appropriate technology ecosystem

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Reinventing Schumacher: Technology, Globalization and the New AT Ecosystem

Benjamin Sacher

STIA FALL 2010


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1 Introduction

In 1973 E.F Schumacher emphasized the importance of reorienting technology

to serve human ends in a wonderful book, Small is Beautiful. First formulated as Intermediate

Technology, Schumacher advocated small scale, labor-intensive technologies as a stepping-

stone to sustainable growth. Eight years afterSmall is Beautiful, Schumachers colleague George

McRobie published Small is Possible to address the practical challenges faced by Appropriate

(or Intermediate) Technology efforts. Since then, the Journal of Appropriate Technology (AT)

has disappeared and the movements traditional centers have shriveled. Those remaining place a

strong emphasis on entrepreneurship as opposed to technology.1 Perhaps most tellingly, AT is

rarely referenced in published books.2

Thelimited success of industrial development projects since World War II, and signs that

technological optimism had become technological hubris, pointed to the need for a revised

sociotechnical order in developing countries. Many large, capital-intensive projects proved

unsuccessful or overly destructive, and MNCs incapable or uninterested in offering products

tailored to the needs of the poor3 (Jackson and Gosh, 1984). Early AT practitioners earned their

stripes in an era characterized by inward looking economies, lower levels of human and

institutional development and a technological menu lacking low cost digital technology. As

evident in the Sussex Manifesto, a dominant model of technological innovation was a linear

progression from basic research to adoption and diffusion (Singer, Cooper et al 1970).

1 See, for example the renaming of ITDG as Practical Action and its emphasis on

entrepreneurship at www.practicalaction.org.2 A Google term usage search (figure 1) shows a rapid decline of the terms Appropriate

Technology and Intermediate Technology in published books from its apex in the late 70s.3 Protectionism is certainly in part to blame for MNCs challenges in reaching developing

markets.

2
http://www.practicalaction.org/http://www.practicalaction.org/


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The latter third of the 20th century witnessed the explosion of ITC and digital

technologies, economic growth in low-income countries, and higher interconnectedness coupled

with lower trade barriers. The way appropriate technologies are designed, manufactured,

distributed, marketed maintained has been reshaped. AT hardware, or the technological artifact

itself, has changed in technicity, capability and form. This hardware is associated with new value

chains and innovation systems managed by new actors with different priorities and capacities.

The focus of this paper is the restructuring of the AT movement, and the involvement of MNCs

(and their equivalents) in the AT space. This paper was initially motivated by the apparent

decline in AT efforts. The decline of Appropriate Technology is perhaps instead a substitution,

where private enterprises working in a changed global economy have entered the AT space

under the radar(Kapkinsky, 2010, p.1).

This paper first looks briefly at AT organizations and improved cookstove projects in the

1970s and early 80s. It draws general conclusions about the management of technological

innovation and the role of different actors in played in the value chain. The second section

examines technological, economic and institutional changes have reshaped both AT and the

environment it operates in. It connects these changes to the new role large, sophisticated firms

(especially MNCs) play. The final section explores some of the obstacles and opportunities

presented by larger firms involvement in AT. It suggests there is room for greater coordination

between Multinational Corporations, domestic firms, communities, NGOs and governments and

provides several examples.

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1.1 What is AT?

Appropriate Technology4 can be defined as a specific set of characteristics including

smallness, organizational simplicity, sparing use of natural resources, and low cost of final

product (Jquier and Blanc, 1983). Others takes a general principles approach that simply

stipulates a technological mix that contributes to economic, social and environmental

objectives (UNIDO, 1979). Appropriate technologies typically take the form of either

productive technology (equipment) or tools and consumer goods for every day life. For purposes

of this paper, appropriate technology is broadly defined as technology that is culturally and

economically appropriate for use in low-income countries. It is by definition, a context specific

and flexible concept.

