Back at Stanford in Jan 2006 I strolled into my favorite class, ‘Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability’, and like the other students, I was eager to learn how to make affordable products for underserved populations.  In the last few months, I have learned that many of the answers are already out there – they are just framed far differently.

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In November I was in the tiny village of Rajugela, in Mathura, UP, visiting the India Schoolhouse Fund.  I also took time to learn about the villages improving infrastructure.  A paved road, some electrical lines that have been working mostly of late, but sometimes go off for 18 days at a time, and their hopes for pumped water soon.  That evening I visited a tailor to ask him about light.  He tried out our new light, the NOVA, and loved it.  He then explained that when the power is out he seldom does work, but when he does, he uses a little pen light to thread the needle, and then a couple kerosene lanterns for general lighting.  He loved our light and said he could easily sew with it.
 

I paused and asked him about the pen he has showed me.  My guide that night, a teacher at the school, was using the same little pen light to show me around the unlit dirt and cobblestones alleys weaving between the houses.  It was a faint bluish light, a joke really compared to the NOVA, which I was using on its lowest setting.  I hadn’t thought much the pen light when we were walking.  The tailor said, “ I replace the pen about every 3 weeks and it costs 5 Rs each time.”
 

I asked to buy the pen.  An incredible story was becoming clear.  Everything that I had been taught in the Stanford course was being done, right here before my eyes, without any of my lofty intentions, and in a much much MUCH less expensive way than any of us students could have imagined or designed.  Somehow, the tailor in a village that’s a train ride, bus, and donkey cart from Delhi, was able to purchase a working pen that seemed at the outset to beat out a Bic in quality and looks, with a working LED penlight on top, for 12 cents, made, delivered, marked-up, and retailed.  I challenge anybody anywhere to beat that.

I was taught that poorer families heavily discount future earnings, and they much prefer to payout less now and sacrifice future savings, even at the expense of quality.  I don’t think anyone can beat a 12 cent pen and working light.  Even though its minimal, and less bright than a candle, it still works.  You can buy a new one every week for months and months before they would cost the same as the average flashlight, which by the way, would only last about 1yr anyway 

As a designer, I cannot help my own bias’s.  I would have been hard pressed to imagine that a faint, almost pathetic single LED blue light, with a lifetime of a few hours, would be a substitute for flashlights.  I would be ashamed to have it under my ‘brand’ and I would be comfortable selling millions less lights, but selling lights of ‘quality.’  And yet, it was evident, even for better-of families, like the gentleman showing me around, who could easily have afforded much more, that this pen was ENOUGH.  I am learning that I still don’t know what is GOOD ENOUGH, and what is not good enough, and how pennies affect that decision.  I say it and say it but I am having a hard time practicing it – perfect is the enemy of the good.

I am also committed to scale.  The kind of impact I want to have on the world is measured in tens of millions.  Those pen lights are entrepreneurial design for extreme affordability in every sense of the words.  They must be manufacturing them for about 6 cents in China.  That means they have cost reduced every micrometer of that product, and shipped gazillions around the world to get economies of scale.  And they will continue to do so, and I would never have previously thought of them as social entrepreneurs.  And they probably aren’t doing it so that tailors can stay up a little later and make a little more money, or villagers can save money on bad flashlights and batteries and put their savings elsewhere…. But they are doing millions of people a great service.  Tata gets so much acknowledgement for a $2500 car… but what about these guys?  Maybe they should be blogging not me.  Or perhaps I should go find that factory and learn from their designers. 

In the meantime, lets help a few villages.  Please don’t forget to support www.DLIGHTDESIGN.ORG and the Dalit communities of Karnataka!