Innovating for the Global South: Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda

by Dilip Soman, Janice Gross Stein, Joseph Wong

Overview

Despite the vast wealth generated in the last half century, in today’s world inequality is worsening and poverty is becoming increasingly chronic. Hundreds of millions of people continue to live on less than $2 per day and lack basic human necessities such as nutritious food, shelter, clean water, primary health care, and education.

Innovating for the Global South offers fresh solutions for reducing poverty in the developing world. Highlighting the multidisciplinary expertise of the University of Toronto’s Global Innovation Group, leading experts from the fields of engineering, medicine, management, and global public policy examine the causes and consequences of endemic poverty and the challenges of mitigating its effects from the perspective of the world’s poorest of the poor.

Can we imagine ways to generate solar energy to run essential medical equipment in the countryside? Can we adapt information and communication technologies to provide up-to-the-minute agricultural market prices for remote farming villages? How do we create more inclusive innovation processes to hear the voices of those living in urban slums? Is it possible to reinvent a low-cost toilet that operates beyond the water and electricity grids?

Motivated by the imperatives of developing, delivering, and harnessing innovation in the developing world, Innovating for the Global South is essential reading for managers, practitioners, and scholars of development, business, and policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442614628
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	01/17/2014
Series:	Munk Series on Global Affairs
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 8.93(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Dilip Soman holds the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Science and Economics at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and serves as the project director of the Behaviourally Informed Organizations initiative.
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
Joseph Wong is Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Canada Research Chair in Democratization, Health, and Development in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Re-Thinking Innovation – Joseph Wong (University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs, Innovation) and Dilip Soman (University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Marketing)

Chapter 1: Poverty Invisibility and Innovation – Joseph Wong

Chapter 2: Behaviourally Informed Innovation – Dilip Soman

Chapter 3: Appropriate Technologies for the Global South – Yu-Ling Cheng (University of Toronto, Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry) and Beverly Bradley (University of Toronto, Centre for Global Engineering)

Chapter 4: Globalization of Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Implications for Poor Market Diseases – Rahim Rezaie (University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs, Research Fellow)

Chapter 5: Embedded Innovation in Health – Anita M. McGahan (University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Associate Dean of Research), Rahim Rezaie and Donald C. Cole (University of Toronto, Associate Professor)

Chapter 6: Scaling Up: The Case of Nutritional Interventions in the Global South – Ashley Aimone Phillips (Registered Dietitian), Nandita Perumal, Carmen Ho (University of Toronto, Doctoral Fellow, Political Science), and Stanley Zlotkin (University of Toronto, Hospital for Sick Children, Paediatrics, Public Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences)

Chapter 7: New Models for Financing Innovative Technologies and Entrepreneurial Organizations in the Global South – Murray R. Metcalfe (University of Toronto, Centre for Global Engineering, Globalization)

Chapter 8: Innovation and Foreign Policy – Janice Gross Stein (University of Toronto, Political Science)

Conclusion: Inclusive Innovation – Will Mitchell (University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Strategic Management), Anita M. McGahan

Glossary

About the Contributor

What People are Saying About This

Peter Singer

“An extraordinary contribution by an extraordinary group of authors who write about the most extraordinary challenges of our time.”

Jaideep Prabhu

“Innovating for the Global South engages a very important and interesting set of global challenges and presents potential solutions involving many important constituencies: governments, businesses and consumers. The authors represent many different disciplines and viewpoints, and the examples used throughout are of excellent quality, very current and highly diverse.”

Thomas Burke

“Innovating for the Global South is a strong, coherent, and much-needed book. Its vision is fresh and forward thinking, and entirely in keeping with where the field on innovating for the poor must go. All students interested in the topic, whether from economics, public health, management, or government, should read this book.

From the Publisher

“Innovating for the Global South engages a very important and interesting set of global challenges and presents potential solutions involving many important constituencies: governments, businesses and consumers. The authors represent many different disciplines and viewpoints, and the examples used throughout are of excellent quality, very current and highly diverse.”

“Innovating for the Global South is a strong, coherent, and much-needed book. Its vision is fresh and forward thinking, and entirely in keeping with where the field on innovating for the poor must go. All students interested in the topic, whether from economics, public health, management, or government, should read this book.

“An extraordinary contribution by an extraordinary group of authors who write about the most extraordinary challenges of our time.”

Editorial Reviews

‘This book is particularly enlightening, even for the lay reader, in its itemizing of examples of strategies and innovations that are changing the lives of local populations as well as the ways both we and they think.’—Larry Krotz, Literary Review of Canada vol 22:07:2014
‘Innovating for the Global South offers a far-ranging and enlightening discussion on the right ways and wrong ways to attempt to improve life for the world’s poorest. It is commendable reading for professionals in business and global development worldwide.’—The Futurist, vol 48:05:2014

“Innovating for the Global South engages a very important and interesting set of global challenges and presents potential solutions involving many important constituencies: governments, businesses and consumers. The authors represent many different disciplines and viewpoints, and the examples used throughout are of excellent quality, very current and highly diverse.”—Jaideep Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise and Director of the Centre for India and Global Business, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

“Innovating for the Global South is a strong, coherent, and much-needed book. Its vision is fresh and forward thinking, and entirely in keeping with where the field on innovating for the poor must go. All students interested in the topic, whether from economics, public health, management, or government, should read this book.

—Thomas Burke, Director of the Division of Global Health and Human Rights, Massachusetts General Hospital

“An extraordinary contribution by an extraordinary group of authors who write about the most extraordinary challenges of our time.”

—Peter Singer, CEO, Grand Challenges Canada

From the Publisher

‘Innovating for the Global South offers a far-ranging and enlightening discussion on the right ways and wrong ways to attempt to improve life for the world’s poorest. It is commendable reading for professionals in business and global development worldwide.’

vol 48:05:2014 The Futurist

‘This book is particularly enlightening, even for the lay reader, in its itemizing of examples of strategies and innovations that are changing the lives of local populations as well as the ways both we and they think.’

Literary Review of Canada vol 22:07:2014 - Larry Krotz