2.1 Improved Cookstove: The Hardware, The Value Chain and Support Activities

The improved cookstove is reflective of the concerns of the AT movement and the

economic and technological environment of the 1970s. In rural parts of the developing world, the

three stone fire is the de facto cooking technology. Cooking with this no-tech, zero capital cost

system is implicated in respiratory illness, deforestation and dangerous fires (Kammen, 1999).

Various policy measures from growing new forests to importing fossil fuels and extending

treatment for respiratory diseases had been proposed to manage and mitigate these consequences

(Baldwin, 1987). The appropriate technologists of the 1970s, however, looked for technological

fixes to what might be seen as mostly economic or policy failures (Schumacher, 1976).

Improved cookstoves closely follow Schumachers ideal of appropriate technology- they are

small scale and, in theory, simple enough to be produced and maintained locally.

4 Upper case Appropriate Technology is used to refer to the movement or its principles, while

appropriate technology is used to refer to technologies that exhibit qualities emphasized byAppropriate Technology.

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Improved cookstoves took many different forms that required different inputs and

production techniques. Some, for example, relied on clay insulation and others on imported

ceramic liners. For brevitys sake, individual models are not given separate attention. The story

of the improved cookstove illustrates by whom and how mainstream appropriate technologies

were developed, manufactured, marketed, distributed and maintained. The purpose of this review

is to show how the AT organization related to prevailing conditions in low-income countries of

the 1970s-80s. This enables a discussion of how major changes since the 1970s have created a

role for larger firms. It also points to systemic weaknesses in the approach taken by AT

organizations.

Typically, product development was undertaken by teams of engineers at or for

appropriate technology organizations such as the Intermediate Technology Development Group

(ITDG) in the UK. Their work is reflective of macro-level concerns such as climate change and

biodiversity. Stove designers weighed different concerns- heat output, fuel savings, durability,

price etc., however the felt needs of the rural poor were different than the priorities identified by

AT practitioners. With the failure of some early stove projects, designers set about to refining the

product. This has been described as the building a better mousetrap phase of appropriate

technology. Further, the design, although simple, would require research into stove physics and

engineering to become more reliable. Universities, many of which were coming to recognize

their role in global development and science for the public good, researched stove physics and

engineering (Baldwin, 1987).

Researchers and practitioners highlighted the importance of involving local artisans in

production of improved cookstoves, which was intended to be labor intensive and feasible at a

small scale (Barnes et al., 1991). Appropriate Technology groups, recognizing the limited

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purchasing power and risk averseness of the poor, promoted a self-help model. ITDG projects

aimed to teach a few dozen people in separate regions how to manufacture a stove, with the hope

that they would share their knowledge with 30 more people. The HERL, Singer, Lorena and

Nouna stoves were all constructed on site. In these cases, quality control was only loosely

enforced and deteriorating standards were rampant. Input markets were poorly developed and the

challenges of doing business in poor, rural environments daunting (Baldwin and Geller, 1985).

Typically, NGOs attempted to kick start a functioning private market based around their

technologies. The hope was for local entrepreneurs to take advantage of a new-found technology,

and make a profit by selling it locally. AT organizations aimed to teach people how to

manufacture stoves and encourage a local market for sales, services and repairs to emerge

(Baldwin and Geller, 1985).

Marketing was carried out through health agencies and by word of mouth. AT

organizations worked to disseminate new designs created under the banner of the improved

cookstove with construction manuals and training (Baldwin, Geller, 1985; Barnes et al. 1991)

Local NGOs, Universities and international researchers focused on making constant

improvements to the hardware. Hsieh and others describe the early 1980s as the building a

better mousetrap phase of Appropriate Technology (Hsieh, 2005). There was, however a low

level of organization, institutionalization and standardization of innovation management along

the value chain. Improvements came at a snails pace as monitoring was carried out in an ad hoc

and decentralized manner. Findings in one stove project were not easily related to findings in

another stove project, although ITDG took on stove testing, extension and training, and an

information service that communicated findings to field partners (Joseph, 1981).

