Transcriber: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Denise RQ
So it was 2009 and I've been working
for the UN for almost 10 years.
And there I became
somewhat of an expert in bureaucracy and red tape.
So using my experience there,
I wanted to test out a new model of delivering innovative technologies
to poor communities in developing countries.
And this new model ended up becoming a new organization called Kopernik
which I co-founded with Toshi Nakamura, who is here today.
And whom I also subsequently married.
(Laughter)
So I'll tell you one thing:
that marrying the person you started an organization with
is a very efficient way of doing business.
(Laughter)
Basically, you never ever stop working.
And then if you want to make things
a little bit more challenging for yourself,
then quit your well paying jobs,
invest all your savings in your organization,
and then have a baby at the same time.
(Laughter)
Which is what we did.
But back to the story.
So it was 2009, and we were testing out
some model of delivering innovative technologies to poor communities,
and we wanted to test out the Q Drum.
This is a rollable water container.
It's so great, it basically enables a person
to transport 50 liters of water in one go,
and this is far more efficient
than carrying five or ten liters of water at a time,
and you can see the contrast here in this photo.
So we were so excited, it was our first project,
and that was until we found out from Indonesian customs,
how much they wanted us to pay to clear these Q Drums.
They were asking us to pay
- on top of what we had already paid to actually buy the Q Drums,
which are not cheap to begin with,
and what we had to pay to ship them to Indonesia -
they were asking us to pay 1000%.
1000% of the value of the Q Drum
to get them to poor and disadvantages communities
that don't have access to water.
Needless to say,
two years later the Q Drums are still in customs in Jakarta.
And then, about nine months ago,
we were trying to clear several hundred solar lights
for a project in central Kalimantan.
On top of 100% import duty that were instructed to pay by customs,
we were told to produce a letter
from the Minister of Trade herself.
We asked for the letter on several occasions,
but, presumably, the minister is busy doing far more important things
than providing letters for us.
So, we don't have the letter,
the lights are still in the customs,
and we don't hold that much hope.
And it's a real shame
because these lights would be a huge benefit to forest communities
who currently rely on dirty, dangerous, and expensive kerosene for lighting.
But let's take a step back for a moment. Why are we importing all this stuff?
Well, this is what we do at Kopernik.
We connect life changing technologies to people who need them.
We find simple solutions
for some of the biggest problems facing the world today.
We get technology to people so they can get themselves out of poverty.
As you can imagine,
a big part of what we do
is to search for great and important innovations globally.
And perhaps it was because of the language we were initially searching in,
we ended up with a lot of innovations from English speaking countries.
But, because of the two experiences that I just told you about at customs,
we decided to rethink our approach here in Indonesia,
which is where we're based.
We decided that here,
we would only distribute those technologies
that are either locally manufactured or at least locally available.
Now, if you think about it, Indonesia is in a fantastic place
to be a leader of innovation for its own people.
It's a booming economy, with an extremely talented population.
But, how will its people continue to live on less than two dollars a day?
And so many parts of Indonesia have challenges in accessing clean water,
accessing energy, accessing health care.
So we started our search for Indonesian innovations,
and it turns out there's a lot going on here.
One program in particular stood out, and that was "RAMP INDONESIA",
this is the Recognition And Mentoring Program.
And what they do is they incubate socially focused technologies
from the idea stage all the way to production.
And they work with leading Indonesian universities.
And here I'm standing with the future innovators of Indonesia.
Some of the technologies that have came out of RAMP
include this biomass stove.
This stove uses waste biomass such as corn cobs, rice husks,
coconut husks, you can also use firewood.
It produces almost no smoke,
and it's 80% more efficient than the traditional means of cooking.
There are some very creative ways in which this stove is being used.
I love this photo, it's a meatball cart in East Java,
and you can see the stove is being used there.
And this stove is saving this man and his family $15 a month in fuel costs,
that is a huge proportion of what he earns each month.
