Local innovation: The key to globalisation

The round table discussion draws the panellists to weigh in on how multinational enterprises from developed countries are innovating in and for emerging markets, the challenges faced, and lessons learnt. The key takeaways are that MNEs are increasingly innovating for the Indian market, alongside their contribution to global products. They are doing so by developing close relationships with field facing organisations, co-creating with customers, empowering engineers, and taking a clean slate approach to product development. This approach has given them dividends not only in the local market but also in the global market

The Evolution of an ICT Platform-Enabled Ecosystem for Poverty Alleviation: The Case of eKutir

This paper analyzes the pioneering work of eKutir, a social business in India that leverages an information and communication technology (ICT) platform to progressively build a self-sustaining ecosystem to address multiple facets of smallholder farmer poverty. The study reveals that eKutir’s ecosystem has evolved through five distinct phases, each expanding the number and type of actors engaged and the breadth of ICT-supported services provided. The evolution displays a distinct pattern where the five elements of the ecosystem progressively evolve and reinforce one another to create a system that is economically sustainable, scalable, and can accelerate transformative change. The study has important implications for the design of emergent ICT platforms, which can enable an ecosystem-based approach to address complex problems

The global pulse roadmap

PRIFPRI3; ISI; CRP4A4NH; SAOCGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH

Convergent innovation for sustainable economic growth and affordable universal health care: innovating the way we innovate

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109961/1/nyas12548.pd

Impact of the eKutir ICT-enabled social enterprise and its distributed micro-entrepreneur strategy on fruit and vegetable consumption: A quasi-experimental study in rural and urban communities in Odisha, India

This paper reports results of a quasi-experimental study designed to assess the impact of an information and communication technology (ICT) –enabled ecosystem, led by the social enterprise eKutir, on household fruit and vegetable consumption in Odisha, India. eKutir aims at providing self-sustaining solutions to poverty and undernutrition in developing countries by leveraging ICTs through ecosystem development anchored into a distributed micro-entrepreneurial strategy. eKutir's farming micro-entrepreneurs (FME) provide agricultural knowledge, inputs, and market linkages at household and community level, followed by progressive integration of other micro-entrepreneurs at different points along the value chain on both supply and demand sides. The present case examined core FMEs along with retail micro-entrepreneurs (RMEs) deployed in low-resource rural and urban communities. Structural equation modeling was used to compare rural outcomes and the role of homegrown consumption as a mediator. Multivariable linear regression and ANOVA were used to test group differences in the urban sample. Positive β coefficients represent an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption in communities exposed to the eKutir ecosystem in contrast to the comparison group. Farmers in rural communities exposed to the eKutir ecosystem consumed more overall fruit and vegetables (β = 0.30, p < 0.001) and fruits alone (β = 0.53, p < 0.05) than those farmers in comparison villages unexposed to the eKutir ecosystem. This effect was concentrated in households exposed to both FMEs + RMEs (β = 0.60, p < 0.0001) and was mediated by homegrown consumption. A non-significant directional effect was observed in comparing fruit and vegetable consumption in rural households exposed to RMEs only over comparison communities. Urban consumers, exposed to the eKutir ecosystem through access to RMEs operating in their neighborhood community, did not increase their fruit or vegetable consumption compared to non-intervention communities. The results reveal the potential of reaching nutritional impacts through homegrown consumption and with farm-level support outside of governmental/philanthropic interventions through an ICT-enabled social enterprise. They also underscore, however, the challenges of both changing eating behaviour and intervening along the agri-food value chain. Implication for more effective digital ecosystem design and intersectoral policies are discussed