2.2 Why AT organizations?

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It is clear why AT organizations, as opposed to profit seeking companies, lead this first

wave of appropriate technologies into poor countries. For one, import restrictions of inward

looking economies encouraged local production. So, despite the practical complications of the

self-help model, local artisanal production made sense given the complications of importing

completed goods to high tariff countries, and isolated rural zones. It is hard to imagine how a

large foreign company could find such an endeavor profitable. Further, models focused on

design and diffusion dominated thinking about innovation (Krishna 2007). Programs from the

1970s and 80s are often described as technology first.

However, private firms did find their way into the AT space. For example, In the early

1970s, Phillips designed a simplified plant for making radios and TVs, Ford made the:

developing nations tractor. Boeing helped develop new types of windmills. But these efforts

were short lived, and more about testing the market and creating a positive corporate image

(Bourke, 1972).

First wave Appropriate Technologists envisioned an archetypical technology as meeting

local needs through production that was socially, environmentally and economically appropriate

to the same locale. It will be discussed later how modern appropriate technologies challenge this

relationship. The production of stoves is simple relative to modern technologies. The improved

cookstove was designed to meet social and environmental goals and to work in harmony with

existing practices. The process for manufacturing was based on existing skills and capacities and

dissemination depended on an informal network of entrepreneurs In short, both product and

process met guiding principles of appropriate technology: human scale, bottom up control and

nonviolence. However, There werent clear answers for who would manage each in production

step. Program reviews describe how aid organizations competed for success stories, measured

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more often than not in the number of stoves disseminated. The macro-level concerns of the AT

organization conflicted with the day-to-day concerns of the consumer. As discussed later, firms

pose the opposite problem. In many cases, AT organizations found that villagers cared more

about cooking speed than fuel efficiency (Gin, Amaliftanoand, et al 1981). In some cases,

however, improved cookstoves have been gladly adopted by families and served the social goals

of their designers. Innovation was managed mostly in an ad hoc fashion, despite he input of

universities, and more sophisticated testing and impact evaluation Despite concerted effort,

diffusion and impact have been limited (Gill 1987).

2.2a Structural and Institutional Barriers

A hue of technological determinism marked the early phases of the movement.

Appropriate technologies were intended to require simple organizational structure (Schumacher,

1973). But production or even sales in an underdeveloped economy is incredibly complex

(Willoughgy, Kelvin, Personal Interview, May 2011). McRobie encouraged a move from

focusing on the technology itself to focusing on the challenge of production and diffusion. He

encouraged AT organizations to improve the efficient operation of an elaborate support

structure or markets training, raw materials, supplies, spares and so on (McRobie, 1979). The

challenge was often between hoping a market driven supply chain would develop or taking on

the task of coordinating a supply chain. This is a task for which, according to Marilyn Carr of

ITDG, the AT organization was not well suited (Charnock 1985). This theme is discussed more

in the following section.

In an attempt to create local economic opportunities and ensure sustainability, the retail

chain was typically delegated to the private sector, a private sector that more often than not

showed extremely low levels of development. Despite the logic of the not for profit model based

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on design, coordination production and facilitating distribution, the AT organization had

institutional weaknesses and mismatched capacities.

New perspectives in STS (Science technology and Society) and the complexity of

modern design and manufacture drew focus to the broader technical system. The view that

technology, no matter how appropriate it is in design must fit in with structures that facilitate

production and encourage innovation started to emerge.

3.1 AT, MNCs and the 21st Century

The following brief example is given to emphasize the efforts taken by AT organizations

to incorporate business principles and to segue into discussing major global changes and their

relationship global business and AT. It is intended to show in more detail the institutional and

technical challenges of supply chain development and management.

