How can a mayor of a city use the open spaces, shared spaces, and redevelopment projects to revitalize the cultural neural network of the city? How can common citizens, not just elites have a greater say in shaping the future of the city than what dominant architects and planners will permit them? It is very…
As a small tribute to Dr. Kalam, The Honey Bee Network invited innovative ideas/solutions to unmet needs from children upto class 12 & organised a meeting of creative children who participated in this local and regional idea competition & awarded them today at 5.00 pm, October 15, 2016, outside RJM hall, IIM old campus. …
While driving to Vadodara from ahmedabad, saw a vehicle with “eco-chulha” written on the back glass. Curious to know more, we waived to that car to stop. Ashwin Bhai, a non resident Gujarati entrepreneur owning many motels is an engineer interested in gasification and biomass stove design and manufacture. Exporting these stoves to many countries,…
When international companies aspire for global presence and sometimes even domination, they don’t do so only in market place. They try to do so in social space too. Why do then most Indian companies not have similar aspirations. In general Indian companies lack hunger for seeking innovations from within and also from outside, but their…
Busy as a Bee By VAIDEHI IYER May/June 2010 All over the world, there are people with problems and innovators with solutions. The Honey Bee Network connects some of them to help make their dreams come true. Imagine an automatic food making machine that does away with the trouble of cooking. “Wouldn’t everybody like that?”…
In my recent book on Grassroots Innovations ( 2016, http://www.amazon.in/Grassroots-Innovation-Minds-Margin-Marginal/dp/8184005873) I describe this dilemma and I quote: “The role of women in grassroots innovations has thus remained rather obscure. The number of innovations by women has also been rather small in the Honey Bee database compared to their real-life societal contributions. There could be many reasons…
With increasing pressure on urban and rural spaces, there is a looming crisis ahead of us in the next few decades. How will we negotiate scarcity of physical spaces with our cultural, emotional and spiritual spaces for “the other” getting squeezed more and more. There is a major onslaught on pluralistic vision of future living…
I inaugurated the GIC unit set up by Subhash ola, a Presidential Grassroots Innovation Award winner of NIF at Behror, midway, Delhi-Jaipur highway. He invented a very cost and energy efficient way of recycling steam to generate power, and/or improving efficiency in textile, food, pharma, plywood industry etc. Sixty per cent saving in water and…
While reflecting on innovation ecosystem for national transformation a few days ago at an apex industrial association forum, I had to ask the industry representatives as to why were they so complacent in seeking ideas from outside? Many MNCs with even a very large market share and no imminent threat to their dominance seem more worried about…
The history of injustice with Dalit communities has not always subdued their spirit. There are many instances when some of them have come out of low self-image, low self-deprecating belief systems and decided to break out of culture of subjugation, learned-helplessness both involuntary and also voluntary. Extreme events some times are a historical necessity to…