How to Make Social Innovation by making Technology and Social Solutions

• Innovation comes from constraints
• when you have very few resources, you’re forced to be very creative in using and reusing them. That's simple isn't it?
  
• Don’t fight culture, let peole be they are
• Embrace market system - give as well as sell
• Innovate on existing platforms rather than creating a totally new one.
• Problems are not always obvious as you seen
• Try living for a week on Rs 100/= a day to understand the poor.
• Listen to the right people.
• Do the hard work needed to find a simple and better solution. Its the key for innovation.
• Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
• Create “transparent” re-usable and upgradable technologies. It should be easily understood by the users
• Promote local and collaborative innovation. No one finds it alone.
• Electrone was known to many people. Rutherfered confired it.
• Make it inexpensive for the poor as well as for rich.
• Provide skills, not just shopisticated technologies.
• Do co-creation by teaching the skills to create solutions.
• Involving the community throughout the design process.
• Build capacity to help equip people to innovate and contribute to the evolution of the solution. It is real empowerment.
• Be where the action is, not away from it.
• Face the problem your self.
• Work with people who have the problem
• LISTEN to what they have to say  
• Learn everything there is to know about it, Learning is a journey
• Think big and act big – don’t plan to reach less than one million people, even if you implement for 100 or even for 10, think upscalability ...
• Concept is everything, Good ideas evolve ecologically
• Think like a child as have no limit to their thinking
• Learn to see the obvious and do the obvious
• If somebody already has invented it, design for measurable improvements
• Work to practical, three-year plans , not less
• Keep learning from your community and document and review
• Be positive
• Don’t be distracted by what other people think or say
• Understand by observing the environment, infrastructure, culture and lives of people by being there.
• Think creatively: start big, use constraints as a filter and find the simplest solutions.
• Increase user acceptance
• Beware of exsisiting costs
• Beware of radically different ways of doing things.
• Deliver value not just solutions.
• Make what benefits people from end product
• Ask how your solution improve life?
• Think economic sustainability
• Build financial motivations for continued growth over time.
• Empower people by improving their economic or social status.
• Share knowledge and skills to continue the innovative process
• Keep a looking out for other challenges or new one
• Dream Before Planning, Awake when planning, Sleep on the plan before making it work ...
• Innovation never ends , it's a process not a milestone

adaptod from Design Africa Blog