IDE, a manual pump organization in Bangladesh and North Bengal in many ways

responded to the perceived shortcomings of earlier AT efforts. IDE turned its focus away from

trying to create ever more appropriate products to creating arrangements for production,

marketing, distribution, and retailing of technology. A few things happened. The first was that

they realized a developed private sector was crucial. In Bangladesh, IDE successfully fostered a

network of producers and distributors. Perhaps the most significant mark of this success is the

number of private imitative competitors that sprung up. In North Bengal, IDE was forced to not

only to kick start a retail chain, but basically assemble one from scratch and manage its

operation. In North Bengal, IDEs efforts failed because the business ecosystem was less

developed (Hall, Clarke, Naik, 2007). This is a common problem, Raphael Kaplinsky cites the

shortage of domestic entrepreneurs as one of the crucial oversights of the AT movement

(Kaplinsky, 2010). This anecdote reinforces the challenge AT organizations face in working in

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weak markets. These challenges would inevitably be larger for more complex projects and

products.

Nicholas Jquier noted in theAppropriate Technology Readerclaims AT groups are

perhaps not the most adequate organizations to carry out the complex technical work of testing,

debugging and improving, without which a good prototype cannot be produced successfully on a

large scale. This is the sort of work that is carried out extremely efficiently by industrial firms

with their research departments, their production engineering teams and their after-sales service.

In his perspective, the growing interest of industrial firms in AT is a phenomenon of major

significance. (Jquier, 1976, p. 44). Marilyn Carr of ITDG said succinctly that appropriate

technology may have to learn to work with the system (mainstream business) rather than against

it (Charnock, 1985 p. NA). A 1985 New Scientist article noted if Pepsi Cola and transistor

radios can be found in the worlds most remote regions, why have carefully designed

appropriate technologies such as improved cooking stoves and farm tools failed to thrive?

(Charnock 1985).

There was also a growing intellectual shift away from technology transfer and towards

the capacity to innovate. Capacity to innovate is a way of conceptualizing capacity in terms of

the different actors, process skills and resources that are needed to allow innovation to take place

on a continuous basis (World Bank, 2006). This recognition even lead some practitioners, such

as Kelvin Willoughby, the head of the Appropriate Technology Development Group to leave the

sector. NGOs are in theory capable of encouraging the capacity to innovate across a range of

actors, as is seen in the Kenyan horticultural export sector. But many AT organizations of the 70s

and 80s were not attuned to this reality (Starkey, 1980).

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3.2New Conditions, the Opportunities they create for Firms.

The first part of section 1 explored the logic for AT organizations leading the way. It

connected general features of developing countries and technology to the way AT was done.

The previous anecdote showed in more depth some of the challenges AT organizations face in

coordinating market activity and continuous innovation. .

Three related global scale changes have shaken the very core of the AT

movement. First the complexity of consumer goods for the poor has increased. Their production

has grown to entail a huge range of activities and actors. Second, economic growth in developing

countries, especially China and India, puts these more modern goods and services within reach of

many millions (Kaplinsky, 2010). Finally, interconnectivity and trade blur the lines between

local and global, bringing developing countries into world economic and technical systems. In

sum, the technologies appropriate for the worlds poor are increasingly integrated into broader,

modern technical systems (Willoughy, K, Personal Interview, May 2011; Beng-Huat, 2000;

Solamino, 2006). Each of these creates opportunities for MNCs (and other large firms).

Demand for More Complex Technologies

The rising consumer class demands a basket of technologically advanced and

value added goods such as televisions, cell phones and name brand snacks. This is bolstered by

economic growth and urbanization (Beng-Huat, 2000; Solamino, 2006).

Technological changes since the 1970s have enabled new possibilities for appropriate

technologies. Francis Stewart describes the fixity between processes and products. In his

thinking, different types of products entail different types of processes (Stewart, 1979).

Production processes vary in the amount infrastructure, technology and capital they require. The

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increased complexity of technology for the poor relies on manufacturing in industrial countries

and new forms of managing innovation and production. These technologies ally with modern

supply chains- they are not easily produced by small, labor-intensive plants, and traditional

NGOs are not involved in the design or production. In many cases, the vast perceived demand

for appropriate technologies is being transformed into demand for consumer goods, and what as

once seen as the province of the AT organization is becoming another market for firms like

Phillips and Nokia.