Another one of the technologies coming out of the program
is this rice threshing machine.
It's a portable rice thresher
which you pop-on the back of any bicycle, it's paddle powered.
And it produces almost 100 kg of rice grains in an hour.
It's far more efficient than doing it by hand.
And this is a portable,
solar powered pest controller
for rice fields.
It's a safe method of killing pests,
and its far more efficient,
and far less dangerous than the chemical pesticides that are commonly used.
And then beyond RAMP,
there are many other technologies in Indonesia.
This water filter, for example,
is one of our most popular items
and it was manufactured in Banda Aceh.
And it's far more environmentally friendly
than producing clean drinking water by boiling using firewood.
But why are local innovation so great?
Well, they create local employment.
They're manufactured locally,
therefore they're typically appropriate for the local context.
They're cheaper to ship and therefore, to buy.
And they can be fixed locally if things go wrong.
But ask any innovator,
and they will tell you that the key to scaling,
especially when you're focusing on socially focused business,
socially focused technologies,
is dissemination.
Distribution of technologies,
especially when you're trying to target poor rural communities
it's really difficult to access them.
And technology adoption doesn't just happen over night.
It requires extensive awareness raising, it requires behavioral change.
And typically, the target population
simply doesn't have sufficient capital to purchase their technology upfront.
So this is where we come in.
We connect the manufacturers of technology to local organizations
that have existing distribution networks.
But we don't stop there because we know that money is an issue.
So we also help raise funds for the initial approaches for the technology,
the transportation costs, and that all-important cost of awareness raising
that are required for technology adoption.
Our local organization is
the absolute key in this distribution model.
They're the ones that know their communities,
they're trusted by their communities,
they know what their communities need.
And they can select from a range of technology on our website.
And in Indonesia, we also co-host with our local partners, technology fairs.
And here you can see Pak Nurhuda, who is the inventor of the stove,
at our most recent technology fair in west Lombok.
When people participate in the technology fair,
they are able to make a much more informed decision
about buying the technology.
And here is one of the members trying off the solar light.
When you're dealing with rural and remote communities
pricing is very, very important.
And this chart here is from a Willingness to Pay study
conducted by Columbia University students on one of our solar lights project.
The bottom axis represents the price,
the left axis represents the percentage of people willing to pay that price.
So you can see at the very far end,
very few people are actually willing to pay the full cost of a technology.
On the other extreme, if we set the price lower,
pretty much everyone is willing to pay.
But neither of these extremes served Kopernik's objective
of widespread technology adoption without creating dependency.
So, we work really close with our local partners,
and we set a locally appropriate price,
sometimes this is the full cost,
but other times it's subsidized.
Because we want to facilitate widespread technology adoption.
So the way that we work with our local partners is this.
We provide technology to the local talent,
they sell it to their communities, earning a commission from each sale.
They pay us back after they sold the product,
and we can then reinvest that money,
and buy more technology for another project.
So, for example, we are working with Pekka.
Pekka is a tremendous organization.
They have 600 groups across 19 provinces of Indonesia.
They have 20,000 members across the country.
We working with them group by group, district by district,
and they're becoming agents of technology and agents of change.
They're the key agent in facilitating technology adoption,
and that all-important behavioral change.
And not only that,
we are creating business opportunity in helping them improves their lives.
We see tremendous promise for this model,
and we're already working in 10 countries.
And since we launch year and half ago, we've already reached
almost 50,000 people with life-changing technology.
And we've only been able to do that
because we're working
with already existing distribution infrastructure.
We wouldn't be able to do that
if we were creating our own distribution networks.
So, I have to say it's been an extremely rewarding experience
seeing such tangible improvements in people's lives.
And marrying my co-founder
and having a baby has been pretty fantastic as well.
So that's all great, and well, and good,
but if anyone has any high level connections,
we'd really love some help getting those Q Drums and solar lights out of customs.
Thank you.
(Applause)