In Africa and other developing regions electricity is not always a guarantee so these bicycle mounted phone chargers from globalcyclesolutions.com are making a big difference. The dynamo isn’t new but this is a new application and it has spawned quite an enterprise.
It’s interesting that their two products right now are a mobile phone charger and a Maise Sheller that “Can fill a 90-kg sack of maize in 40 minutes and 10-15 sacks per day”. Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it happens in context to the world around us, in other words innovation is often quite a local phenomena.
I do feel that local entrepreneurship and innovation are tremendously valuable in the developing world right now and can really help lift up communities.
There is a documentary called “Young World Inventors” on kickstarter right now that is worth supporting that covers inventions and inventors in the developing world.
Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/the-context-of-innovation