Example: The Cellular Phone: Many technologies appropriate for the worlds

poor are vastly more sophisticated as compared to the technologies prominent during the peak

of the AT movement. Tatas Nano $2,500 automobile and the 100 dollar laptop are only a few

examples among many. The cell phone, for example, is a small technology that is simple to use

and has been adopted widely in developing countries (by almost any definition an appropriate

technology). But it is almost impossible to imagine the success of the cellular phone coming

from AT groups, as did the improved stove. Its even more difficult to imagine its production

taking place in a network of local entrepreneurs.

Cellular phones depend on large-scale modern infrastructure and complex

production designed and implemented by large corporations like Vodaphone. Technological

change is associated with new actors, new needs for managing innovation and a restructured

value chain (Kaplinsky, 2002). It remains relevant that goods demanded by todays poor are part

of a global technical system and complex value chain. The village cooperatives and not for

profits core competency is not managing highly complex and costly systems of technological

innovation and production.

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The early AT movement paid too little attention to the connection between individual

technologies and broader technical systems. In a modern technical system involving multiple

producers and actors, the local community is perhaps not the best unit of analysis. To be

appropriate, a technology must fit with the needs of the local community. But in much of the

developing word, communities are not so closed off as they once were, and even a poor town is

also a node on vast network. How capital intensive a technology ought to be depends the not

only on the community it is located in, but also its relationship to other elements of the technical

system (Willoughby, K. Personal Interview, May 2011).

3.3 Openness, Productive technologies and imports

The Washington Consensus and neoliberalism has largely supplanted import substitution.

The inward looking, protected economies of Schumachers time became more open and

connected to global markets (Stiglitz, 2002). Open economies not only allow MNCs product

offerings to compete, but require more competitive productive technologies. In outward looking

economies, the need for competitiveness can drive away things like small scale egg carton

manufacturers (a classic AT success story). One of the most striking trends in contemporary

appropriate technologies is the shift from appropriate modes of production to appropriate

consumer goods. Influential books like Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, A Corporate

Solution to Global Poverty and major conferences like 2007s Business with Four Billion at

Cornell champion bringing the power of the corporation to bear on the unmet needs and wants of

the poor. Schumacher argued that technological innovation could transform undercapitalized

activities reliant on inefficient technologies into economically viable but small industries. With

lower trade barriers, production in the intermediate sector must stand up not only against local

competition, but a huge array of goods and inputs from all over the world. The need for the

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intermediate capital goods that Schumacher envisioned must be re-examined in this light.

Hindustan Unilever, for example, has been successful in tailoring non-durable consumer goods

to the local market- with products like non-spoiling margarine or shampoo that comes in single

use packs (Prahalad, 2005). Who needs an oil seed press or small-scale soap factory when

Unilever margarine and shampoo can be bought cheaply? From a companys perspective, selling

a branded product holds more potential for profit than teaching people to make their own local

substitute.

Just as products become more complex, many productive technologies have become

more capital intensive, stretching the limits of what it means to be intermediate. Intermediate

productive technologies can be defined as intermediate when the cost of fixed capital per worker

is roughly equal to average per capita income (Schumacher 1975; Willoughby, 1990). For the

poor, underdeveloped countries that Schumacher was writing about, intermediate technologies

were, by definition, low cost per worker. As countries get richer, intermediate technologies

become more capital intensive. Higher levels of development and productive capacity, especially

in The Tiger Economies and the BRICs show how rapid economic growth tracks rising capital

intensity. Taiwan, for example built institutions that enabled it to stretch from producing primary

goods to competing in knowledge and capital intensive electronics manufacturing while

maintaining a rough equivalence between average income and investment per worker (Mathews,

2006). At a basic level, technology suited to 1970s Taiwan underwrote the growth and

development necessary for more capital-intensive technology in the 1980s, and the technology of

the 1980s created conditions of the technology of the 1990s. The most pointed observation is that

successful intermediate technologies dont necessarily require altruistic intervention, and that

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economies can quickly enter the fold of modern techno-capitalism. No one today would suggest

that Taiwan needs help from an AT organization.

