and producers. For knowing their own capability so as to
know it's possible to change the world by themselves, the product
designer will have much dignity, and in the end the good circulation
with no waste, decent and simple design will come out and the world
gonna be very BEAUTIFUL finally.

This is my own perspective much inspired by William Morris, but the
designer such as Ilona had the exact same idea.

We are on the role to promote and enhance the ability of design for
the poor (BOP). Many collaboration will definitely follow the talk we
had in NY.

enthusiastic people who is willing to work on this project from their
own heart, and it was actually amazing.
The things I learnt here is that nothing is different if you want
sustainable development which address to the community's social issues,
even if using such a high technology of bio-, micro-, and clean and green.
Yesterday we had come to one conclusion to make up a so-called
initiative which accelerate sustainable development with many other
actors including governments, international organizations, investors,
companies, engineers, technical proffesionals and local entreupreners.
The thing we made up a mind here is to set up a pipeline which make the
access to information smoothly back and forth, from top to the bottom,
from the bottom to the top.
We especially take much care for the feedback system from the local
site, because it's worth hearing, worth knowing, and that would be the
only resource which make us more innovative.
Innovation with PPP will happen from our team, I hope.

Now we at last had a whole day meeting with everybody... It's
fascinating that I can meet almost more than 30-40 people who are
originally related in BOP projects. It is quite a good asset for me to
get to know each other not only because we are in the same field of BOP
issues, but also because we are very similar when thinking about the way
of life and their way of living and ideas will inspire me the most
individually.

I was in the team of Convergence task team to develop ideas how to
spread the idea of convergence.

Anyway long long talk with everybody makes me dizzy at the end of work
shop as my jet lag is very heavy, and I will write about the idea we
developed tomorrow.

Now it's starting. It is actually exciting especially today because many of the attendees are from almuni of Cornell and they are actually doing their own business other than Bop matters. Stu Hart had a thought of mingling all those BOP related researchers and those who had become interested in cleantech and sustainability recently.

Enthusiasm of Cleantech had come too much sometimes and thus the Carbon credit or financial activities on Carbon something had become very popular and powerful. I used to engage with CDM project developing before but I couldn't figure out my question till the end. "IS CDM
REALLY GOOD FOR THE EARTH?"

I think the basic thought for this forum today is the same idea as Stu had envoked a question and raising a proposal about conversion of Cleantech and BOP. It says, "Unfortunately, the vast majority of these investments are focused purely on sustainable technology development
targeted at the 'top of the pyramid'."


And, "Comparatively littele attention is being paid to creative commercialization strategies or distribution models for clean technologies at the base of the pyramid, raising the concern that large numbers of them might fail in the coming years."

This is true. That is why I came here all the way from Tokyo to find out or to find some companies who can struggle for this question together.
I understand that it's still in the half way, but it will attract people, mostly business people. But I don't know how deep they understood might affect in the end to real projects. I'll wait and see
the dialogue we will continue from now on.

I had come to NYC from Tokyo, (it's been 5 yrs since I came here last time, wow), and set up my surroundings towards BOP conference in Hilton, New York.
Why NYC? Why Hilton? for BOP?
No, it's the global forum by Cornell University. I was a bit related with Stuart Hart and his team in Cornell, (Stu is the author of "Capitalism at the cross road"), and in that connection, I was also
invited to this forum by luck.
Almost 100 people will get together, who is in the front line of BOP projects in the world, and we will discuss about how we proceed the BOP projects in the near future.
Convergence and guideline setting for the future, is the one main target of this conference's outcome.
I think, form my viewpoints, many things must be done for BOP projects developing more sustainablly. Negative case collections must be done sooner or later, and also innovation is very crucial but it has to be from the very bottom of people's heart in BOP.
Actually I cannot wait for 2days later we will concentrate on working group discussions as many people will come over to revise the protocol and guidelines for the future essence.
If you are delegates, see you soon in hilton.