Scale, sustainability and inclusive collaborative future:
If we want to make a difference to the lives of millions, then inclusive grassroots innovations must diffuse widely. Some indeed do, But a very large majority remain localized. Should then one stop encouraging them? Large number of top down interventions have failed in making a difference to the community lives. But we still try to persist with them, but when it comes to grassroots bottom-up innovations, our standards seem to vary. We don’t ask as to how many of these innovators were given support for prototyping, testing, redesigning, fabricating market ready models, and supported with low cost, long duration, patient risk capital to scale? Llocal innovations often emerge from recognition of local unmet needs, guided by samevdansheelta (tendency to internalize the pain of the people affected by the absence of innovation, the word, ‘empathy’ is a poor substitute for this feeling). These are driven by desire to solve the problem through an affordable solutions. We don’t want to lose this trigger for problem solving. In this issue, we will find many innovations which are designed for the grassroots but not always from the grassroots. We need both sources of innovations to make this world more inclusive and caring of the economic and environmental well being of communities. Agri-food systems driven by communities as well as corporate agri businesses face the same tension. First one may be guided by the need to keep soil healthy, water extraction within the limits of replenishment or recuperation, but consistently decling water table, increasing waste and declining soil micro nutrients indicate that high production gains are at a high agro-ecologcial cost. Our grandchildren will have to bear, the consequences of this often with very few options of reversing the damage. But here too we need both, the supply chains for managing the movement of surplus food from rich regions to poor ones as well as market space for biodiverse, organic or non-chemical input based products grown by small, scattered and often segmented farmers. The scale can not be managed by small producer groups unless they follow a cooperative model like Milk coops run by Amul or network entrepreneurship model by pooling their catalogue, individual production but collective marketing, becoming mutual franchisee etc.,
We are very proud that many of the grassroots innovators scouted and honoured by Honey Bee network Institutions have been given highest civilian award by our country. This does help in creating appreciable role models. But most text books for school and colleges still have to incorporate the lessons of their journey. Similarly, many grassroots innovators have become millionaires in the last 20-25 years but the majority have remained small or medium size.
The fifth international conference on Creativity and Innovation at grassroots. January, 2025, hopefully will generate more examples of authentic engagements among creative communities, outside supporters and supply Chain members, public policy makers, investors and entrepreneurs.
GIAN’s golden triangle for linking innovation, investment and enterprise still holds true for scaling grassroots innovations. Similarly, the SRISTI’s logo signifies the power of conservators of biodiversity, particularly women provided the formal science and technology insights are blended with community knowledge. NIF established by HBN and supported by HBN volunteers till 2018 opened many doors for the innovators and Traditional Knowledge holders in taking these ideas forward. It continues many activities. While protecting the intellectual property rights of the creative individuals and communities was encouraged, these rights were never asserted to prevent fellow farmers and mechanics from learning from them, even if original products have been patented. For community use, the innovations were open source but for corporate use, these were licensable.
Through a journey encompassing the values of open sharing and blending these with IPR protection was a kind of unique experiment in the annals of the knowledge economy. All databases of HBN are open source and don’t require any obligation on the part of the users. If users share more innovations or traditional knowledge practices, they are welcome but if they don’t they can still use it without restrictions.
A question has often been asked, with so much content, if we don’t monetize it, how will we run the network? This a question which bothers me also. But we have so far refrained from putting any restrictions in the hope that beneficiaries of this knowledge will find an answer to this question and try to sustain all the initiatives that HBN took over the last 36 years. Would like to hear from you, if you think our utopia has a future. We are also trying to create a Foundation for inclusive innovation globally (FIIG) or the Academy of Inclusive Innovations and Knowledge Augmentation ( AIIKA).
You can be part of this effort of HBN to recognize, respect and reward creative innovators, frugal problem solvers and generous traditional knowledge providers worldwide. Will you be?
Floating among clouds