4.1 What MNC AT Means.

Kaplinsky argues that the demands of the poor induce technical changes in processes that are

likely to meet many of the requirements of appropriateness set out by its leader (2010, pg.1).

The consumer demands of the poor not only respond to changes in technology, but also induce

changes (Kaplinsky, 2010). The cell phone is again an illustrative example. Institutions

developed cellular technology a far reach from poor consumers. The factors underlying this

development had nothing to do with the demand pull of developing countries. However, the

poors demand for mobile communications later induced firms like Nokia to design and produce

simple, lower cost units.

The phrase appropriate technology raises the obvious question, appropriate

to what? It is clear that the what, the parameters in which AT must operate have changed

dramatically. One must ask, then, if the transformed AT explored above is in fact AT, or is

appropriate conflated with whatever works or extending business as usual to new

territory? The answer depends on the type of definitions one adopts. A reconceptualization of

appropriateness to context might be needed. Technology that was appropriate to an isolated

farmer in 1970s is very different than the technology appropriate for a wage earner who lives on

the urban periphery. The changing parameters of appropriateness have to do not only to the

poors different day-to-day needs, but the extent to which they participate and are connected to

broader technical, social and economic systems.

4.1a MNCs, unlike AT organizations, are not directly concerned with improving the

societal conditions in a country, or preventing the mutual poisoning of industrial and rural

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sectors. Firms, however, have learned to make efficient production succeed in developing

countries. Schumacher noted failure of larger scaled industrial production in underdeveloped

countries and pointed to the need of intermediate technologies. In this sense, their efforts are

appropriate to their goals and in country circumstances. Some examples for MNCs reaching

developing countries are clearly inappropriate, such as tobacco companies or some mining

operations5. So there is both good and bad in the reach of global corporations. The relevant

observation is that this reach extends to grasp appropriate technology.

There are important differences in how AT NGOs and business firms gauge and respond

to feedback. For the business firm, a profitable but inappropriate good or production technology

can thrive for some time because negative externalities are felt late and only partially internalized

(Willoughy, K, Personal Interview, May 2011). The AT organization, on the other hand, takes

macro-level social and environmental concerns as central, and makes an effort to foresee and

respond to negative consequences.

Business firms bring interests, beliefs and capabilities that have a definite influence on

the hardware, value chain and innovation system. AT organizations were eager to make

production as local as possible. Firms serving low-income customers have no such directive, and

will source inputs and employ labor by cost. However, even the complex cell phone creates job

opportunities for local repairmen and salespeople but not in the direct and purposeful way AT

organizations sought to create opportunities.

4.2 Conceptual Complications With Business Domination of AT

The first section, referenced cookstove projects to suggest that appropriate technologies

were intended to be made in an appropriate manner. The decoupling of goods tailored to the

global poor and their production raises an important analytical issue. In mainline AT, both the

5 See for example Moving Mountains: The Case of the Antamina Mining Company by

Portacarrero et. al

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production (the means) and the good (the end) should be appropriate to the local context

(Schumacher, 1976). But global production networks bring together inputs from different locales

with different needs and varying degrees of appropriateness in production.

Even simple appropriate goods and services do not entail appropriate production

technologies.

The diffusion of production and extension of global distribution challenges forces careful

consideration of perspective. What is a good from one perspective is a manufacturing technology

from another. For example, one might laud the use of small, scale, labor intensive, yet effective

machines for manufacturing bicycle tires in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet these same machines could

include inputs made in a gigantic polluting, socially disruptive factory located elsewhere. With

respect to the small African manufacturer and the bike user, the machine is an appropriate

intermediate technology. With respect to the worker in the big polluting factory, perhaps no.

It is unclear if MNC driven AT should be considered appropriate technology.

