I managed to catch some of the afternoon sessions of the second day of FIKR 6 including an half hour segment on transformations in global thinking which was absolutely inspiring.
Four very different experiences from four different regions from Africa to Europe and both the Middle East and Far East shared seven minutes (each) to enlighten the attendees on how such simple concepts can make such a difference (in addition to a lot of money!)
Hecters of SMS gold
Daniel Annerose, founder and CEO of Manobi Corporation in Senegal discussed the impact of IT and Telecommunications in rural Africa. He first highlighted that in rural Africa only 2% of homes have access to landline telephone connections with an even poorer broadband penetration, thus any access to information was very hard to come by.
MTC (now Zain), as part of their international strategy to expand their market, tapped into the African market and invested heavily (approx. 7 billion USD$). One of the fruits of their success in Africa was Manobi Corporation’s project in helping Senegalese commercial farmers by using mobile phone technology .
The concept was simple. Manobi offered internet services over mobile networks that included market information to these Senegalese farmers who were predominately living in rural areas, thus they would be in the know from a single SMS or MMS message to their mobile phone. Farmers benefitted greatly to that some farmers’ income increased by USD$2000 per hecter of land. He concluded by predicting that 50% of rural Africans will have mobile phones in the next ten years.
Inspired by Gandhi..Self reliant youth who better the community
Philanthropy through education was the second experience covered where Mr Camaran Elahian (his wife’s name, Zohre Elahian, was originally to give this short and strong talk according to the programme).
Education has always been teacher centred, with all efforts in improving teaching. But if we are to seek innovation in education, we must look at the learner.
He believes that an education that is more student centered, where their point of view and voice is heard, is the way to combat hatred and encourage more cooperation worldwide. He added that his generation “did not leave a good legacy for the future generations” due to the ever-growing problems we face from pollution to conflict and wars. Despite this, the youth people of this generation are “hopeful”.
Mr Elahian used the Gandhi Project and its network in Palestine as an example on how young people can make a difference. The Gandhi Project promotes the ideas and concepts of non-violence resistance and community development, and aims to make the Palestinian community economically self reliant.
23 Youth clubs from around the world participate in this project, and when given the task to create some sort of celebration event (like Eid etc.) .All of the clubs sent proposals and asked for some financial support, all excluding Palestine that is. The Palestinians were able to give back to the community without being reliant on others.
Mainframe.. We don’t need one!
Shinsei Bank is the only global bank that fully runs on the internet. After the bankruptcy of the Long Term Credit Bank of Japan which followed by it’s nationalization in 1998, the new Shinsei bank were “aiming to get one million customers in one year”. This was a massive task and with a modest budget (in banking terms), it seemed impossible.
Not for Dhananjaya Dvivedi, the Chief Information Officer at Shinsei Bank and his team. The first thing most banks would worry about is their database and in particular what type of mainframe computer to buy. Shensei were simply unable to buy one so they opted to buying thousands of Dell machines with off the shelf Microsoft Windows connected to each other in an enormous network. This policy of low cost and high impact led the bank to gaining “two million customers instead of one”. This eventually evolved making all the transactions and procedures online, everything from overseas transfers to online ATMs to video phone calls. Shinsei Bank has gained its status between Japanese banks and has been voted as the best Japanese commercial bank three years in a row.
Building Blocks to Success
Lego, other than creating the world famous building blocks, had a programmable robotics kit called Mindstorms but with four years without an update and huge losses from other endeavors including PC software games and Disney licensing, something had to change.
With the rise of Web 2.0 technologies on the web, Lego decided to take a “calculated risk”.
With so much user created content all over the internet, Lego decided to do the unthinkable at the time (and especially to their lawyers) and bring in the consumer and their creative ideas into the development team.
This consumer driven business model was devised by Soren Lund and his team at LEGO Group. It started out as an underground website to invite four people from outside the company to join the Mindstorms development thus giving birth to the MUP (Mindstorm User Panel). this number gradually grew to ten people than Lego decided to bring the MUP to the surface and add another 100 panelists.
Lego deliberately made the registration process as difficult and unattractive as possible by only allowing people over 18 to register , an exhausting amount of forms and questionnaires that needed filling and forcing a fee to register. Lego expected 1,000 people to register.
They received 10,000 requests from 79 different countries.
After finally choosing the 100 panelists, Lego was astounded by the amount of creativity and hardcore commitment from the panelists. All this and they weren’t even paid peanuts, but were rewarded with prototype Mindstorm kits, and lego pieces.
Lego developed the new Mindstorms without a full professional development team, and without costs.
The panelists kept pushing us as a company for better products, better Mindstorm capabilities. This two-way dialogue with the users has benefitted Lego massively and truly shows that we now have intelligent and creative consumers in our markets.
Other FIKR 6 related posts in the Bahrain blogosphere:
Mahmood’s Den:
[FIKR6] Education, The digital Arab
[FIKR6] Speeches – audio files
[FIKR6] quicky recommendations
هذيان الحروف
في فكر6 .. آن الأوان كي نضخ البترول في عروق الثقافة العربية
فكر6 .. انطباعات ومواقف
Ammaro.com
Great review; I missed this one, actually, but you’ve given a pretty interesting insight to what was said. Those are some pretty amazing ideas there.
Thanks, this happened exactly after you left! lol