Most corporations focus on market efficiency, with social and environmental impact a tangential

concern at best. Whether processed snacks and sweatshop labor are appropriate is debatable.

For AT organizations, environmental and social impact are maximized while the rigors of the

market are boundaries to be worked within, or for some groups, to be overcome

To some, such as Anthony Akube, Appropriate Technology entails an explicit moral

commitment to improving the lot of the worlds poor, and reorienting mans relationship with the

economy (2000). MNC s providing tailored consumer goods to the poor would not fit his rigid

definition.

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5.1New directions and potential for collaboration: A New Frontier?

Some firms have found promising synergies between industrial capitalism and small

technologies and local focus. For the very poorest, those at the bottom of the pyramid, more

creative approaches might be needed. They have learned to create efficiency with technical

artifacts and systems more in line with the specific characteristics such as smallness and village

scale outlined by Appropriate Technologists.

This paper has emphasized large private companies role in providing goods for the

worlds poor, as opposed to productive technologies. Indias $2 billion dairy giant AMUL was

founded in 1946 to reverse the exploitation of marginal producers. From the beginning, its

mission was social (Ghandi and Jain, 2007). AMUL focuses on grass roots organization, job

creation, and leveraging scientific knowledge to help small farmers improve their production and

herd health. Farmers are given access to modern technology. IT use includes an ordering

portal, a supply chain planning system for the material in the network, a net based dairy kiosk at

some village societies and use of GIS along the supply chain. Engineers at AMUL developed

methods for processing buffalo milk into powder, baby food, and cheese while GCMMF

marketed the new products (Tirupati, 2002). AMUL doesnt poison the dual sector as a large

dairy farm might, but instead employs 2.8 million milk producers (Ghandi and Jain, 2007). Their

end products are low cost and priced for Indias poor. At the same time AMUL relies on an

educated, urban leadership, sophisticated processing techniques and a vast and sophisticated

distribution system that requires expensive technology and central management. AMUL is

unique in that it founders espoused Gandhian economic values, and it has maintained these

values while becoming thoroughly modern and internationally competitive.

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Appropriate technology for production can succeed when it helps integrate small

producers into a robust and well-developed value chain (World Bank 2010). AMULs diary

collection centers, design of appropriate feeds and treatments for livestock are foundational to

their success, but their greatest achievement in appropriate technology is organizational and

strategic. Some of the appropriate technologies used by AMUL dairy farmers would likely have

failed without the institutional and market support provided by AMUL. Farmers would be

hesitant to invest in an productivity upgrade unless a market for their surplus was assured.

Technological adoption is highly contingent, and AMULs structure makes new tech

appropriate by guaranteeing a market and minimizing risk to the farmer.

Phillips Coneco has pushed an innovative model that links their capabilities as a

multinational firm with other actors to meet the needs of the rural poor. Phillips is teaming with

the Dutch government and the organization Lighting Africa to provide off grid LED lighting

for 10 million people in 14 sub-Saharan African countries. Gerard Kleisterlee, CEO of Phillips

Coneco said in a speech "The rural lighting markets for low income people in developing

countries, is not very well known or explored. It is essential that governments and international

organizations such as the World Bank, NGOs and various companies get together in a network to

work out appropriate business models." (LED Magazine, 2008). Phillips is using its vast

resources and expertise to develop specially designed, solar powered LED lighting for this

African market. The field partners help Phillips figure our what is most appropriate to the local

context. The Public Private Partnership enables Phillips to use its capabilities to reach the rural

poor with new technology when it wouldnt otherwise be profitable (LED Magazine, 2008). By

virtue of its size and resources, an MNC like Phillips is able to roll out products at low cost, as

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compared to an NGO such as D-light, that started from scratch to design and manufacture a solar

lamp.

Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and Alleviating Poverty through Profitable

Partnerships emphasize co-created designs, low cost manufacturing, social distribution,

microfinance, user education and technical support.There are still many millions of people out

of reach from both AT organizations and corporations. Businesses have to be creative to turn to

serve low-income markets, but the poorest and most isolated populations will require even

greater effort.

In short, the enormous capabilities of large companies with advanced technology,

government backing and the social focus and on the ground expertise of NGOs is a powerful

combination. MNCs historically have given away products in an attempt to help the poor and

improve their image. But these models should be based on real consumer demands, and use

government or NGO funding to incentive the firm to meet these demands as competitively as

possible.

6.1 Some of the Drivers of Corporate Involvement also benefit AT organizations.

The story of global changes and AT has been one sided thus far. It would be

amiss not to mention some of the opportunities given to more traditional AT organizations. For

example, technological change also gives AT organizations and small businesses a powerful tool

for managing complex decentralized production systems and sharing information at low

marginal cost. The web opens new possibilities for sharing information and supporting

innovation among the worlds poor. Appropriate Technologists of the last 40 years have called

for the development of software to support AT hardware (McRobie, 1979). Software is the

managerial tools, organizational forms, financial incentives, legal structures, and cultural

knowledge that determine the success or failure of innovation (Dickinson, 1975, p. 542).

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Information systems were one of the major, if not the major software concerns for the first

wave of AT. InAppropriate Technology: Problems and Promises, Nicholas Jquier notes the

importance of information technologies, and the inadequacy of contemporary (1970s) methods.

For example, the average cost of a technical answer of piece of documentation about a specific

technical problem is about $150. (Jquier, 1976, p. 67). The costs of storing information on the

web are fraction of that and the marginal cost of access is virtually zero. For all its promise, the

web has not unleashed a flood of co-creation with the worlds poor. Websites like Appropedia

and Design for the Other 90% are touted by proponents of collaborative and open source

innovation, but are only lightly used by the worlds poor (Buitenhuis, 2010; Zeleinka, 2011).

This resonates with the observations made previously that the choke point in developing

countries is not purely technological (the hardware) but in the software- how these

technologies can be designed, maintained, produced, diffused and constantly improved.

6.2 Weaknesses and Omissions

The first section of this paper is not transparent about how it drew the general

conclusions about improved cookstove projects. The author read summaries of individual

cookstove projects and relied on secondary sources that reviewed and analyzed cookstove

projects. But no rigorous methodology was used. Further, it compressed a great deal of

complexity within and across stove projects.

When identifying large-scale global transformations, this paper did not account for the

divergent paths that individual countries have taken.

This paper attributed the fall of Appropriate Technology to structural features and global

changes, and ignored compelling explanations from Loweick and Morrision that make AT out as

a social movement, subject to ebb and flow with western countries ideologies (1980).

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The crux of the argument is that MNCs have advantages in providing appropriate

technologies to the global poor in todays environment. This is based off of 1) assumptions about

the capabilities of firms vis a vis NGOs, 2) the observation that appropriate technologies today

are biased to favor the capabilities of MNCs. These are both contestable claims, and are not

thoroughly defended.

6.3 Conclusion:If the previous generation of appropriate technology dealt with finding alternatives to

sophisticated, large scale technologies, the new generation is about finding ways to bring the

capabilities responsible for these technologies to bear on the lives of the worlds poor.

The involvement of MNCs poses new challenges to the AT concept. Does true Appropriate

Technology deal only with those who are still isolated from the benefits of global economic

growth? Is wireless the new the treadle pump? Does techno-capitalism sweep away AT or give it

new life? The apparent decline in traditional AT activity is more than a product of the

movements internal inconsistencies and constraints. The rise of corporations in introducing

productive and consumptive technologies to the poor is rooted in dramatic global shifts. MNCs

dont appear posed to profit their way to ending world poverty. But they do carry distinct

advantages that make the modern business an effective tool at reaching the poor with new

technology. There is great promise in the future of appropriate technology even if

Appropriate Technology declines as firms learn to expand their operations to difficult

environments and work with a broader range of stakeholders.

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Figure 1. Frequency of use in Published English Language Books. Source Google Tracker.

appropriate technology ecosystem

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